A couple of Argentinian guys I recently met at Carolina Railhawks games like to give me grief for being an American football fan. “Why do you waste your time with that pussy rugby?”, they like to say. “They should take the pads off and play real rugby.”

It’s practically impossible to explain to them that a century ago, Americans did play without the helmets and pads, and… well, people died. In 1905, mass formation plays killed 18 college football players and seriously injured 159 more in America. Even President Teddy Roosevelt had to intervene, telling colleges to “Change the game or forsake it!”

Here’s the thing: colleges nearly did forsake it. There was a rather large movement afoot to abandon Walter Camp’s football code and go back to playing rugby. Barnstorming teams from England and Australia came to America to espouse the virtues of the rugby code over this heinously violent gridiron game.

So why didn’t we listen? Believe it or not, the seeds were sown here in North Carolina in 1895…

John Heisman, a noted historian, wrote 30 years later that, indeed, the Tar Heels had given birth to the forward pass against the (Georgia) Bulldogs. It was conceived to break a scoreless deadlock and give UNC a 6-0 win. The Carolinians were in a punting situation and a Georgia rush seemed destined to block the ball. The punter, with an impromptu dash to his right, tossed the ball and it was caught by George Stephens, who ran 70 yards for a touchdown.

For the record, I don’t believe for a second that this play was “conceived.” That punter probably saw the rush coming and prayed for a way to avoid certain death. His prayer was answered when he saw his teammate up the field, and he just threw the ball to him, because he didn’t know what else to do.

More important to the story, though, was the fact that John Heisman was there. He saw this forward pass happen, and in that instant, he saw a way to revolutionize this rough gridiron game and make it more appealing to the fans. So when the NCAA rules committee convened in 1906, Camp found himself with a choice — legalize the forward pass, or go back to playing rugby. (Keep in mind that Camp created the gridiron game because he felt rugby wasn’t enough of a mental challenge. He wanted to create a more strategy-oriented game, and going back to rugby felt like too much of a step backward for him.)

The Tar Heel punter’s name is lost to history, but try to imagine where American football might be without him. What if he had taken the sack instead of panicking and throwing the ball forward? Would the gridiron game have survived? Or would colleges have abandoned Camp’s game to play rugby instead? Can you imagine this country adopting rugby as its football game of choice? The USA Eagles might have been favorites at the Rugby World Cup, which starts tomorrow.

Alas, rugby is not America’s game. We created our own football game, and because of that, you can expect the USA Eagles to lose badly to the likes of England and South Africa. If you want to blame anyone for that, blame the Tar Heels. They started it.