When Piling On Was Legal: The Strange History of the Football Tackle

Have you ever watched a football game and cringed at the sight of a massive pile of players wrestling for the ball, wondering how officials ever sort it out? While today's rules strictly forbid piling on, there was a time in football history when the act was not only legal—it was essential to stopping the runner.

In a recent episode of the Pigskin Dispatch Podcast, host Darin Hayes welcomed historian Timothy P. Brown of Football Archaeology to dig into this dangerous gridiron relic. Brown explained that in the earliest days of American football, determining when a ball carrier was "down" was radically different and much more informal.

The history of the big play ending pile-ups of yesteryear is the topic we get to enjoy from our guest. One of the top historic observers and researchers on the game of the gridiron, author Timothy P. Brown shares some of the football factoids that make up his FootballArchaeology.com "Today's Tidbits. Find Tim on Twitter @FoFStrife

Before the invention of a whistle loud enough to be heard over the action, the responsibility fell to the players themselves. The tackler would yell "Held!" and the ball carrier would respond with "Down!" This call-and-response was the signal to stop action. Crucially, even when brought down, the runner was allowed to keep crawling and making "forward progress," meaning the defense had to secure the ball by any means necessary.

This is where the infamous pile came in. If a runner was still moving—or deemed capable of moving—the defense would aggressively "pile on" until the ball was secured and the runner was sufficiently "held." This practice, unsurprisingly, introduced a highly dangerous element into the sport.

The rules began to shift in the late 1880s with the introduction of the whistle, which finally allowed the referee to assume the role of judging when the ball was dead. However, crawling remained legal for a time. Major safety changes came between 1906 and 1912. In 1910, a foundational rule was established: a man was down once any part of his body other than his hands and feet touched the ground, but only if he was simultaneously in the "grasp of the tackler." This "down and held" rule remained the standard for decades.

This history explains the subtle but key differences we still see today. The NFL held onto the "down by contact" rule, requiring a tackle to be in the runner's grasp to end the play. Meanwhile, the college game (NCAA) eventually dropped the "in the grasp" requirement, which is why in college, a runner who slips and falls untouched is immediately ruled down, while in the NFL, they can famously get up and run.

Brown's historical tidbits remind us that the rules of the gridiron are constantly evolving, built upon a foundation that once favored humanity's natural instinct to pile on.

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