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NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
October 26, 2000
In 1936 fifty high school coaches, administrators, and athletes gathered at the high school in Sykeston, N. D., for a clinic on six-man football. Before end of day the athletic director of Jamestown College had issued an invitation to hold the state six-man championship game on the college field. That fall Sykeston claimed the title by defeating Ray 39 to 19. Six-man football, the game of the plains, had arrived in North Dakota.
In the 1930s most high schools played only one sport, basketball. The girls’ side of the game was in decline and would largely die out for more than a generation. On the other hand there was increasing interest in boys’ athletics, especially in football. This interest was fueled by the enthusiasm for big-time college football that had swelled since the advent of radio.
On the plains, though, football ran up against the regional problems of sparse population and long distances. Small high schools were unable to muster respectable rosters for a rigorous game requiring 11 players. Moreover, in the middle of the Great Depression, equipment costs for such large teams were daunting.
It was Stephen E. Epler, a high-school administrator in Beatrice, Neb., who hit on the idea of adapting football to the plains by eliminating the guards and tackles and one back–a six-man team with every man but the center (and later the center, too) eligible. Field size was reduced to 40 yards by 80, and it was required that the ball could not cross the line of scrimmage until the offense had executed a "clear pass" of three yards, that is, a lateral or a pass.
The result was a wide-open, high-scoring game with lots of 140-pound home-town heroes. The first six-man game was played in Hebron, Neb, on Sept. 16, 1934. That same fall some schools in Barnes County, N. D., played some exhibition games. The first league play was by schools along the Kansas-Nebraska border in 1935. After that leagues organized rapidly from Texas to North Dakota.
Six-man football was fun, and people loved it, but its days were numbered. High school consolidation created somewhat larger schools that, even if they could not go 11-man, were likely to turn to nine-man ball on the northern plains, eight-man on the southern plains. Six-man largely died out in the 1950s and 1960s, although it persists in several distinct precincts of the plains–most notably, West Texas.
One of my students, Nathan Sand, has been looking into the history of six-man football in North Dakota and has found it was played widely and enthusiastically. Among the schools that played the game were West Fargo, Donnybrook, Haynes, Deering, Sentinel Butte, Van Hook, Starkweather, Elbowoods, Dazey, Nome, Sykeston, Tuttle, Esmond, Grace City, Kensal, Hurdsfield, Cathy, Hannaford, Heaton, Ray, Grenora, Alamo, Alexander, Wildrose, Drake, Fort Yates, Maddock, Minnewauken, Kindred, Pembina, Rolette, Monango, Milnor, Max and Velva.
Sand has turned up many great details of the story. He knows, for instance, that by 1939, when Starkweather beat Pembina for the state title in the University of North Dakota stadium, the championship game drew 3500 spectators. The following year, however, Drake and Kindred were declared co-champs, because a blizzard foreclosed the scheduled title game in Jamestown.
Sand would be delighted to hear from veteran coaches, players, or reporters of the six-man game willing to share information and documents. Of particular interest would be playbooks, scrapbooks, scorebooks, photographs, and other such documents from the heyday of the game. Contacts sent to me (at Minard Hall 412C, NDSU, Fargo 58105-5075 or isern@plainsfolk.com ) will be passed along to Sand.
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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2942
Editor: Gary Moran, (701) 231-7865
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