by Paul R. Spitzzeri
It has a date stamp of 12 December 1927, but the highlighted photograph from the Museum’s collection for this post, a great aerial view of the landmark Los Angeles Coliseum, was taken nine days before and issued by the Underwood & Underwood service for press use and shows 60,000 attending the final college football game of the season for the University of Southern California Trojans and its opponent the University of Washington Huskies.
A typed caption pasted down on the reverse provides the title of “Platter of the Gods” and adds that it contained “60,000 Human Morsels,” though a strange statement is that,
Like a colossal platter of caviar is this new Los Angeles Coliseum with its throngs of football fans. It is here that the football games engaged in by the University of Southern California are played. The capacity of Coliseum is 75,000, making it the fifth largest in the country. This recent photo shows the new regulations placing the goal posts ten years behind the lines.
The stadium wasn’t new—in fact, it was completed four years prior, but what is notable about the statement concerned the change in rules enacted by the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or N.C.A.A., that included the moving of goal posts from the goal line of the end zone ten years to the back of that area.
As succinctly explained by the Covina Argus in its 7 October edition the repositioning of the posts “makes [the] try for [the] extra point [following a touchdown] more difficult.” The paper also noted the other rule changes, including the increase of the penalty for illegal motion to fifteen yards; that backward or lateral passes that were fumbled were considered dead; that a recovered fumble on a kick was dead so that these could not be run back for a touchdown; that three timeouts per half were allowed; and that delays in a huddle or in executing plays “are guarded against more strictly.”
Because eastern teams started the season sooner, the 26 September edition of the Los Angeles Times, while stating that it would take another weekend or two of contests, noting that the first series of gridiron battles the prior day, involving some 200 squads across the nation, indicated that “there was no noticeable effect on the goal [point] after touchdown” despite the 10-yard move of the posts. It was added that “goals from the field were few” though “this might have been expected on the opening day with the coaches having had insufficient time to devote to such a specialty.”
For the Men of Troy, the debut at the Coliseum (the team only played two of ten games on the road—a 13-13 tie at Stanford and an epic 7-6 loss to Notre Dame at Chicago’s Soldier Field before an astounding 120,000 fans) was against the little local squad of Occidental College, with the poor Tigers getting shellacked 33-0. During the contest, an Occidental player attempted a sudden drop-kick field goal, perhaps not remembering that the posts were further back, though the attempt was blocked.
In its issue of 12 October, the Times reported that, “based on games played to date, the 1927 changes in rules have had little, if any, effect on football in the East” as it was noted that “straight football and the forward pass have played large parts in scores,” insinuating that lateral or backward tosses were inconsequential. Moreover, it was remarked,
The point from touchdown has not appeared to be the bugaboo some critics feared it would be with the goal posts ten yards behind the goal line, and the percentage of drop kicks and placements seems to be about the same as always.
Within a couple of weeks, however, a groundswell of growling and grumbling increasingly was heard, with the San Pedro News Pilot of the 25th running a press photo showing the standard wooden H-shape goal posts and the caption commenting, “when football’s rule makers decided goal posts should be moved . . . they anticipated little objection. But it came, from players and fans,” not to mention coaches.
It was continued that “goal posts gave the teams something tangible to defend, something more than a last whitewashed strip of turf.” Quoted was Navy’s Coach Bill Ingram, who told the press that, “they boys have nothing to defend now, and the spectators lose interest because football has less color.” That would include black, blue and red, because, looking at the posts, there was no protection on them at all for players when they collided into the wooden objects!
Another criticism was made by Times columnist Paul Lowry in his “Rabbit Punches” feature on the 12th, where he wrote that “players and spectators alike are confused without some definite marking to distinguish the end zone from the playing field.” He went on,
In the past the goal posts have been the outstanding feature of the scenery, but their relocation makes some other marker necessary. At the Coliseum the other day [the contest on the 8th in which U.S.C. edged Oregon State, 13-12] I was confused glancing quickly from scrimmage line to goal line to ascertain the yards the teams had to go to make a touchdown. The goal line was red, and hard to distinguish from the press box. A player racing for a punt near the goal line is likely to lose his sense of location under the present arrangement, but with stripes in the end zone he will be favored with a tremendous advantage.
To this end, the Pasadena Post of the 26th reprinted a wire report that there was generally the use of “conventional white lines across the field with a pattern of diagonal lines at each extremity to mark the end zones,” though some schools utilized a checkerboard pattern. Yale employed double goal lines with the letter “G,” Princeton placed a zero on a single line to demarcate the goal line and Georgia “has bright red hassocks or cushions as beacons at the ends of the goal lines, this being the forerunner of the modern pylon.
In his Times feature, “Watching Coast Elevens,” of 6 November, Trojan head coach Howard Jones remarked that, “when the present football season opened in September there was considerable agitation over the new rules,” with some fearing the denigration of the sport and others hailing most of the revisions.
Jones generally dismissed the matter of backward and lateral passes because of the time wasted in developing a play and the lack of evidence of success in employing them. What he advocated was a return to the previous situation in which, in case of a fumble, the ball should be considered live, as well as requirement that such a maneuver involve at least a yard’s toss, not just a handoff of sorts.
With respect to the goal posts, the U.S.C. gridiron leader remarked,
Moving the goal posts back has virtually destroyed the value of the field goal. There hasn’t been a single field goal kicked in an outstanding intercollegiate game in Southern California this year. Of course, it is perfectly right that too much emphasis should not be laid on the ability of one man’s toe to win football games. If the rule makers sought to remove this emphasis their change is a good one, for football games should be won by team play rather than by the individual efforts of one man. Of course, no coach throws away the opportunity to work with an individual star, but in the main team play is the thing. So far as I can see, the rule has made little difference in the ability to kick goals after a touchdown.
In its edition of the 18th, the Times published an article by Associated Press sportswriter Brian Bell, who reported that N.C.A.A. Rules Committee members were happy with the changes they implemented and, specific to the goal posts move, it was observed that “points after touchdown have to some extent gone out of style . . . the extra ten yards being more than many of the kickers can negotiate under pressure.”
Bell continued that “goals from field, a dominant factor in 1926, also have been reduced to a minimum, most quarterbacks preferring to gamble with a pass on fourth down when within striking distance.” In the “old days” it was noted, a team having the ball on its opponent’s 15-yard line could easily go for the field goal, but, with the additional ten yards, “that extra distance has been a stumbling block to scores of educated toes.”
The Los Angeles Record of the same day, though, ran a short piece that included the comment that,
Bring the goal posts back, is the cry of football coaches from coast to coast. The rule . . . was regarded as a reform that would be popular. It isn’t, for the change is the most disliked of all.
Goals from the field, one of the most interesting features of football, slumped badly under the new rule. It has also removed the value of a kicking specialist.
The piece concluded with the forecast that a significant effort would be made to restore the posts to the goal line once the season ended and the Rules Committee reconvened before the onset of 1928. United Press International sports columnist Frank Getty, in his “Sportsmatter” feature and its “Lessons of 1927” opined that the goal post rule “had the most important effect” of any instituted and that “a dearth of field goals ensued,” while the PAT “came to acquire increased importance.”
The Associated Press’ Sports Editor Alan Gould, in an article appearing in the Times of 29 November, noted that the season “has produced a bumper crop of touchdowns, one of the greatest on record, as the forward pass has come back into its own as a scoring weapon.” Much of this was due to the goal post rule as there was a “greater concentration on drives for touchdowns, instead of resorting to field goal attempts,” while PATs were much less frequent.
As for the game that was depicted in the aerial image, the Trojans rolled to a 33-13 win over Washington, which posted a 9-2 record including seven shutouts, winning all five contests outside of its Pacific Coast Conference schedule and allowing only 26 points all season, half of them in its only loss to Stanford, before being steamrolled by U.S.C.
The Trojans rolled up 435 yards from scrimmage to just 164 for Washington and took a 20-0 lead into halftime before the teams were evenly matched in scoring in the second half. Of the seven touchdowns, four included PATs and there were, predictably, no field goals, though the Huskies’ Gene Cook was the national leader with seven (the all-time record is 31 in 2003 by Billy Bennett of Georgia).
The 1927 campaign ended with the latter two squads tied for the conference championship by virtue of their deadlocked game, while Idaho only played four league games, winning and tying two each and also considered a co-champion. Stanford, coached by Glenn “Pop” Warner, was selected to represent the conference in the Rose Bowl of 2 January 1928 (the 1st was a Sunday, so the parade and game were moved to Monday) and eked out a 7-6 win against Pitt, erasing the bad memories of a 10-10 tie with Alabama in the prior year’s contest. The Trojans, who’d last been represented in 1923, returned in 1930 and pummeled Pitt, 47-14.
As to an effort to rescind the goal post rule, the Hollywood Citizen of 27 December cited Getty as observing that the debate over the matter was about evenly divided between those for and against the idea of returning them to the goal line. Spectators, it was added, “cannot get the thrill now of knowing when the ball is driven over for a touchdown” as “without the goal posts to judge by, they have to await the clamor of those nearer to the play.”
The Times of the 29th featured the remarks of University of Illinois head coach Bob Zuppke, who remarked that,
The moving of the goal posts has been scored by the public, but I hope there will be no change this year. The goal posts were moved back primarily to open up the territory about the goal line and pave the way for successful aerial attacks. What must be done is to let the rules stay as they are, and give the players and public a chance to grasp their meaning before a new set of rules are proposed.
The next day’s edition of the paper reported that the N.C.A.A.’s Rules Committee decided to keep the goal posts in place, citing member Robert Hall as suggesting that “the inconvenienced spectator can restrain his curiosity for about three to five seconds longer” to learn if a touchdown was scored and stressed the safety of players.
Hall added, “when the permanent safety of the boys must give way to the momentary convenience of the spectators our ideas as to the true purposes of academic sport will have to come up for drastic and annihilative revision.” Of course, most players were under 200 pounds and not nearly as fast nor strong, so the concern for safety is on a much different level today. The official added that the move of the posts aided teams punting from the end zone, while it “adds to the gamble for the extra point after [a] touchdown.”
The professional National Football League followed the N.C.A.A. on the goal post matter, though it returned to the goal line location in 1933, with that rule remaining in place for over forty years, until a reversion to the end zone siting in 1974. Meanwhile, the H-shaped posts, taken from rugby, was transformed into the “sling shot” style after it was introduced by the University of Miami in 1966. As for the challenge of field goals, that was met by the introduction of soccer-style kicking, with the current record being 66 yards, a distance unimaginable nearly a century ago.
As for the 2024 Trojan squad, it had a disappointing 6-6 regular season, including a middle-of-the-pack 4-5 showing, with four 4th-quarter leads blown, in the Big Ten Conference (which, however, has 18 teams) and will confront Texas A&M, which has an 8-4 overall record and went 5-3 in the stacked Southeastern Conference, at the Las Vegas Bowl on the 27th. Will a measure of redemption be found with a U.S.C. triumph?