David Rosenthal

This summit that Teddy Roosevelt calls and then he basically tells all the presidents of the universities like, hey, you guys got to figure this out or I'm going to outlaw this.

In response, they create the NCAA.

Like that is the beginning of the NCAA.

Yeah, it was to regulate and codify and make the game of collegiate American football safer.

Huh.

Yeah, crazy, right?

So following that, this new institution that becomes the NCAA, they institute the creation of a neutral zone.

They abolish the use of wedge formations.

So they do make the sport safer.

I mean, there's still like a lot of injuries.

There's not a lot of protective padding being worn here.

Yes.

But they also make a change to the rules after this summit that would become the defining element of American football and fully differentiate it from soccer and rugby, which rugby itself...

came from soccer.

Rugby is the set of soccer rules that the English public school rugby used, hence why it's called rugby.

And this rule that the NCAA institutes is legalizing the forward pass.

In 1905.

And that becomes, obviously, a defining characteristic of football.

Yeah.

The beauty and the strategic element to the offensive playbook, the defensive coverages, the audibles.