Today's Tidbit... 100 Years of Football: The 1890s

This is the third in a series looking back at “100 Years OF Football,” syndicated cartoons published by Jerry Brondfield and Charles Beck in 1969. Today's version covers the 1890s.

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The 1890s were a decade filled with innovation as the game continued down a separate path from rugby. However, many of those changes made the game more brutal, leading to concerns about its viability.

Brief notes follow each cartoon, primarily so their contents are discoverable from an indexing and search perspective. As always, click the images to enlarge...

(Brondfield & Beck, '100 Years Of Football,' Courier-News (Bridgewater, NJ), September 29, 1969.)

While some school administrators did not like football, the sport grew quickly. Centers began snapping with their hands rather than their feet to control the ball better, especially when opposing linemen struck it. Soon, linemen stopped striking the ball and one another, numerical signals arrived, and Penn created the guards back formation.