Today's Tidbit... It's Time For Football's Two-Yard Penalty

The 1906 season was a seminal season for rule changes. The forward pass became legal, as did the onside kick from scrimmage, the neutral zone entered the game, and the yards to gain for a first down doubled from five to ten. Those were among the significant changes in 1906, but there was another small change whose story is seldom told: the introduction of the two-yard penalty.

By football’s tradition, only the team captains could call timeout, and there was no rule limiting how often they could call time until the 1906 rule makers decided time could be called three times per team per half. Calling time more than three times per half resulted in a two-yard penalty, which, as far as I can tell, was the only two-yard penalty in the game's history.

An exception to the rule allowed for more than three timeouts per half when tending to an injured player. However, not every official knew all the rules back in 1906, and those who knew the rules sometimes did not follow them. That was likely the situation in the 1906 Notre Dame-Indiana game when the Hoosiers put a licking on the Irish 12-0. Late in the game, Notre Dame stopped play due to an injury: