THEY CHANGED THE GAME: Football's Great Coaches, Players, and Games

A look at some of the major trends and rule changes which have transformed football from a rough rugby-like skirmish into ""a pitched battle, with complicated offenses and defenses, strategy, feints and charges, and aerial attack."" In its infancy (1869) the game was dominated by kicking and had 15-man teams, no downs or passes, and very little cohesion. The revolutionary changes which later followed can be attributed to a handful of innovators: Walter Camp, John Heisman, Amos Alonzo Stagg and Pop Warner. Stagg is regarded as ""football's most inventive coach"" inasmuch as he originated the reverse, the man-in-motion, and the direct pass from center; Warner devised the double-wing formation and the three-point stance. . . . A distance run for gridiron historians.