The Opening Kickoff Quotes

“After witnessing a particularly brutal Harvard–Yale match in the 1890s, boxing champ John L. Sullivan boarded a train for New York City. In the washroom, he encountered noted football official Paul Dashiell, who asked the prizefighter what he had thought of the match. Sullivan lowered his voice to a whisper before observing, “There’s murder in that game.”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“He left Yale in 1890 and eventually made his way to the International Young Men’s Christian Association Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts, joining a staff that included James Naismith, who would invent basketball there a year later.”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“The next few moments border on the apocryphal—though Pat told and retold the story quite consistently throughout his life. A stray ball rolled in his direction. As he had so many times in Australia, O’Dea picked up the ball and booted it back toward the players. It flew far over their heads and landed perhaps 75 yards from where he was standing. The players looked at one another and started to shout at the unfamiliar figure. Thinking he had somehow made a breach of etiquette, Pat turned to walk away. But he was quickly intercepted by a short, curly-haired fellow who introduced himself as Phil King, head football coach.”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“Back east, schools began to recruit actively, often offering inducements to promising athletes. In the fall of 1889, former Yale captain Bill “Pa” Corbin telegraphed Camp, who was serving as Yale’s football advisor. The subject was a prospect named Highland Stickney, who, it seems, was in search of a handout. “Stickney wrote,” Corbin reported, “Have received good offers from Harvard and Princeton to play football. What will you give[?]” Apparently, not enough. Stickney landed in Cambridge.”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“The rules exacerbated the issue. For instance, a player wasn’t technically down until he stopped moving, meaning a tackled player would often try to squirm forward on the ground, as members of the opposing team jumped on his back or head trying to stop his progress”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“The original scrummage was a weird and unscientific institution. The ball belonged to neither side,” observed Amos Alonzo Stagg. “It was dull business for the backs and the onlookers. For long periods the ball could not be seen and nothing happened. All the spectators could distinguish was a ton and a half of heavyweights leaning pantingly against one another. Eventually the ball would pop out by accident or surrender, a back would seize it for a run, be tackled and downed, and back went the ball into scrummage.” Camp’s solution was what came to be known as the scrimmage. Instead of reestablishing possession each time the ball was downed, Camp believed that the downed team ought to retain possession and simply start the play anew. This rule passed at the 1880 convention, along with the reduction to eleven players. American football was born.”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“No one who does not live in New York can understand how completely it colors and lays its hold upon that city,” famed journalist Richard Harding Davis wrote in 1893 of the Thanksgiving Day game. “[I]t, in short, became ‘the thing to do,’ and the significance of that day which once centred in New England around a grateful family offering thanks for blessing received and a fruitful harvest now centres in Harlem about twenty-two very dirty and very earnest young men who are trying to force a leather ball over a whitewashed line.”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“The North Carolina academic scandal, for instance, had its precedent at the University of Chicago. That school’s greatest star of the early twentieth century, Walter Eckersall, was allowed to compete for three years despite making almost no progress toward a degree. He was enabled along the way by legendary coach Amos Alonzo Stagg, whose friends on the faculty did all they could to keep the All-American eligible.”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation

“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. —Ecclesiastes 1:9”
― Dave Revsine, The Opening Kickoff: The Tumultuous Birth of a Football Nation