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LIKE many American institutions, the game of football was acquired from England. Rugby football, as it is played throughout the British Commonwealth, Ireland, and France, contains most of the ingredients out of which the American game has been developed—such as running with the ball, passing, kicking, and tackling — but in the American game these ingredients have been complicated, padded, and shot through with specialized operations. The result has been that the more salutary technique and the better spirit of Rugby football have been lost.

Both Rugby and American football have large followings, and both games may be looked upon as good mirrors of the attitude toward sport of the people concerned. From this point of view it is especially interesting to notice the pronounced difference of emphasis in the American and the Rugby football scene. In America there is a strong emphasis upon spectacle, and upon watching rather than playing the game. In Rugby football the emphasis is exactly the opposite. Part of the reason for this difference can be traced directly to the nature of the games themselves. American football is violent, expensive, and time-consuming; and the number of people who are able to play under these conditions is extremely limited. Rugby, on the other hand, is more rough than violent, and the expenditure of time and money is small. Consequently, a large proportion of the interested people are able to play, and do play, rather than watch the game. Indicative of this difference in emphasis is the small varsity stadium at Oxford University, a school which compares, in terms of football reputation, with Notre Dame or Michigan; there are 2000 seats at the Oxford field, with standing-room accommodations for an additional 12,000.

Technically speaking, the essential difference between American football and Rugby is that the American game is more complex. A possible defense of this complexity might be that it provides the player with a greater variety of activity than is possible in a simpler game. But there is so much variety in the American game that the individual player has had to specialize, and this has narrowed rather than broadened his scope. Rugby does not have a forward pass or prearranged plays, but a quick examination of Rugby’s technical characteristics will show that there is not only just as much opportunity for team play as there is in American football, but a greater variety of activity for each player.

In American football more than half of the team either never touch the ball or handle it but rarely. In fact there are four men on the team who do virtually nothing but charge head-on into the men in front of them. In Rugby, everyone has a chance to handle the ball. There are fifteen men on a side, roughly divided into the backfield and the forwards. The forwards put the ball in play by first packing themselves into a three-deep phalanx, the “scrum,” and then beginning to shove, shoulder to shoulder, against a similarly organized group of opposing forwards.