One of the top sports in America, football has come a long way from the rebelling college students who wanted to play a different type of game. With the introduction of the television (which greatly increased football's accessibility to more parts of the United States) and the merger of the NFL and the AFL, football games became the most-watched television program. The ratings were as big as the profits. The titanic flood of fan interest generated billions of dollars by the 1990s. These enormous profits eventually trickled down to the players' salaries. If change was how football began, it is change that has kept the sport's popularity high. The rules governing football have continued to evolve throughout the years to generate fan interest. For example, rules enacted in the 1970s promoted the passing game while placing less focus on the running game. Passing became less risky, and the rule change altered the complexion of the sport. In 1994, a greater emphasis was drawn from field goals to the two-point conversion. The game of football will continue to evolve with the times and provide Americans and people all across the world with a fun and enjoyable athletic experience. History of Football In the beginning football as played in the United States was the same as soccer. That is, the ball was round, and running with the ball was not allowed. The first intercollegiate match was played between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869. Rutgers won, 6 goals to 4. Soon other colleges organized teams.Meanwhile, Harvard did not go along with the other schools. Players there preferred the "Boston game," in which a player could run with the ball. It was similar to rugby football as played in Canada. Harvard invited McGill University of Montreal to come to Harvard for two matches. The first was played under Harvard rules, and Harvard won, 3 goals to 0. The second game was played to a scoreless tie under McGill rules with the egg-shaped rugby ball. The new game, which allowed both kicking and running, soon became popular at other schools. Harvard defeated Yale, 4 goals to 0, in the first rugby match between two American colleges in 1875. A year later Columbia and Princeton joined Harvard in organizing the Intercollegiate Football Association and forming rules. These early rules provided that the game should be played by teams of 15 players each on a field 140 yards long. Yale wanted teams of 11 players and did not join the association until later when the rules were changed. Modern American football was beginning to develop. The ruby ball was adopted. But by 1880 the rugby style of play, starting with a scramble for the ball in a "scrum," followed by the players tossing the ball back and forth and friendly kicking a loose ball, had given way to the present style of play. In this, one team at a time has possession of the ball. In 1883 a scale of scoring values was first used. A safety was worth 1 point, a touchdown 2, a goal after a touchdown 4, and a goal from the field 5. After that the touchdown gradually became more valuable than the field goal and the goal after touchdown. Football of the late 1800's was a rough game. There were mass formations, such as the "flying wedge." These resulted in big pileups of players, who wore no helmets or padding in those early days. An alarming number of injuries resulted, and there was a general outcry to make the game safer. This led President Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 to call a meeting for the purpose of abolishing "brutality and foul play." As a result, in December, 1905, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association (now the National Collegiate Athletic Association) and its football rules committee were formed. Because of the rule changes that have been made through the years, football has become a better game for both players and spectators. Among the changes adopted by the rules committee in 1906 was the one that allows the forward pass. This marked a turning point in American football. Gradually the mass plays gave way to the open game of today. In 1912 the passing rules were changed to allow four tries, or "downs," in which to advance 10 yards, and the value of the touchdown was increased to the present 6 points. Modern football had begun. Many important people, including several presidents of the United States, have been connected with the sport. Woodrow Wilson was an assistant coach at Princeton. Herbert Hoover was manager at Stanford. Dwight D. Eisenhower was a halfback on Army's team. At Harvard, John F. Kennedy was a junior varsity back. And Supreme Court Justice Byron "Whizzer" White was an all-American quarterback at the University of Colorado and later a professional star.Today Football is the most popular of all high school and college sports in the United States. On Saturday afternoons all through the fall students flock to stadiums to cheer their favorite teams. For football is not only a great game to play... it's a great one to watch. Marching bands, acrobatic cheerleaders, and rousing school songs all add color to the game. Crowds of 60,000 ro 80,000 are not unusual at major college games or at professional games, which are generally played on Sunday afternoons
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Nationalizing the Game
College football matured through the 1800's in a league of its own until the beginning of the twentieth century when professional football teams began appearing. By that time, college sports fell under the newly-established National College Atheletic Association(NCAA) so the rules of professional football were derived from the collegiate organization's guidelines. When 1920 arrived, there were more than 10 professional teams across the United States. Organizers from the teams decided to meet in Canton, Ohio to form the American Professional Football Association(APFA) which later became the National Football League(NFL). The NFL continued to change the rules of the game and the game of football began to establish itself as an all-American past time.
Becoming a Popular Sport in America
From the time of the NFL's establishment, football's popularity caught on with the general public. The games played by the Chicago Bears against teams like the Los Angeles Tigers and the New York Giants featured Harold (Red) Grange, the fresh-out-of-college rookie star who helped draw record numbers of fans into the stands. After the NFL divided into two divisions, the culmination of the best teams from those sections played the first NFL championship game in 1933. As football became a favorite sport with Americans, many leagues followed the NFL in trying to establish their own franchises. The NFL's dominance was so pervasive that many leagues did not even last beyond four years. Under millionaire Lamar Hunt, however, the American Football League (AFL) was the only lasting follow-up league that was able to keep up with the NFL. Soon thereafter, both leagues fought to draft star college players, television contracts, and other perks generated from football's popularity. The NFL bested the AFL most of the time. In another historic moment in football history, representatives from both the NFL and the AFL met in 1966 to agree on merging both leagues, but keeping the NFL name. Within the new league which actually began in 1970, two conferences were created that reflected the NFL's origins: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference(NFC). From then on, the two best teams from each NFL conference were set to play a championship game (later named the Super Bowl. This practice started with the two champions from the NFL and the AFL.
Football History
This section will provide a quick overview of how football got started to give general overview about how the sport became so popular today.
The story of football began sometime during the 19th century in England when a soccer player, frustrated at using only his feet to manipulate the ball, decided to simply pick it up and run with it. Although it was clearly against the rules of soccer, other players soon found the new way of playing soccer appealing and thus, the sport of rugby was born. The new sport soon became a world-wide success that found its way into America by the mid-1800s. Played by many northeastern colleges, it was not long before Harvard University and Yale University met in Massachussetts in 1876 to formalize the rules to rugby that were similar to those in England. There were differences however: instead of playing with a round ball, the schools opted for an egg-shaped ball and the game's name was changed from rugby to football. To finalize the meeting, an organization called the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) was created to preside over the Americanized sport. Football was still basically American rugby -- much different from the popular sport known today. Over the course of three years starting in 1880, Yale player Walter Camp eventually convinced the IFA to change a series of rules in football to create a game that is very similar to the one we know today. For his efforts, Camp is considered by historians as the father of modern football.
Roots of American Football
The birth date of football in the United States is generally regarded by football historians as November 6, 1869, when teams from Rutgers and Princeton Universities met for the first intercollegiate football game. In those early games, there were 20 players to a team and football still more closely resembled rugby than modern football.
The game of football has a history of constant rule changes. Rule changes have been implemented to bolster the excitement of the game of football and to increase the game's safety. In 1873, representatives from Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale Universities met in New York City to formulate the first intercollegiate football rules for the increasingly popular game. These four teams established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) and set 15 as the number of players allowed on each team. Walter Camp, the coach at Yale and a dissenter from the IFA over his desire for an eleven man team, helped begin the final step in the evolution from rugby-style play to the modern game of American football. The IFA’s rules committee, led by Camp, soon cut the number of players from fifteen to eleven, and also instituted the size of the playing field, at one hundred ten yards. In 1882 Camp also introduced the system of downs. After first allowing three attempts to advance the ball five yards, in 1906 the distance was changed to ten yards. The fourth down was added in 1912. Within a decade, concern over the increasing brutality of the game led to its ban by some colleges. Nearly 180 players had suffered serious injuries, and eighteen deaths had been reported from the brutal mass plays that had become common practice. So in 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called upon Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to help save the sport from demise. At a meeting between the schools, reform was agreed upon, and at a second meeting, attended by more than sixty other schools, the group appointed a seven member Rules Committee and set up what would later become known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or the NCAA.From this committee came the legalization of the forward pass, which resulted in a redesign of the ball and a more open style of play on the field. The rough mass plays, which once caused so many serious injuries, were prohibited by the committee. Also prohibited was the locking of arms by teammates in an effort to clear the way for their ball carriers. The length of the game was shortened, from seventy to sixty minutes, and the neutral zone, which separates the teams by the length of the ball before each play begins, was also established.
The History of Football
The contemporary history of the world's favourite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed - becoming the sport's first governing body.Both codes stemmed from a common root and both have a long and intricately branched ancestral tree. A search down the centuries reveals at least half a dozen different games, varying to different degrees, and to which the historical development of football has been traced back. Whether this can be justified in some instances is disputable. Nevertheless, the fact remains that people have enjoyed kicking a ball about for thousands of years and there is absolutely no reason to consider it an aberration of the more 'natural' form of playing a ball with the hands.On the contrary, apart from the need to employ the legs and feet in tough tussles for the ball, often without any laws for protection, it was recognised right at the outset that the art of controlling the ball with the feet was not easy and, as such, required no small measure of skill. The very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise from a military manual dating back to the second and third centuries BC in China.This Han Dynasty forebear of football was called Tsu' Chu and it consisted of kicking a leather ball filled with feathers and hair through an opening, measuring only 30-40cm in width, into a small net fixed onto long bamboo canes. According to one variation of this exercise, the player was not permitted to aim at his target unimpeded, but had to use his feet, chest, back and shoulders while trying to withstand the attacks of his opponents. Use of the hands was not permitted. Another form of the game, also originating from the Far East, was the Japanese Kemari, which began some 500-600 years later and is still played today. This is a sport lacking the competitive element of Tsu' Chu with no struggle for possession involved. Standing in a circle, the players had to pass the ball to each other, in a relatively small space, trying not to let it touch the ground.The Greek 'Episkyros' - of which few concrete details survive - was much livelier, as was the Roman 'Harpastum'. The latter was played out with a smaller ball by two teams on a rectangular field marked by boundary lines and a centre line. The objective was to get the ball over the opposition's boundary lines and as players passed it between themselves, trickery was the order of the day. The game remained popular for 700-800 years, but, although the Romans took it to Britain with them, the use of feet was so small as to scarcely be of consequence.
The game of football has a history of constant rule changes. Rule changes have been implemented to bolster the excitement of the game of football and to increase the game's safety. In 1873, representatives from Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale Universities met in New York City to formulate the first intercollegiate football rules for the increasingly popular game. These four teams established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) and set 15 as the number of players allowed on each team. Walter Camp, the coach at Yale and a dissenter from the IFA over his desire for an eleven man team, helped begin the final step in the evolution from rugby-style play to the modern game of American football. The IFA’s rules committee, led by Camp, soon cut the number of players from fifteen to eleven, and also instituted the size of the playing field, at one hundred ten yards. In 1882 Camp also introduced the system of downs. After first allowing three attempts to advance the ball five yards, in 1906 the distance was changed to ten yards. The fourth down was added in 1912. Within a decade, concern over the increasing brutality of the game led to its ban by some colleges. Nearly 180 players had suffered serious injuries, and eighteen deaths had been reported from the brutal mass plays that had become common practice. So in 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt called upon Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to help save the sport from demise. At a meeting between the schools, reform was agreed upon, and at a second meeting, attended by more than sixty other schools, the group appointed a seven member Rules Committee and set up what would later become known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or the NCAA.From this committee came the legalization of the forward pass, which resulted in a redesign of the ball and a more open style of play on the field. The rough mass plays, which once caused so many serious injuries, were prohibited by the committee. Also prohibited was the locking of arms by teammates in an effort to clear the way for their ball carriers. The length of the game was shortened, from seventy to sixty minutes, and the neutral zone, which separates the teams by the length of the ball before each play begins, was also established.
The History of Football
The contemporary history of the world's favourite game spans more than 100 years. It all began in 1863 in England, when rugby football and association football branched off on their different courses and the Football Association in England was formed - becoming the sport's first governing body.Both codes stemmed from a common root and both have a long and intricately branched ancestral tree. A search down the centuries reveals at least half a dozen different games, varying to different degrees, and to which the historical development of football has been traced back. Whether this can be justified in some instances is disputable. Nevertheless, the fact remains that people have enjoyed kicking a ball about for thousands of years and there is absolutely no reason to consider it an aberration of the more 'natural' form of playing a ball with the hands.On the contrary, apart from the need to employ the legs and feet in tough tussles for the ball, often without any laws for protection, it was recognised right at the outset that the art of controlling the ball with the feet was not easy and, as such, required no small measure of skill. The very earliest form of the game for which there is scientific evidence was an exercise from a military manual dating back to the second and third centuries BC in China.This Han Dynasty forebear of football was called Tsu' Chu and it consisted of kicking a leather ball filled with feathers and hair through an opening, measuring only 30-40cm in width, into a small net fixed onto long bamboo canes. According to one variation of this exercise, the player was not permitted to aim at his target unimpeded, but had to use his feet, chest, back and shoulders while trying to withstand the attacks of his opponents. Use of the hands was not permitted. Another form of the game, also originating from the Far East, was the Japanese Kemari, which began some 500-600 years later and is still played today. This is a sport lacking the competitive element of Tsu' Chu with no struggle for possession involved. Standing in a circle, the players had to pass the ball to each other, in a relatively small space, trying not to let it touch the ground.The Greek 'Episkyros' - of which few concrete details survive - was much livelier, as was the Roman 'Harpastum'. The latter was played out with a smaller ball by two teams on a rectangular field marked by boundary lines and a centre line. The objective was to get the ball over the opposition's boundary lines and as players passed it between themselves, trickery was the order of the day. The game remained popular for 700-800 years, but, although the Romans took it to Britain with them, the use of feet was so small as to scarcely be of consequence.
Football’s Early Beginnings
Football (as well as rugby and soccer) are believed to have descended from the ancient Greek game of harpaston. Harpaston is mentioned frequently in classical literature, where it is often referred to as a “very rough and brutal game“. The rules of this ancient sport were quite simple: Points were awarded when a player would cross a goal line by either kicking the ball, running with it across the goal line, or throwing it across the line to another player. The other team’s objective was simply to stop them by any means possible. There was no specific field length, no side line boundaries, no specified number of players per team, only a glaring lack of rules.
Most modern versions of football are believed to have originated from England in the twelfth century. The game became so popular in England that the kings of that time (Henry II and Henry IV) actually banned football. They believed that football was taking away interest from the traditional sports of England, such as fencing and archery.
Most modern versions of football are believed to have originated from England in the twelfth century. The game became so popular in England that the kings of that time (Henry II and Henry IV) actually banned football. They believed that football was taking away interest from the traditional sports of England, such as fencing and archery.
Evolution and the Beginnings of Standardization
Football didn’t really begin to take on any consistency of rules and boundaries until it was picked up as a sport in the seven major public schools of England in the early 1800’s. Six of the seven schools were largely playing the same game (including Eton, Harrow and Winchester) - while the seventh, Rugby School (founded in 1567) was playing a markedly different version of football.The other schools moved ahead refining their rules and eventually their game became known as "association football" – or soccer, which was played back then much as it is today.
Rugby School went in a different direction. How and why the game developed differently at Rugby School appears to have been lost in history, but what is known is that by the 1830's, running with the ball at Rugby School was in common use and 18 foot goal posts had been added with a cross-bar at 10 feet above the ground.
The inclusion of the cross-bar was accompanied by a rule that a goal could only be scored by the ball passing over the bar from a place kick or drop kick. Apparently this was done to make scoring easier from further out and also to avoid the horde of defenders standing in and blocking the mouth of the goal. Players who were able to "touch down" the ball behind the opponents goal line were awarded a "try-at-goal" - the player would make a mark on the goal line and then walk back onto the field of play to a point where a place kick at the goal was possible (a conversion). There was also an "off-your-side" rule used to keep the teams apart. Passing the ball forward was not allowed.By the mid-1860s British schools and universities had taken up Rugby's game and honored the school by giving the "new football" the name of rugby. The game soon went trans-Atlantic to America and landed on fertile soil.
Rugby School went in a different direction. How and why the game developed differently at Rugby School appears to have been lost in history, but what is known is that by the 1830's, running with the ball at Rugby School was in common use and 18 foot goal posts had been added with a cross-bar at 10 feet above the ground.
The inclusion of the cross-bar was accompanied by a rule that a goal could only be scored by the ball passing over the bar from a place kick or drop kick. Apparently this was done to make scoring easier from further out and also to avoid the horde of defenders standing in and blocking the mouth of the goal. Players who were able to "touch down" the ball behind the opponents goal line were awarded a "try-at-goal" - the player would make a mark on the goal line and then walk back onto the field of play to a point where a place kick at the goal was possible (a conversion). There was also an "off-your-side" rule used to keep the teams apart. Passing the ball forward was not allowed.By the mid-1860s British schools and universities had taken up Rugby's game and honored the school by giving the "new football" the name of rugby. The game soon went trans-Atlantic to America and landed on fertile soil.
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