Sideline Plays and How We See the Past and Future

Studying history helps us understand that each of us understands the world through a unique perspective that results from the time and place we were born, educated, and all our life experiences. For example, as someone living in 2023, it isn't easy to see the world through the eyes of someone living in the 1920s and 1930s because we bring a worldview informed by the events of the last 100 or 90 years. Likewise, try as they might, those living in the 1920s and 1930s struggled to see the future, resulting in blind spots about elements of the world we take for granted.

Those fancy thoughts occurred to me when digging into this story, which addresses sideline plays. Sideline plays have been covered previously in the history of hash marks, and a Tidbit about sideline plays specifically. Read those stories if interested, but I'll provide a short version of the relevant information for the poor souls who are too lazy to read those stories.

As you may know, football fields did not have hash marks until 1933. When the ball went out of bounds, the last team to touch the ball could bring the ball infield fifteen yards and start the next play there. However, when a ball carrier was downed inside the sideline, the next play started from that spot, regardless of whether that was one foot, one yard, or twenty yards from the sideline. Like golf, you play the ball as it lies.

A sideline play in an early 1920s Hamilton-Rochester game. (Personal collection)