Excerpts from “The History of American Football” (2008, R. McKay, J. Johnson, J. Jones)

“Football isn’t nuclear physics, but
It’s not so simple that you can make it simple.
It takes some explaining to get across.”
- John Madden, AGFL Commissioner (1994 – 2008)

Historians often say that the very first American gridiron football game was played on November 6, 1869 between two colleges: Princeton, and Rutgers. Most football fans and historians know, however, that the game played on that day between those two teams was little more than what is commonly known today as association football, or soccer.

Some have pointed to the game played between Tufts College and Harvard College on June 4, 1875 as one of the first games of American gridiron football to be played under rules that we could recognize as part of our game now. Yet, even still, that one game does not define the fifty-eight years of history that was the evolution of the game of football between then and the Red May Revolution, its near extinction at the hands of the Second Republic’s quasi-progressive politicking, and the fact that because of some of the real inherent risks of the sport, it was very nearly was a forgotten relic of the pre-revolutionary era.

The history of football in Revolutionary America, and in the greater Communist International, is one of trying to find a place for a sport that was, fundamentally, a bastard child of rugby and soccer, yet with its own uniqueness that most people can hardly ever truly appreciate unless they are a disciple of the game.

The game of football is one defined by talented men, and the love of the game. A fraternity of brothers whose long journey from then to now has evolved with the world it has inhabited. There is little else in this world like it, and that, in essence, is what makes it so special.

Defensive lineman Lee Roy Selmon (#63; Tampa Bay; 1976-1984), widely known as one of the greatest defensive linemen in AGFL history. ​

Setting the Standards– the Early Rulesets of Gridiron

“The standard is the standard.”
- Mike Tomlin, head coach (2005–), Pittsburgh Steelworkers FC “Steelers”

From the 1869 Rutgers-Princeton game, in which teams consisted of twenty-five players per team, used a round ball that would not look out of place on an English association league pitch, and had rules that the ball could not be picked up or carried, yet could be batted down with the body whilst in air. The initial foray into this new sport was deeply unregulated, as teams often obeyed the custom rules as set by the hosting school.

In the fall of 1873, the first attempt to standardize the ruleset of football was made between Yale, Columbia, Princeton and Rutgers. Teams were shrunk to twenty players each, and pitches of 400 by 250 feet (122 meters by 76 meters). Harvard was a notable absence from this meeting as they favored the more rugby-style approach which involved running the ball through lines of scrimmage, as well as many other rules that we see in modern football, such as the forward pass, tackling, and using the oblong pigskin ball rather than a spherical soccer ball.

This Harvard ruleset became popular in football circles after the 1875 Harvard-Yale game, and it soon spread to other colleges, eventually leading to the formation of the Intercollegiate Football Association soon after. Walter Camp (1859-1925) helped promulgate a series of rule changes in 1880 that further brought football into line with what we expect in the modern era, reducing on-field players to eleven men only, and replacing the rugby scrum with the line of scrimmage and snap of the ball to start the play.

The bulk of the 1880s was spent further refining these rules, such as:

• A game between Yale and Princeton was played in 1881, in which both teams took advantage of the fact that snaps were uncontested, and held the ball indefinitely in order to prevent the opponent from scoring. The game ended in a 0-0 tie. Subsequently, the following year, Camp pushed forward a rule that limited each team to three attempts (or downs) in order to advance the ball 5 yards. Failure to do so would result in the ball being forfeited to the other team.
• The pitch was changed to be a 110 x 53.33 yard field, and a rule set was created to award four points for a touchdown, two for a safety, and the ability to score an extra goal following a touchdown.
• Tackling below the waist was also legalized in the 1880s
• The line of scrimmage was made static as well.

Over the latter decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, the practicalities of wanting to grow the sport combined with inch-by-inch innovations continued to hone it closer to what resembles the modern era.

Other rules which followed included the legal forward pass being introduced in 1906, a reduction in playing time from 70 to 60 minutes, increasing the down length from 5 yards to 10 yards; giving a team four total downs to convert rather than three; and the introduction of a neutral zone between the defense and offense to prevent fighting and dirty play.

The Most Dangerous Game in America

“You’re not going to eliminate concussions.
Any time you hit your head, you have a chance of getting a concussion, in any sport, too.
I think we have to learn more about it.
Part of it is rules, part of it is equipment, and part of it is medical studies, knowing more about the brain.”
- John Madden, AGFL Commissioner (1994 – 2008)

The dangers of football were clear to the American public throughout the sports’ infancy. Rugby, an already brutal sport, seemed to get all the more worse as teams began to undertake more dangerous formations of play in order to win games. As early as 1892, the “flying wedge” or “flying vee” formation was being introduced to the game of football, its first use coming as part of a Harvard-Yale game. Teammates would lock arms with the ball carrier and use their hands and arms to push forward through the opposing team.

While the play was outlawed in 1894 with penalties against “assisting the runner”, concerns about the dangers of football continued to mount.

The concerns reached their peak in 1905, as that year saw nineteen fatalities nationwide as a result of reckless play, so much so that the Second Republic government threatened to intervene and abolish the sport nationally unless changes were implemented. This directly resulted in the December 28, 1905 meeting by collegiate football organizations, leading to the creation of the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (IAAUS) which would later become the post-revolutionary National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

The standards of safety and player health have always been points of contention throughout football’s existence– and nearly resulted in the sport being nothing more than a historical footnote more than once. Several groups opposed the formation of the American Gridiron Football League (AGFL) in 1933, and many groups advocated for the league to be shuttered permanently in the Second Cultural Revolution.

Yet, in spite of the repeated emphasis on the inherent dangers of the full-contact tackling sport, many youths and adults play the sport to this day– and efforts have been made to reduce the number of concussions and instances of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, such as changing from leather helmets to hard plastic ones with padding, players wearing body pads to absorb blows to their torso, and rules changes to ban certain plays and player actions in order to reduce injuries.

Pre-Revolutionary Professionalization– and How It Failed

“Football is a sport that only breeds proletarian insurrection.
It’s better off as a dusty relic of a bygone era.”
Attributed to Champ Clark, First Secretary of the United States, c. 1920

While the sport reached a nadir during the length of the first World War due to the large number of American boys being shipped overseas to fight the Germans in France, exposure over on the European frontlines to pure rugby and pure soccer at its most basic principles helped influence the sport at home, with many of these young veterans returning home and forming barnstorming and pro-am teams in order to make some money and play the sport they’d fallen in love with while in the trenches.

By the late 1910s, there was significant enough interest from the large number of barnstorming and pro-am teams in the northeastern United States for some to propose going ahead with a series of reforms to the sport to:

• Raise the professional standard of the game of football in “every possible way”
• Eliminate bidding wars between teams for the same players
• Formalize cooperative scheduling in ensuring no overlap or conflict between teams.

The few nascent attempts to start a league were plagued with troubles from the beginning.

In the background of the late 1910s and early 1920s violence that upset the late Second Republic such as the Biennio Rosso, the public’s opinions on such a violent, hard-hitting sport were not receptive, and many capitalist investors balked at the idea of providing funding for a professional organization to manage the sport.

Despite the best efforts of Jim Thorpe, George Halas and many others, the initial meetings in Canton, Ohio went poorly, and many teams, whose funding derived from local businesses in their respective cities, began to fold as capitalists pivoted away from the “death sport” of football entirely, focusing more on baseball. It seemed, as the 1920s began, that the fate of football would, in the end, be one of ignominy and extinction.

Their fortunes were not helped either by the sudden rise of rugby, as that sport seemed poised to overtake it and bury it in the history books, following the United States’ fantastical success in the 1920 Olympics, where the national rugby union team brought home the gold.

The Birth of the AGFL (1933 – 1946)

“Football is fundamentally the revolution in action. You either make the play or you don’t.”
- Derrick Brooks, defensive back
Tampa Bay Buccaneers (1995–2008)
AGFL Commissioner (2008–)

Despite the failures of the APFL in 1920, and the serious doubts of the sport’s popularity among the American proletariat, Jim Thorpe, Glenn “Pop” Warner and John Heisman were all not to be deterred by the revolution nor the MLB’s meteoric rise to the forefront of American sports. The three had all been semi-pro football athletes or had coached in college, and were deeply motivated to move towards trying to start a new football league.

Throughout the winter of 1933 and into early 1934, the three men compiled a lengthy “commission report” discussing the future of the sport, how to mitigate the inherent health risks, and ways to innovate the game. Several teams that had been playing the game already– such as union teams and organizations of veterans across the Northeastern UASR were brought together to discuss the potential of forming this new league.

In February 1934, spurred on by interest from these barnstormers, Warner, Thorpe and Heisman founded the Congress of American Football, extending invitations to the assembled leaderships and coaching staffs of colleges, secondary schools, local pick-up leagues and barnstorming teams to help build public interest in the dying sport– as well as to build up what the AGFL product would look like and standardize the rules of the game to avoid continued issues and disputes between teams and organizations over titles, game standards, and other things in that same general realm. An emphasis was placed– and has been reinforced throughout the league’s history, on maximizing the safety and well-being of players.

Shortly after the February 1934 Congress of American Football, the American Gridiron Football League and associated union AGFLPA was born. Some adjustments made to the game include the scoring table, which was officially standardized– and has remained much the same, save for the addition of the Conversion at the 2000 AGFLPA Summit in Akron, Ohio.

• Try: 5 points – Defined as “any player breaking the plane of the opposing team end-zone while possessing the ball during any standard scrimmage”.
• Field goal: 4 points – Defined as “successfully kicking the ball through an upright goalpost at the back of the respective endzone on any down from any distance during a standard scrimmage.”
• Extra goal: 1 point (abolished in 2000, replaced with the conversion) – defined as “Upon a successful try, the team may attempt a single field goal as an untimed down, from the twenty-five yard line. Failure to convert will have no consequence, as the team will be expected to perform a kickoff to the opposing team regardless of outcome.”
  • In 2000, this was replaced with the “Conversion”:
    • 1 point (from the 2 yd. line)
    • 2 points (from the 5 yd. line)
    • 3 points (from the 10. Yd line)
    • Defined as “upon a successful try, the team may opt to take one of the three conversion options, treated as one untimed down. Failure to convert will have no field possession consequence as the team will be expected to perform a standard kickoff after the play regardless of outcome.”

The teams that made up the 1934 AGFL included:

• Titans of Metropolis
• Pittsburgh Steelworkers Football Club “Steelers”
• St. Louis Gunners
• Philadelphia Yellow Jackets
• Chicagoland Railworkers Football Club “Dynamo”
• Detroit Spartans

Pop Warner was elected the league’s first commissioner, a role he would serve until 1938, when he opted to retire. Jim Thorpe would replace him and serve until his death in 1953. As of the most recent AGFL season, there have been eight commissioners to date.

Commissioners of the Early AGFL:

• Glenn “Pop” Warner – 1934 to 1938
  • One of the founding fathers of American gridiron football, responsible for much of the modern fundamentals that define how the game is played.
  • Pop Warner retired in 1938, but maintained a presence in the AGFL league office to ensure the sport continued to grow and blossom through the turbulent 1940s.
• Jim Thorpe – 1938 to 1953
  • Pro-Am footballer and Olympic gold medallist
  • Played semi-pro football through independent teams during the 1920s:
    • Cleveland Indians (1921)
    • Oorang Indians (1922-23)
    • Rock Island Independents (1924)
    • Tampa Cardinals (1924-1929)
  • Thorpe passed away on March 28, 1953 while serving as Commissioner.

The AGFL’s first season was, in fact, a tremendous success, as thousands turned out to see the sport being played. After some negotiations between the AGFL, local soviets and the MLB, AGFL-sanctioned organizations were permitted to use MLB stadiums and facilities to play their sport– which was not much of an issue considering that football was traditionally played in the fall and winter, typically after the end of baseball season.

To further buoy the sport, two exhibition football teams, the Baltimore Colts and Cincinnati Football Reds both applied for membership in the league, which was approved at the 1935 AGFLPA Summit, to become effective with the 1936 season.

During the first sixty-five years of the league’s existence, the champion of the AGFL was typically decided by a combination of wins/losses, points for/against and other metrics, and did not include a championship game except in certain pilot years. Those years were typically done to commemorate certain events such as the anniversary of the league and revolution. As a result, with all of the teams generally well-balanced, Detroit won the title in 1934 and 1936, Chicagoland in 1935, Metropolis in 1937, Philadelphia in 1938, St. Louis in 1939 and Cincinnati in 1940.

1939 saw the holding of the 5th Anniversary Game, in which the Gunners defeated the Yellow Jackets, 21 to 12.

Despite the league’s initial successes, the realities of war were unavoidable– and the league was suspended from 1941 to 1945 due to the Great Patriotic War. It would not resume until 1946 with the International Solidarity Game , in which the All-AGFL team– a group of players picked from each team that were in active service with the Workers’ and Farmers’ Revolutionary Armed Forces– were pitted against an amateur team of Soviet servicemen (“All-Union ‘Red Star’ American Football Team”).

This game is the first, and only time, that a team from outside of the UASR has contested the AGFL championship. The outcome of the game was pretty much known from the onset, as one side had men who had spent years training and playing the game before serving the cause of international revolution; and the other had men who had learned the game in a rush to compete. But, contemporary accounts indicate the game was mostly for the sake of public morale, and a demonstration of international solidarity between the two greatest superpowers to emerge from the aftermath of the German defeat.

[…]

Football in American Havana

“In war and peace, I have found football men to be my greatest reliance.”
- Douglas MacArthur, unelected dictator of American Havana (1933 – 1964)

After the revolution, many collaborators and well-to-do Americans found themselves missing some of the most fundamental parts of the American experience– sports being one of them. It took very little pushing for the autocrat MacArthur to grant his blessing for the formation of the National Football League– a hasty meeting at a small café in Havana by eight businessmen led to its formation, and the appointing of George Preston Marshall as the league commissioner.

Reflecting the initial optimism of the MacArthurites about their chances of eventually reclaiming the mainland of the United States, the eight owners of the NFL agreed on geographic partitioning of the country– claiming all players both born and unborn to belong to their particular geographic region.

This was quickly dropped as Entente and MacArthurite appetites to wage continued war against the much larger United Republics faltered.

The league, at the time of founding, consisted of eight teams (with their geographic designations before that proviso was dropped from the league charter being noted as well):

• Boston Redskins (New England)
• Chicago Eagles (Great Lakes)
• Atlanta Giants (Southern States east of the Mississippi)
• St. Louis Bombers (Great Plains)
• California Gunners (West Coast)
• D.C. Patriots (Mid-Atlantic States; i.e. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware)
• Texas All-Americans (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana)
• Colorado Graybacks (Mountain West)

The league was not the quick rapid success the NFL had hoped for as foreign holiday-goers and investors found it lacking compared to their domestic sports of soccer and rugby. Making matters worse, despite the promises of support given, the National Salvation Front heavily curtailed public assemblies including NFL games, limiting the number of people in attendance. Further, the local Cuban population did not find the sport particularly interesting and overwhelmingly preferred baseball– which rapidly became a symbol of Cuban resistance against the regime that had been forced on them in 1933.

Despite the money sink and complete lack of interest in the product, Marshall and others insisted that it would “catch on” eventually.

The glut of teams and lack of support led to half of the league contracting by the time it was suspended for Cuba’s entry into World War II– the last championship season before that consisting only of four teams (Redskins, Eagles, Patriots, Graybacks), and still required copious amounts of capital coming in from other organizations within and outside of Cuba to keep the league operating, which it did, though the 1950s would prove to be a troublesome time indeed for Cuba’s nascent attempts to copy the success of the mainland…

[…]

Teams of the Modern AGFL

The following table is found at the back of the book “The History of American Football” – detailing the current extant teams of the AGFL as of its publication in late 2008. The pictured image below is a digitized copy found on the internet around that same time.

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Some notes after the fact:

1. By and large the ruleset of the AGFL is very similar to that of our present-day NFL. There may be some dimensional adjustments to fit them into what are ostensibly baseball fields (110-yard field), but they make due in a world that is infinitely less capitalistic and profit-seeking than our own… the only substantial differences you see here is how the score table is set, as it is closer to rugby than not in-universe. Otherwise, it’s still recognizable as FOOTBALLLLLLLLL
2. The conversion rule (1pt, 2pt, 3pt) is directly copied from the modern XFL 2.0/3.0 where they used this rule-set before the merger with the UFL.
3. Play clock stoppage is not as frequent as the OTL NFL due to the lack of corporate advertisements.
4. It uses the NCAA “one-foot in” rule rather than the two-feet touch rule of the NFL.

*[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation