Walter Camp

COURTESY YALE MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES

Camp's visionary mind set him apart from all other Bulldog athletes. When he started his career, football was played in a haphazard and violent fashion, much like English rugby. By the time he retired, he had single-handedly devised American football as we know it today. He invented the scrimmage, the quarterback, the forward pass, penalties, and downs. When football began to get too violent—deaths were commonplace in early 20th-Century contests—President Theodore Roosevelt called on none other than Camp to devise ways to make games less vicious and bloody. Camp edited the football rulebook until 1925, the year he died. He was the Abner Doubleday of football.

But Camp wasn't just an innovator—he was a winner. He spent a total of 49 years as a player, coach, and adviser at Yale. During one 38-year stretch of his tenure at Yale, the Elis lost just 14 games. Yale football can thank Camp for the fact that the Bulldogs still own more victories (799) than any other collegiate program in the nation.

Admittedly, many Yale athletes have accomplished more on the playing field than Camp did. But no Eli ever did more for his sport, or for America's athletic culture. The New York Times once called him "The Prophet of the Age of Athletics." Camp is the clear choice for Eli athlete of the millennium just by virtue of that moniker. It isn't every day that football players turn into prophets—but one of ours did.

—Nola Breglio

Back to Sports...