Walter Chauncey Camp (April 7, 1859 – March 14, 1925) was an American college football player and coach, and sports writer known as the " Father of American Football". Among a long list of inventions, he created the sport's line of scrimmage and the system of downs. With John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner, Fielding H. Yost, and George Halas, Camp was one of the most accomplished persons in the early history of American football. He attended Yale University, where he played and coached college football. Camp's Yale teams of 1888, 1891, and 1892 have been recognized as national champions. Camp was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach during 1951.
Camp wrote articles and books on the gridiron and sports in general, annually publishing an "All-American" team. By the time of his death, he had written nearly 30 books and more than 250 magazine articles.
The annual Walter Camp Award is named in his honor, recognizing the best all-around collegiate football player.
He is credited with innovations such as the snap-back from center, the system of downs, and the points system as well as the introduction of what became a standard offensive arrangement of players—a seven-man line and a four-man backfield consisting of a quarterback, two halfbacks, and a fullback. Camp was also responsible for introducing the "safety," the awarding of two points to the defensive side for tackling a ball carrier in his own end zone followed by a free kick by the offense from its own 20-yard line to restart play. This is significant as rugby union has no point value award for this action, but instead awards a scrum to the attacking side five meters from the goal line.
In 2011, reviewing Camp's role in the founding of the sport and of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), Taylor Branch also credited Camp with cutting the number of players on a football team from 15 to 11 and adding measuring lines to the field. However, Branch noted that the revelation in a contemporaneous McClure's magazine story of "Camp's $100,000 slush fund," along with concern about the violence of the growing sport, helped lead to President Theodore Roosevelt's intervention in the sport. The NCAA emerged from the national talks, but worked to Yale's disadvantage relative to rival (and Roosevelt's alma mater) Harvard University, according to Branch.Branch, Taylor, " The Shame of College Sports," The Atlantic, September 14, 2011 (October 2011 issue). In 1905 in McClure's, Henry Beach Needham published two stories, "The College Athlete: His Amateur Code: Its Evasion and Administration." (July; 25:3 p. 260) and "The College Athlete: How Commercialism Is Making Him a Professional" (June; 25:2) with Yale content per "The early history of football at Yale: Contemporary sources" , Critical Sport Studies. Retrieved 2011-09-27.
By the age of 33, twelve years after graduating from Yale, Walter Camp had already become known as the "Father of Football." In a column in the popular magazine Harper's Weekly, sports columnist Caspar Whitney had applied the nickname; the sobriquet was appropriate because, by 1892, Camp had almost single-handedly fashioned the game of modern American football.
Camp was editor for several sports books published by the Spalding Athletic Library.
The selectors were typically Eastern writers and former players who attended only games in the East. In December 1910, The Mansfield News, an Ohio newspaper, ran an article headlined: "All-American Teams of East Are Jokes: Critics Who Never Saw Western Teams Play to Name Best in Country -- Forget About Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois." The article noted:
Both the Army and the Navy used Camp's methods."Walter Camp, Father of Football," Atlanta Constitution, September 19, 1920, p. 2D
The names of the exercises in the original Daily Dozen, as the whole set became known, were hands, grind, crawl, wave, hips, grate, curl, weave, head, grasp, crouch, and wing. As the name indicates, there were twelve exercises, and they could be completed in about eight minutes."Camp's Daily Dozen Exercises", Boston Globe, July 11, 1920, p. 64 A prolific writer, Camp wrote a book explaining the exercises and extolling their benefits. During the 1920s, a number of newspapers and magazines used the term "Daily Dozen" to refer to exercise in general.Lulu Hunt Peters, "Diet and Health: The Daily Dozens—Take 'Em." Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1927, p. A6
Starting in 1921 with the Musical Health Builder record sets, Camp began offering morning setting-up exercises to a wider market. "Recent Acquisitions 2007", National Library of Medicine, Walter Camp Musical Health Builder (New York, 1921). Retrieved 2011-09-14. In 1922, the initiative reached the new medium of radio.
Football historian Timothy P. Brown wrote of Camp nearly a century after his death:
The Daily Dozen exercise regimen
Walter Camp has just developed for the Naval of setting up exercises that seems to fill the bill; a system designed to give a man a running jump start for the serious work of the day. It is called the "daily dozen set-up", meaning thereby twelve very simple exercises. "A Daily Dozen Set-Up. Walter Camp's New Shorthand System of Morning Exercises", Outing, November 1918, p. 98
Death and legacy
Head coaching record
See also
Bibliography
External links
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