Modern Football

Edward Kimball Hall 1892 was an athlete (captain of football and track), coach, Dartmouth Trustee, lawyer, telephone-company executive, utility president, editor, fundraiser, lecturer, referee, member of the Football Hall of Fame and visionary.

He left footprints all over Hanover, not the least of which include Alumni Gymnasium (he was chairman of the fund committee) and Dick's House (given in memory of his son, Richard Hall '27). But most of all, he gave shape to modern football as a game of four downs, not three, played on a field with an end zone, with players permitted to throw passes as long as they like, with kickoffs from the 40-yard line, with clipping forbidden, and with goal posts ten yards behind the goal line all legacies of his years as chairman of the national Football Rules Committee. And if all that were not enough, this devoted son of the game became an evangelist for keeping football within perspective, as a part of, but not a substitute for, a college education.

E.K. Hall gave the sport four downs and end zones.