Johnny Heisman, for whom the Heisman Trophy is named, was one of football’s most inventive coaches. One of his oddest inventions was the old hidden-ball trick. One day in 1895, a player asked him if it was illegal to hide the ball during a play. He knew it wasn’t against the rules, but how could it be done?
Two of Heisman’s players at Auburn, Walt Shafer and “Tick” Tichenor, thought the ball could be hidden under a running back’s jersey, and they helped devise a play. As the ball was snapped to Tichenor, the rest of the team would drop back and form a circle around him. Then Tichenor would slip the ball under his jersey, and he would drop to one knee. The team would run to the right and the defenders would follow them. Then Tichenor would get up and run the other way. Auburn tried the trick against Vanderbilt soon after and scored a touchdown with it.
Tighter uniforms and faster play have made the hidden-ball trick harder and harder to perform. The bizarre play is hardly ever used today.
From The Giant Book of Strange But True Sports Stories by Howard Liss. Illustrations by Joe Mathieu.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_Tichenor
There seems to be some argument online as to whether it was Johnny Heisman or Pop Warner who came up with the hidden ball trick, but the reference to the 1895 Vanderbilt game is clearly documented and easily beats the Pop Warner references which don’t even start until the early 20th Century.
So it’s harder to pull off but still legal? Weird.