Professional football

Early players, teams, and leagues (1892–1919)

In the early twentieth century, football began to catch on in the general population of the United States and was the subject of intense competition and rivalry, albeit of a localized nature. Although payments to players were considered unsporting and dishonorable at the time, a Pittsburgh area club, the Allegheny Athletic Association, surreptitiously hired former Yale All-American guard William "Pudge" Heffelfinger. On November 12, 1892, Heffelfinger became the first known professional football player. He was paid $500 to play in a game against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Heffelfinger picked up a Pittsburgh fumble and ran 35 yards for a touchdown, winning the game 4–0 for Allegheny. Although observers held suspicions, the payment remained a secret for years. On September 3, 1895 the first wholly professional game was played, in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, between the Latrobe YMCA and the Jeannette Athletic Club. Latrobe won the contest 12–0. In 1897, the Latrobe Athletic Association paid all of its players for the whole season, becoming the first fully professional football team. In 1899, the organ Athletic Club, on the South Side of Chicago, was founded. This team later became the Chicago Cardinals, and now is known as the Arizona Cardinals, making them the oldest continuously operating professional football team. The first known professional football league, known as the National Football League (not the same as the modern league) began play in 1902 with teams from the Mid Atlantic region. Several baseball clubs formed football teams to play in the league, including the Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Phillies. A five-team tournament, known as the World Series of Football was organized by the league. The league and the World Series only lasted two seasons. The game moved west into Ohio which became the center of professional football during the early decades of the twentieth century. Small towns such as Massillon, Akron, Portsmouth, and Canton all supported professional teams. In 1915, the Canton Bulldogs signed former Olympian and Carlisle Indian School standout Jim Thorpe to a contract. Thorpe became the face of professional football for the next several years and was present at the founding of the National Football League five years later.

Bowl Championship Series

In 1998, a new system was put into place, the Bowl Championship Series. For the first time, it included all major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, and SEC) and all four major bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta). The champions of these six conferences, along with two "at-large" selections, were invited to play in the four bowl games. Each year, one of the four bowl games served as a national championship game. Also, a complex system of human polls, computer rankings, and strength of schedule calculations was instituted to rank schools. Based on this ranking system, the #1 and #2 teams met each year in the national championship game. Traditional tie-ins were maintained for schools and bowls not part of the national championship. For example, in years when not a part of the national championship, the Rose Bowl still hosted the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions. The system continued to change, as the formula for ranking teams was tweaked from year to year. At-large teams could be chosen from any of the Division I conferences, though only one selection—Utah in 2005—came from a non-BCS affiliated conference. Starting with the 2006 season, a fifth game—simply called the BCS National Championship Game—was added to the schedule, to be played at the site of one of the four BCS bowl games on a rotating basis, one week after the regular bowl game. This opened up the BCS to two additional at-large teams. Also, rules were changed to add the champions of five additional conferences (Conference USA, the Mid-American Conference, the Mountain West Conference, the Sun Belt Conference and the Western Athletic Conference), provided that said champion ranked in the top twelve in the final BCS rankings, The first two seasons following this rule change saw two additional non-BCS schools make BCS bowl games, namely Boise State in 2006 and Hawaii in 2007.

Gather momentum

But that will only happen after 2014. The 2010, 2012 and 2014 games have already been given to Angola, Gabon/Equatorial Guinea/Benin and Libya respectively. Essien has, meanwhile, said he expected Ghana to gather momentum and go all the way in the Nations Cup after winning the opening match 2-1 against Guinea. “The game was difficult for us but it was good to start with a win. The first game is always dodgey but a win is a good first step,” the former Liberty Profession player said In front of home fans He added: “Our next game will be better because we will have more confidence.” Ghana next play Namibia tomorrow and are almost assured of qualifying for the quarter-finals with a win. “It feels good playing in front of the home fans. I want to play for the nation. Obviously our aim is to win but here are a lot of quality players in this tournament. We will see what happens,” Essien said. The Ghanaian super star was speaking at a function organised by his public relations team where he took time to chat with selected journalists on a one to one basis

Growth of bowl games
In 1940, there were only five bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Sun, and Cotton). By 1950, three more had joined that number and in 1970, there were still only eight. The number grew to eleven in 1976. At the birth of cable television and cable sports networks like ESPN, there were fifteen bowls in 1980. With more national venues and increased available revenue, the bowls saw an explosive growth throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the twenty years from 1960 to 1980, seven bowl games were added to the schedule. From 1980 to 2006, an additional 17 bowl games were added to the schedule Some have criticized this growth, claiming that the increased number of games has diluted the significance of playing in a bowl game. Yet others have countered that the increased number of games has increased exposure and revenue for a greater number of schools, and see it as a positive development. With the growth of bowl games, it became difficult to determine a national champion in a fair and equitable manner. As conferences became contractually bound to certain bowl games (a situation known as a tie-in), match-ups that guaranteed a consensus national champion became increasingly rare. In 1992, seven conferences and independent Notre Dame formed the Bowl Coalition, which attempted to arrange an annual #1 versus #2 matchup based on the final AP poll standings. The Coalition lasted for three years, however several scheduling issues prevented much success; tie-ins still took precedence in several cases. For example the Big Eight and SEC champions could never meet, since they were contractually bound to different bowl games. The coalition also excluded the Rose Bowl, arguably the most prestigious game in the nation, and two major conferences—the Pac-10 and Big Ten—meaning that it had limited success. In 1995, the Coalition was replaced by the Bowl Alliance, which reduced the number of bowl games to host a national championship game to three—the Fiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls—and the participating conferences to five—the ACC, SEC, Southwest, Big Eight, and Big East. It was agreed that the #1 and #2 ranked teams gave up their prior bowl tie-ins and were guaranteed to meet in the national championship game, which rotated between the three participating bowls. The system still did not include the Big Ten, Pac-10, or the Rose Bowl, and thus still lacked the legitimacy of a true national championship.

Ute football: U. hopes recruits unswayed by 'rarity'

In the wake of a tragic incident in which two Utah Utes football players were stabbed and a recruit was attacked during Utah's biggest football recruiting weekend, coach Kyle Whittingham is hoping the situation won't reflect poorly on his program and university. He also hopes it doesn't steer the recruit in another direction. "We've been very proactive and have addressed it with recruits," Whittingham added. "It was just a matter of being at the wrong place at the wrong time." Since Saturday night's incident - in which Utes Paul Kruger and Greg Newman, and David Kruger, a Timpanogos High senior who has orally committed to Utah, were attacked by a group of a dozen or so men after leaving a party - Whittingham and others continue to get the word out that it was a random, isolated incident. Paul Kruger was stabbed in the stomach with a knife, David Kruger was hit in the head and suffered two cuts to his cheek and Newman was stabbed in the back. The athletes are all expected to recover from the injuries. That might explain why one Utah recruit said the incident didn't scare him away. Chris Hines, a point guard out of Klein Forest High in Houston who has signed with the men's basketball team, was in Salt Lake over the weekend to familiarize himself with the Utah campus and to watch the Utah
I'm sad that it happened," said Hines, who eschewed the party to hang out with current Ute players that evening. "It's unfortunate. But that stuff happens every day. I live in Houston. A lot more than that happens down here." Jeff Rudy, football director of operations, said the party the athletes attended wasn't associated with the activities the Utes put together for the about a dozen recruits last weekend. He said the program will examine the incident, but the university believes it was a random act of violence. "It was a rarity," Rudy said. The Krugers' mother, Jennifer, said the incident was no fault of the Utes. "This had nothing to do with Utah," she said. "It was a gang of kids looking to hurt somebody. It was a random, weird thing that unfortunately happened to affect our family." In other words, the Utes have nothing to worry about. That's what Chris Fetters, a recruiting expert for scout.com, said about the incident. "When you look at the numbers and how many times something like that has happened and the history of the program, it's so out of character," he said. "It's so baffling. It seems so random."
FOOTBALL: Essien backs calls for change in Cup’s dates Ghana and Chelsea midfielder Michael Essien insists that clubs have every right to complain about the dates of the African Cup of Nations finals and repeated his calls for the dates to be changed. “If you ask me, I always say the same thing; If the dates can be changed it is a good thing for us players,” Essien said here where he is representing Ghana at the Nations Cup. “We always have to fight for our clubs. The FA have to fight for the country. If the dates change there will be no more fighting.”
Club owners in Europe have in recent years increasingly agitated for a change in the biennial African Cup of Nations from January to June saying its timing disrupted their domestic season.
Several top African players have also began to publicly voice their concern saying the dates needed to be changed including Essien, Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o of Barcelona and Bolton Wanderers’ El Hadji Diouf of Senegal. But their sentiments appear to have rubbed the Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Issa Hayatou the wrong way. The CAF boss last week accused the players of being selfish and not having the interest of African football at heart. “When the African Cup of Nations started, there were very few African players in Europe but now almost half the players at the Nations Cup play in Europe,” Essien said. The Ghanain squad for example is made up of 19 Europe-based professionals. Monday’s top table Group B clash between Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria featured only European based players with the English Premier League and French Ligue 1 contributing the bulk. CAF has, however, agreed on the need to consider changing the dates from even to odd years to stop having the Africa Cup of Nations held on the same year that the World Cup is held.

NPG nets £5m from football club owner

The National Portrait Gallery in London has been given its biggest ever private donation of money in the shape of £5m from the American billionaire owner of Aston Villa Football Club, Randy Lerner. About half the gift, to be given over three years, will help beef up the gallery's acquisitions budget while the rest will be used on other programmes including digitising the collection, educational initiatives and outreach schemes in schools, colleges and hospitals. Sandy Nairne, the NPG's director and a friend of Lerner, called it a "fantastic" donation. "It is an issue, how we can succeed in getting more philanthropy into the cultural sector. We need to encourage those lucky enough to be able to give and also put the money to good use," he said. Nairne added that he now had an Aston Villa scarf on his desk and, yes, they were now his team. "I grew up with Rugby Union and rowing to be honest." The NPG's ground floor spaces will be renamed the Lerner Galleries thanks to the gift which, technically, comes from the Lerner Foundation, led by the family of Lerner's father Alfred Lerner, who died in 2002. Lerner said: "On behalf of my mother and sister it is an enormous privilege to express our support for the National Portrait Gallery financially. We are enthusiastic supporters of the gallery's director and the board for their inspired and creative management of the gallery's collection and acquisition programme."
Lerner bought the Birmingham club for £62m in 2006 from Doug Ellis and unlike other American owners at clubs such as Manchester United and Liverpool, his stewardship has been widely praised and welcomed by fans. For all his high-profile acquisition, Lerner is often said to be quietly spoken and shy of publicity. He rarely allows TV or radio interviews, apparently because of the way his comments following a tragedy involving a near family relative, were used by American broadcasters. In the US, it is far more commonplace for philanthropists to give big chunks of money to the arts, a practice that many would like to see more ingrained in the UK. Lerner, who also owns the Cleveland Browns American football club, also gives to medical charities in the Cleveland area. Lerner becomes the second premier league chairman to donate substantially to the arts. The Royal Academy in London has named some of its space the John Madejski Fine Rooms after the Reading chairman donated £3m.

Backing of the Net: The true meaning of planet football

American billionaires, Russian plutocrats, worldwide media interest and fans tuning in via satellite television and the web from every continent. That's the everyday story of contemporary top-end English football but one club, at a considerably humbler level, has recently trumped the lot in hands-on global participation. In the last two months, this club have been visited by TV crews from Russia, Brazil, Mexico and Sweden. ESPN are coming over from America this week, so too a channel from Germany. Al Jazeera has been once, and will return. The same is true of John F Burns, a double Pulitzer prize-winning correspondent from the New York Times, among other journalists. But it is not just the media who are flocking to Ebbsfleet United of the Blue Square Premier. As The Independent first revealed in November, Ebbsfleet have agreed in principle to be taken over by MyFootballClub, an Internet-based collective with 27,000-plus members in more than 70 countries. Due diligence was completed last Wednesday on the £635,000 deal, triggering a "yes" or "no" poll by MyFC members to seal it. Voting closes at midday tomorrow and, while MyFC's founder, Will Brooks, a former copywriter and football journalist, is taking nothing for granted, he anticipates that members will ratify the takeover.
If they do, they will take effective full control of the club imminently. By March, after a period of "acclimatisation", members will also start picking the team on a one member, one vote basis in what will be the most radical experiment in club ownership that British football has known.
"We take great heart from the voter turnout," Brooks told The Independent last night. "We had 11,000 votes cast on the opening day, and hope members back the takeover in good numbers."
Yet even before MyFC's legion of disparate fans has actually bought Ebbsfleet, many have gone to extraordinary lengths – literal and metaphorical – to show support to a club most had not previously heard of. Josh Friedman, a 34-year-old lawyer from Boston known as "Friejose" on myfootballclub. co.uk forums, has already made three trips across the Atlantic for matches. He flew to England at the weekend to see Ebbsfleet play Histon. It was postponed. "No matter," he said yesterday. "There'll be other games." Rob Daniel, aka "Chocmint", a 48-year-old children's author from Albany in western Australia, is coming over next month for Ebbsfleet's game with Exeter. Until now, he has listened to commentary on Radio Kent, online. Daniel's other work includes schools' workshops, and as a direct result of contacting fellow teachers via MyFC, he will tour UK schools while here, and then go to Latvia to give workshops in two orphanages.
Fellow long-distance travellers drawn to the club's Stonebridge Road ground even before ownership include Felix Ney, aka "FNEX" from Berlin, who spent five days in Gravesend to take in a few games over the Christmas holiday, and Benjamin Bild, a 20-year-old from Copenhagen, who attended the 4-1 win over Weymouth on 5 January. Hundreds of other "newbies" with no prior affiliation to Ebbsfleet, have travelled, either home or away, from across Britain.
Enthusiasm stretches beyond attendance, which, because of Ebbsfleet's location in Kent, is a slog for many, especially overseas members. One Texan member donated £500 to sponsor a player. Other members raised £1,300 within hours of an appeal for new balls and goals for the training ground. That was a one-off investment separate to their annual £35 membership fee.
Other members, marshalled by Keith Handley, a 45-year-old haulage firm worker from York, have provided football kits for a children's project in Uganda, while a junior team in Salford has benefited from fund-raising that would never had happened without individuals merging in the MyFC cause. Of course, the core business of MyFC is and will be Ebbsfleet, managed by Liam Daish, a former Cambridge United, Birmingham, Coventry and Republic of Ireland defender. The team have won eight, drawn two and lost two games in all competitions since the provisional deal was announced in November. They lie three points off a shot at the play-offs, which might end in promotion to the Football League for the first time in the club's history. They are also progressing in the FA Trophy, which has a Wembley final. Arguably the most contentious issue in the MyFC project is the members' right to pick the team. It caused friction with long-standing fans in particular, wary of newcomers with no knowledge of the club demanding control of who plays at left-back and whether two or three up front is the way to go. Animosity has subsided as old fans and new get acquainted. Long-standing supporters of Ebbsfleet – who were Gravesend & Northfleet until May 2007, when the name changed for reasons unrelated to MyFC – also now, generally, see the benefits of MyFC's football kitty, which stands at around £800,000, enough for buying the club, plus investment in the squad. Those same fans, many now MyFC members, will abstain from team selection if the view of Mark Neilson, 40, is typical. A Fleet fan since boyhood, he says: "I have no interest in picking the team because at the end of the day, what do I know? Liam is and always will be manager." Some "newbies" concur. As Keith Handley says: "At the moment I do not have the depth of knowledge to pick the team."
Other members see team selection as key to a project originally sold on the slogan: "Own the club, pick the team." Rob Daniel is among them. "Voting for the team is one of the fundamental ideas of the whole concept," he says. "Without it, what would be the point? It's new, it's different. If people want it to stay the same then why join?" Sarah-Jane Bennett, a 20-year-old sales assistant from Fife, who is also a qualified referee, is in the middle ground. "Picking the team is important," she says. "I wholeheartedly believe in the wisdom of the crowds theory. However, saying that, my choice will be heavily based on what [Daish] says about the players in training."
So how will it work, this team selection by 27,000 bosses? Will Brooks expects it to begin in March, after members have spent time studying the detailed ProZone stats that will be available on every player, and watched regular games – or highlights on the website. Members will vote on formation, then "drag and drop" players into place, with the majority view implemented.
Daish, 39, a self-confessed "old school" manager, has every right to shudder at the prospect, but he was relaxed yesterday in telling The Independent that he is taking a "suck it and see" approach. "But, ultimately, team selection will be the members' choice, that's part of the deal," he added, insisting that "properly informed decisions" would be the key. "Hopefully, it will work out." Team selection has provoked fierce debate among members, but so too has whether free- range chicken is a viable food choice, and whether kits should be sourced only from "ethical" manufacturers. MyFC's members, its most vocal at least, are a politicised bunch, and not afraid of dissent. A minority have made public their "no" vote on the grounds that MyFC is a "flawed model" and the £635,000 Ebbsfleet buyout is poor value. Most of the cash will go to creditors, including the board, in return for 75 per cent of the shares. MyFC will not own the stadium, although there is a guaranteed 18-year lease at peppercorn rent on the current ground, or training ground. The club are also losing between £26,000 and 28,000 a month. On the flip side, many clubs from League Two downwards lose that much money, and have bigger debt, and would have cost £1m or more to buy. "If we had 200,000 members and £5m in the kitty, we'd have had more choice," Brooks said. "But this, I honestly believe, is the best deal, and a good one." Josh Friedman agrees. "I've blown 70 bucks on worse things," he said. "At least with this I'm now involved in English football. I could've been fey and said 'Hey, I'll support Liverpool'. Instead, I've taken a real, meaningful interest in a community club, and I take that seriously."

Lawyer ignores football talk

AN Edinburgh-based property lawyer has set aside speculation on whether she will become Scottish football's first chairwoman to focus on her father's health. Justine Mitchell – daughter of Dundee United chairman Eddie Thomson – is said to be "100 per cent committed to her father's care" after it was announced she was being groomed for the top spot on the club board.Mr Thompson, 67, who is fighting cancer, will stay on as chairman but is scaling back his duties. Justine has been given an as yet unspecified position on the board alongside her brother Stephen Thomson, who was made director of the club in September 2002.Justine, 38, is managing partner at Mr Thomson's West End property business Edinburgh Residential. Her husband Ken said: "She's too upset about her father's condition to make any statement."

Dayton football coach Kelly steps down after 27 years
Dayton, OH (Sports Network) - University of Dayton football coach Mike Kelly announced Tuesday he is stepping away from the position after 27 years at the helm. However, he will remain at the school and expand his duties as an Associate Director of Athletics. Kelly said current defensive coordinator Rick Chamberlin would take over as head coach. Kelly made the decision to leave before the 2007 season, when the Flyers went 11-1 and won the Sports Network Cup, which is awarded to the nation's top mid- major program in the Football Championship Subdivision. "It was one of (those) things that was going to happen no matter how we did this year," Kelly said. "But it was nice to finish the way we did - outstanding team, outstanding group of young men." Overall, Kelly's teams went 246-54-1, and that .819 winning percentage ranks fourth all-time among college coaches with at least 25 years of experience.
Only Florida A&M's Jake Gaither (.844), Nebraska's Tom Osborne (.836), and Michigan's Fielding Yost (.828) had higher success rates. Kelly started at Dayton in 1977 as defensive coordinator, and helped the Flyers win the NCAA Division III national championship under head coach Rick Carter in 1980. The following season, Kelly was named head coach, and the successes piled up. For the first 12 years of Kelly's head coaching tenure, Dayton competed in Division III and won the national title in 1989. In 1993, the Flyers joined the Division I-AA ranks in the Pioneer League, and have since won the league championship six times outright, and tied for it three other times. Dayton also won the Sports Network Cup in 2002. As for why he stepped down after 31 years as a coach for Dayton, Kelly said he felt he was "cheating the program."
"The last three years have come to the point where you're maybe out on the field or maybe at your desk and you think to yourself, 'Do I really want to keep doing this?'" Kelly said. "And I felt it wasn't fair. That's not what it's about. If the head coach is thinking this it's not fair to the players. It's time for someone else to take charge." Nevertheless, Kelly's legacy is in place, and he was offered effusive praise after making his decision. "Mike Kelly is the best of the best. He embodies all that is right about intercollegiate athletics," Dayton athletic director Ted Kissell said.