The Wretched Field Conditions of Football's Past - In Pictures

Wretched field conditions were a regular feature of football games in the past. They significantly affected play, particularly as the season wore on, with muddy conditions one week starting a cycle of deteriorating conditions. Field conditions began to improve as schools built or upgraded their stadiums in the 1920s and 1930s because they often enhanced the infrastructure underlying the fields, besides expanding the stadium seating capacity. 

Field conditions in football's earliest days were primitive, like the game itself. Games were played on almost any available open field such as college greens or pastures on the town's edge. As time marched on, schools began playing at major or minor league baseball parks whose grandstands could hold large crowds, but whose dirt infields became part of the gridiron. In addition, many schools built multi-purpose stadiums to handle football, baseball, and track. 

Upgraded in the early 1920s, the University of Vermont's Centennial Field is an example of the multi-sport stadiums or complexes built during the era. (1923 Vermont yearbook)

Having outlined the broad reasons why field conditions were more suspect in the past, let's turn to images of those field conditions. The images shown below were identified during a review of more than 2,000 college yearbooks published between 1900 to 1925. (Pre-1910 yearbooks often included only a single, posed image of the year's team. Game action photos became more common after 1910, though many were photographically challenged.)

Mowing the Field

The neatly manicured lawns of the English estates we see in movies set in the 18th or 19th century were not as neat as portrayed since they were maintained by grazing, hand clipping, or scything the lawns. The reel mover did not arrive until the 1830s, and the first internal combustion-powered mover only came to the U.S. in 1919. The well-trimmed grass football fields we know today did not exist for much of football's history. Not only was it difficult to keep the grass trimmed, but allowing it to grow longer helped the grass withstand the abuse of daily practices and games.

The field's long grass partially obscures the holder for the free kick as he executes the prone, over-under holding technique common at the time. (1902 William and Mary yearbook)

The grass remained comparatively long during this 1917 game at North Carolina State. (1918 North Carolina State yearbook)

Dirt and Dusty Fields