Today's Tidbit... Fair Play Before Hash Marks

Since football began, the ball has sometimes gone out of bounds during play, so the game found ways to deal with those events through tactics that changed dramatically over the years. Until 1926, the ball remained live when it went out of bounds, leading to players scrambling for it, knocking over whatever was in the way while pursuing the oblate spheroid.

These days, balls that go out of bounds are returned to the team that last possessed the ball (or last touched it in Canada), with the ball brought back onto the field to a hash mark or inbounds line set at some distance from the sideline. Hashmarks did not enter NCAA and NFL football until 1933, so what procedures did they use to bring the ball back on the field before that?

Initially, football teams had five methods to bring the ball back into play from out of bounds. The first method (shown in the illustration) was to throw the ball back to a teammate, who then ran or punted it.

(Johnson, Alexander. "The American Game of Foot-Ball," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October 1887.)

The second option was the "fair," which involved throwing the ball onto the field at a right angle from the sideline and between the two teams lined up across from one another. (The fair or "line out" remains part of rugby today.)