The Hut! Hut! Hike! series examines the origins of football terminology and how the game’s evolution drove changes in its vocabulary. Over 400 football terms are defined in my newest book (published in November 2022). This article is #1 in the new series.

Few football terms combine a sense of joy and horror as well as “two-a-days.” The term brings delight and optimism in that every team begins practice anticipating a winning season, but the start of practice comes with the knowledge that difficult times on dusty fields are ahead.

Unlike some football terms, there is little mystery about the term itself since it simply refers to teams undergoing two practices per day.

The first mentions of teams practicing twice a day appear just before the forward pass became legal when Harvard’s 1904 preseason schedule included “two sessions a day.” Trinity held two practices daily in 1905, but Harvard seems to have been the only school to consistently gain attention for their double sessions until Cornell stepped up in 1913.