Aside from inventing modern football, Hugh “Shorty” Ray was an outstanding athlete, teacher, coach, and official. Ray was “rated the best official in the Mid-West for over 30 years, and he is still the only man ever to officiate in three major sports in the Big Ten: football, baseball, and basketball.”
By 1925, football’s needless injuries, deaths, and the haphazard handling of games by his fellow officials forced him to take action. He gathered his colleagues into the American Officials Association he founded in 1917. Surprisingly football’s revolution started among the zebras–the executors of football law.
Ray forced his proteges to write a report on each game, he conducted the first rules interpretation meetings, and led rules clinics in which officials took examinations. These quickly became required courses for all officials He insisted that officials become absolute masters of the rules book. “Ray’s men became famous overnight. Coaches and athletic directors all over America had head of the ‘Chicago Experiment.'”
In 1930 Ray invented and copyrighted “FOOTBALL RULES THRU PLAY SITUATIONS” which taught the rules by example and is still universally used. In 1932 Ray issued the first set of modern “safety rules” and Rules Book. The Pro Football Hall of Fame said of his Rules Book, “It was a masterpiece, a model for all future rule books at every level.”
Would Ray be upset by the terrible officiating that took place in last weeks’ Cowboys–Lions game? You bet he would. There is no excuse for that kind of ineptitude in the NFL and it cost the Lions a hard-fought, well-deserved win.
If you would like to learn more about Hugh L. Ray, The Father of Modern American Football,read “THE NFL’S MR. EINSTEIN” by James W. Stangeland, available at amazon.com/books or hughrayfootball.com.
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Top picture, Ray explains position of Referee to NFL Commissioner Elmer Layden. Bottom picture, Ray demonstrates what constitutes legal and illegal treatment of a passer under his rules to George Halas (far left) and the Chicago Bears. Copyright (c) The Washington Post 1941
Hugh “Shorty” Ray
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