With a Few Tweaks, the Country's Favorite Sports Went From Pastimes to Part of the Fabric of Our Culture

The Forward Pass: In its earliest days, football was brutal, even deadly, with offense and defense smashing and scrabbling for a yard or two at a time. The Chicago Tribune reported that 19 athletes died playing the sport in 1905 alone — the last year before college football's rules committee legalized the forward pass. Notre Dame's subsequent success with the passing game set football toward the more open, creative, full-field sport played today.

Baseball's Farm System: In the early 1920s, manager Branch Rickey realized that his cash-poor St. Louis Cardinals were at a disadvantage in obtaining players of merit from the minors. Rickey's Cardinals took over a minor-league team in Houston in 1924, and from there gradually built a system through which young players could improve over years. A quarter-century afterward, Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers, integrating baseball — a milestone that helped redefine American culture.

Night Baseball: In 1930, the Negro League's Kansas City Monarchs started traveling with six floodlights on flatbed trucks, and their resulting night games gave fans with day jobs the chance to see live baseball. Crowds flocked, and big-league clubs came around to playing under the lights. From the White House, President Franklin Roosevelt threw the "first switch" before the Cincinnati Reds played MLB's first night game in 1935 — to a crowd nearly ten times their average daytime draw.

The Shot Clock: Basketball before the 1950s was a dry game of keep-away — until the shot clock made its NBA debut in the 1954–55 season. Syracuse Nationals owner Danny Biasone devised the concept with general manager Leo Ferris, and it imbued each trip down the floor with urgency. The average game score jumped from 79 to 93 points that first season.