David Rosenthal

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.

There's no way a casual fan can understand all of it.

And yet the ballet, as you say, is mesmerizing to watch.

Collegiate American football just becomes wildly, wildly popular.

It still is to this day.

Like it is a huge part of the American sports landscape.

And it was even more so then.

No.

Again, very specifically, we're spending a lot of time on the origins of football in college here, but it's so important for understanding the NFL.

This is a college thing.

This is a American collegiate experience that these elite young men go through this dangerous kind of warlike activity.

There's the sacred element to it.

So much so that while in the early 1900s, some professional teams do start to pop up around the country.