It's a Snap: The Line of Scrimmage and Center Technique

The Intercollegiate Football Association defined football using a set of sixty-one rules in 1876 and all but five were essentially the same rules prescribed for play by the Rugby Union. The game evolved to its present form by thousands of rule changes and a comparable number of innovations in technique, some of which took longer to find their current form than others. One technique that took a circuitous route was the center snap.

Two of the original rules (shown in italics below) had to change before the center position and technique could evolve. Even then, the progression was surprisingly slow.

Rule 11: A scrummage takes place when the holder of the ball, being in the field of play, puts it on the ground in front of him, and all who have closed around on the respective sides endeavor to push their opponents back, and by kicking the ball, to drive it in the direction of the opposite goal-line.

Since early football was a form of rugby, its play mirrored rugby. After a runner was downed, the two teams formed a rugby-like scrummage or scrum with the ball put in play by tossing it between the two teams. Both teams attempted to kick the ball behind their scrum line to a teammate who picked it up, ran, backward passed to another teammate, or kicked the ball to advance it.

Walter Camp and others considered the scrummage bad form since it gave both teams equal opportunity to gain possession of the ball. He pushed for the ‘scientific’ approach to the game that reduced the role of chance in favor of effective planning and team play. He succeeded in getting the scrimmage rule passed in 1880 which, more than any other rule change, led to football’s distinctiveness as a sport.

Starting play from a controlled scrimmage with one team maintaining possession of the ball allowed for the development of structured alignments and plays different in kind from the free-flowing plays of soccer and rugby.

Rule 14: In a scrummage it is not lawful for the man who has the ball to pick it up with the hand under any circumstance whatsoever.

Using the concept of the scrimmage, the team with the ball retained possession and aligned on the line of scrimmage. One player snapped the ball backward with his feet to a teammate who then passed it backward to another teammate to run or kick the ball. Initially, any of the men on the line might snap the ball back, and any of the backs might be the first to pick up the ball, but teams quickly formalized the position of each player in the scrimmage.