Today's Tidbit... The Arrival of Spearing

Just before Christmas, I published an article about Rule #10 from the IFA's 1876 rule book. The article described how tacklers were initially limited to grabbing the ball carrier's torso, only later being allowed to grab other body parts, excluding the head.

Fifty-plus years after tackling below the waist became legal in 1903, a series of rules began restricting more dangerous elements of the tackling process, one of which was to outlaw face masking in 1957.

Another dangerous tackling process, spearing, came to the public's attention in the early 1960s after the Armour Institute of the Illinois Institute of Technology published the results of a study investigating football helmets and their relationship to head and neck injuries. Most football insiders believed spearing began because plastic helmets and face masks offered significant protection to tacklers that they became willing to use their heads as weapons. In addition, many coaches taught spearing and hitting with the face mask.