The Opening Kickoff Read online

  By October of 1894, the Galveston Daily News declared the nation to be officially Football Mad [with] The Whole American Country Crazily Chasing the Oval Pigskin on the Gridiron. After spending a day on campus with the Yale team for an article in the popular publication Harper’s Weekly, Richard Harding Davis best summarized the growing football fervor when he quipped, “There is only one man in New Haven of more importance than Walter Camp, and I have forgotten his name. I think he is the president of the university.”

  In newspaper and magazine columns like that one, football had found its greatest ally and another mechanism to help expand the game’s reach. The combination of cheap paper, evolving printing technology, enhanced distribution, and skyrocketing literacy rates coalesced to form an era of unprecedented power for newspapers and periodicals. They seized on sports in general and football in particular as a topic to help increase readership, through the newly created sports section of the paper.

  Much of the coverage didn’t even focus on the action on the field, as in many respects, the game was less important than the event. Football games—particularly the annual Thanksgiving Day contests in New York—were a place to see and be seen. The New York Herald’s coverage of the 1892 Thanksgiving Day game was typical. “Mrs. William C. Whitney had a conspicuous box, trimmed profusely in Yale colors and beautifully decorated with a bevy of young girls,” the paper reported. “The silvery frost of the wintry atmosphere which settled upon the box framework was strangely similar to the glistening shades of her hair, and her café au lait broadcloth, with garnet and sable trimmings, made a’ la Russian and royally fitted, enhanced her appearance.

  “His Luminous Magnificence the Sun was patted pleasantly on the back by Mrs. Elliot Shepard when she stepped into the Shepard-Vanderbilt box and remarked, ‘what a perfect day; what glorious sunshine!,’ ” the report continued. “And; indeed, the sun reciprocated thankfully to the compliment and smiled full and bright in her lovely face. Mrs. Shepard wore a burr brown broadcloth tailor made suit, with a soft Scotch turban of velvet and a spotted veil. . . .” And so it went for paragraph after nauseating paragraph.

  So, it had all reached a confluence by the mid-1890s. Schools wanted more students, prestige, and money. Players wanted to win. Papers wanted to increase their circulation. Society people wanted to see their names in print. Meanwhile, half a world away, a young Australian was beginning to get restless.

  Chapter Four

  Mass Plays and Mass Popularity

  The funeral procession moved slowly through the streets of Kilmore, Australia. Though it was the middle of the day, the bustling village was virtually shut down. The bankers, blacksmiths, tobacconists, and tailors had all closed their businesses so they could mourn one of Kilmore’s most well-liked citizens, a man who one friend observed, “had not an enemy in the world.”

  Until just a few weeks before, Patrick Flannery O’Dea had been a vibrant and important part of the community. A successful proprietor, he operated the town’s flour mill, living with his wife and family in a small cottage next to his business. Though he often remained on the sidelines when it came to public affairs, O’Dea was always quick to participate in charitable causes. Now, it was his bereaved family, shaken by the unexpected loss of its patriarch, that needed help. O’Dea’s eight-year-old son, Patrick, shuffled along in the sad march to the cemetery, his life forever altered.

  It was a family that had arrived in Australia like many others did—on a ship full of convicts. Patrick Flannery O’Dea’s father-in-law, James Crossley, came from England in 1830 after being jailed for stealing caps. He served out his time in the new land as an indentured servant before taking a job as an “overlander,” moving sheep and cattle through the unsettled countryside in search of verdant grazing lands. In 1838 he and a group of coworkers were attacked by Aborigines, a horrifying raid that killed eight of the eighteen men. Crossley was among the survivors. Perhaps scarred by the experience, he entered a different profession in the animal trade, opening a butcher shop in the new village of Kilmore.

  Kilmore was permanently settled in 1843, generally regarded as the first inland town in the Port Phillip District, an area that is now known as Victoria. Located a bit less than 40 miles from Melbourne, Kilmore lay in the midst of a lightly timbered, undulating region, with fertile land that was ideal for farming and grazing.

  While much of Australia’s early population was made up of former English convicts like Crossley, a significant number of Irish helped settle the country as well. Patrick Flannery (P. F.) O’Dea was a native of County Clare, having arrived with his family in the 1840s at age eleven. His father, Patrick, went into business in the Victorian countryside, raising horses, cattle, and sheep. P. F. O’Dea and his brothers inherited the business when Patrick died. Though it was successful, it was also isolating. Wanting to move a little closer to civilization, P. F. O’Dea took a job operating the flour mill in Kilmore.

  In 1863 P. F. O’Dea and Mary Johanna Crossley, James Crossley’s eldest daughter, were married at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Kilmore. Over the next sixteen years, they had ten children, seven of whom survived infancy. Pat was the third-oldest surviving boy. He was born on March 16, 1872—though throughout his life he would claim to have arrived a day later. What Irishman wouldn’t want a birthday on St. Patrick’s Day? O’Dea was never one to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

  By the time of Pat’s birth, Kilmore was fairly well-populated, a town of about 1,500 people scattered among nearly 300 dwellings. It had a hospital, two newspapers, and a number of churches. A recently completed train line ran nearby, though the tracks were not extended into the town proper until 1888. A new state school, providing compulsory education up until the age of twelve, was completed in 1875. It was the pride of Kilmore, “well-ventilated to guard against any epidemic.” Still, the village was a rather unremarkable place, with one visitor in the late nineteenth century observing that there wasn’t anything “particularly worth stopping for.”

  Not long after her husband’s death, Johanna, as O’Dea’s mother was known, decided there wasn’t anything particularly worth staying for, either. She moved the family closer to Melbourne. It was here that Pat O’Dea first entered the public eye.

  Over the holiday break from school in 1888, the fifteen-year-old O’Dea accompanied classmate Robert Crooke to the Crooke family home in Mordialloc, a seaside town south of Melbourne. Their relaxation took a tragic turn on the afternoon of January 3.

  Mrs. Crooke, whose name was Annie, took Pat, Robert, and Robert’s younger brother Bertie to a beach on the shores of Port Phillip Bay. As was her custom, Annie, an adept swimmer, made her way out into the water. Suddenly, a huge wave struck her, carrying her over a sandbar, which separated the swimming area from the deeper waters.

  The woman struggled mightily as she tried to make it back toward land. The boys quickly recognized her predicament. Bertie ran home to get his father, while Pat and Robert attempted to swim out to save Mrs. Crooke. Robert had to abandon his effort, but, as described by a local newspaper, Pat “pluckily swam out in the face of the breakers and he succeeded in obtaining a hold of the lady and in bringing her to shore.” When they arrived on dry land, Annie Crooke was lifeless, and despite the best efforts of several onlookers, she could not be revived.

  For his brave attempt to save Annie’s life, O’Dea was awarded a bronze medal by the Royal Humane Society of Australia. Like his birthday and many other accomplishments to follow, the drowning incident would take on a life of its own.

  In an early profile piece written on O’Dea in 1897, a Milwaukee Journal reporter described the Humane Society medal that “graces the wall of his room” in Madison—a medal the reporter had presumably seen while interviewing O’Dea. The story mentioned that the commendation was for “saving a woman from drowning,” which, as heroic as O’Dea’s efforts may have been on that day, is obviously not true. While it’s certain
ly possible that the reporter altered the story on his own, it is clear that the source for the rest of his information was O’Dea himself, and it doesn’t seem like too big a leap to conclude that the football star might have embellished the incident to make himself look better.

  By 1934 the story had a new, even more heroic, dimension. A newspaper writer reported that not only had O’Dea saved Annie Crooke, but that he had narrowly avoided getting eaten by sharks in the process. O’Dea spent plenty of time with the reporter of that story before it was published, so it seems reasonable to think that the sharks were his creation.

  The Herald Sun of Australia ran a feature on O’Dea in 2007 that reported the story this way: “On January 3, 1888, while he was swimming at Mordialloc beach, he heard a woman scream and looked up to see a shark’s fin. Young O’Dea, churning the water with his arms and legs, got between the shark and the woman. Although he finally got her safely ashore, the woman collapsed and died of a heart attack.” It was a story that would have made O’Dea proud.

  O’Dea completed his studies at Xavier, a Catholic boys high school in Melbourne, in 1889. In that same year, the seventeen-year-old applied to and was rejected by Melbourne University . . . three times. So, not by choice, O’Dea put his academic life on hold and focused on sports.

  While he excelled in many athletic pursuits, Pat had his most success in Australian Rules Football, or “footy.” He began to play the game at age eight, when his brother Andrew pieced together a homemade ball made of a bull bladder and a leather cover and inflated with a goose quill. By the time he arrived at Xavier, he had matured into an outstanding player, and he continued to compete locally after graduation.

  Footy is a kicking game. Though players can run with the ball provided they bounce it periodically (in O’Dea’s time, the rule was every seven yards), the only way to score is by booting the ball through the posts at either end of the field. Hence, in order to excel in footy, a player has to be an accomplished kicker—particularly on the run.

  And O’Dea did excel. He played for teams in North Melbourne and Melbourne in the early 1890s and was named as an alternate to the All-Victorian team in 1894. In 1895 he made the move to Essendon, just north of Melbourne, and his first appearance for that side received favorable reviews in the Melbourne Argus, which reported that he played with “more resolution than usual . . . and quite satisfied Essendon with his debut.” Though many newspaper articles in the United States would later report that O’Dea held “the distance kicking record” in Australia, there is no evidence to support this assertion.

  While Pat was pursuing his footy career, his older brother Andrew left home for the United States. Andy, an accomplished athlete himself, departed in the retinue of a boxer named Frank “Paddy” Slavin, the Australian heavyweight champion, who hoped to get a shot at the famed John L. Sullivan. It never happened, and Andy eventually broke off from Slavin. Andy had been a rower of some renown in Australia, competing for the Yarra Yarra Rowing Club, which took its name from the Yarra River on which it was located. He turned his attention back to that sport and accepted a job coaching a local rowing club in Minneapolis before being offered a position as the University of Wisconsin’s crew coach in 1895.

  Andy arrived on Wisconsin’s campus right when football was beginning to take hold in the Midwest. The game had evolved significantly since the scrimmage was adopted fifteen years earlier, but it was still quite dissimilar from the one we’re familiar with now. The ball was rounder, and therefore far easier to kick. At 110 yards from goal line to goal line, the field was 10 yards longer than it is in the modern game.

  The scoring, as described with the lofty value of the field goal and the two-point goal after a touchdown, placed a huge premium on the kicking game. Due to the rules of the time, these kicks were far trickier propositions than they are today. That scoring system, combined with the frequent punts, many executed on first or second down, meant that kickers were the unquestioned stars of 1890s football. A good kicker could turn a mediocre team into a great one. An outstanding kicker could become a national celebrity.

  Substitutions were legal, but if a player was replaced, he could not return. This meant, obviously, that all of the players were involved in both offense and defense. It also meant that the kicker was a position player, often playing fullback. The defensive fullback position was what would be referred to today as safety. With no legal forward passing, there were just two ways to advance the ball—running and kicking. The first player who received the snap (generally the quarterback) was prohibited from running with the ball unless it had first been in another player’s hands. Thus, the plays were not only limited but also a bit slow to develop.

  Given the narrow options for moving the ball, gaining the requisite five yards in three plays was a difficult proposition. The problem was exacerbated in 1887 when the football association, led by Camp, legalized tackling below the waist. That decision cut down severely on the effectiveness of open-field running and led to the rise of so-called “mass plays.” The concept was a simple one: Since the highly restrictive rules didn’t necessarily favor the speedier or more athletic side, teams turned to brute force in their efforts to advance the ball.

  Penn’s legendary coach George Woodruff devised an attack called “guards back.” In this formation both guards lined up a couple of yards behind the line of scrimmage, one in front of the other. About four yards behind them were three more players—the fullback and both halfbacks. There were several variations of the play, but the most common one involved a handoff to one of the backs. The players in front of him would all plow forward, providing “interference” or blocking for the runner. They would focus their efforts on one opponent on the defensive line, meaning the would-be tackler might have to take on four or five blockers on the same play. The results were often devastating.

  Other plays took on forms that would be only marginally recognizable as football today. The “turtle back” is a case in point. In this play the offensive team would organize itself in a tightly packed oval, with the farthest forward players on the line. After the snap the ball was handed to the designated runner, who would disappear into the mass. The players around him then began to revolve around the perimeter attempting to hold their formation, thus preventing defenders from getting at the ball carrier. All the while the oval moved forward, eventually opening up and launching the runner around end.

  The rules at the time also allowed blockers to attach straps to the back of their jerseys, which ball carriers could hold onto during their plunge into the line. This was a strategy favored by Yale and its revolutionary guard, William “Pudge” Heffelfinger. Heffelfinger, a Minneapolis native, was a freakish athlete. At 6'3" and just over 200 pounds, he was considered enormous for the time, but he was also faster than most backs. A three-time All-American, Heffelfinger became the most feared player of the late 1880s and early 1890s. As football historian Alexander Weyand noted, “The sight of this swarthy giant, a white bandage around his head to protect his ears, stampeding through the opposing line like a bull elephant, with a halfback clinging to a strap sewed to the back of his canvas jacket, was something once seen, never forgotten.”

  With players like Heffelfinger out front, the advancing wedges greatly increased the violence in the sport, exposing both sides to potential brutality. The effects on the defense are obvious, but the offense was often beaten up as well. The preferred method for breaking up the wedge, after all, was for a defender to strike the man at the front in the jaw with an open hand. Heffelfinger had a different strategy, though. He kicked his opponent in the face. During Yale’s game with Princeton in his freshman year of 1889, “Heffelfinger took a running leap and, with his knees drawn up in front of him, struck the apex man. That halted the wedge.”

  In 1892 the mass play gave birth to the “momentum play,” which combined the mass formations with the added element of a running start. The most famous of these, the “flying wedg
e,” was the brainchild of Lorin Deland, a military historian who not only never played football, but also never even attended a game until he was in his thirties.

  Deland believed that Napoleon’s concept of increasing force by “multiplying mass by rapidity” could be applied to the football field. He envisioned a play where an entire team full of blockers would gain momentum by starting well behind the line of scrimmage, arriving at the line to plow over their opponents at the precise moment that the ball was snapped. He discussed the idea with Harvard’s captain, Bernie Trafford, who encouraged him to design a play. The original flying wedge was a kickoff play, as the rules at the time allowed teams to begin by simply kicking the ball an inch forward, picking it up, and tossing it back to a teammate to run it.

  The play was first used in the 1892 game between Harvard and Yale. “Trafford remained in the middle of the field with the ball, while the other ten men separated in squads of five each, each squad taking a position about fifteen yards behind Trafford and toward the sides of the field,” the New York Times reported the next day. “Then the ten men started to run toward Trafford, and as they came near him he put the ball in play, passed it back and joined in the general rush toward the Yale players. By this trick the Harvard men were able to get additional momentum, and they carried the ball fifteen yards into Yale’s territory before they were downed.”

  The possibilities of the momentum play were immediately evident, and teams spent much of the time leading into the 1893 season developing similar plays of their own, adapting them to involve not just kickoffs but also snaps from the line of scrimmage. The flying wedge as a kickoff play was eliminated in 1894, when it was mandated that kickoffs travel at least ten yards before the kicking team could recover. That same year the committee declared that, “No momentum mass play shall be allowed,” with “momentum mass plays” defined as ones where more than three men start moving before the snap or group together more than five yards behind the play. Unfortunately, this rule didn’t go nearly far enough. If anything, the game seemed to get more brutal.