Walter Camp was born on April 7, 1859 in New Haven, Connecticut, United States, the son of Leverett Camp and Ellen Sophia (Cornwell) Camp. Walter Camp was of English descent. His first immigrant ancestor was the English colonist Nicholas Camp, who came from Essex, England and arrived in colonial New England in 1630, arriving first in Massachusetts and then moving to Connecticut that same year.
In 1873 Camp attended a meeting where representatives from Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale universities created the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA). The representatives created the rule that each team is only allowed 15 plays per drive. Camp played as a halfback at Yale from 1876 to 1882.
Camp served as the head football coach at Yale from 1888 to 1892 before moving to Stanford University, where he coached in December 1892 and in 1894 and 1895. On Christmas Day, 1894, Amos Alonzo Stagg and his University of Chicago Maroons defeated Camp's Stanford team 24–4 at San Francisco in an early intersectional contest.
Despite having a full-time job at the New Haven Clock Company, a Camp family business, and being an unpaid yet very involved adviser to the Yale football team, Camp wrote articles and books on the gridiron and sports in general. By the time of his death, he had written nearly 30 books and more than 250 magazine articles. His articles appeared in national periodicals such as Harper's Weekly, Collier's, Outing, Outlook, and The Independent, and in juvenile magazines such as St. Nicholas, Youth's Companion, and Boys' Magazine. His stories also appeared in major daily newspapers throughout the United States. He also selected an annual "All-American" team.
By the age of 33, twelve years after graduating from Yale, Walter Camp had already become known as the "Father of Football." In a column in the popular magazine Harper's Weekly, sports columnist Caspar Whitney had applied the nickname; the sobriquet was appropriate because, by 1892, Camp had almost single-handedly fashioned the game of modern American football.
Walter Camp has been listed as a notable author by Marquis Who's Who.
On June 30, 1888, Camp married to Alice Graham Sumner, sister of sociologist William Graham Sumner. They had two children: Walter Camp, Jr. (born 1891), who attended Yale as well and was elected as a member of Scroll and Key in 1912, and Janet Camp Troxell (born 1897).
