History of American football - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football.
Both games have their origin in varieties of football played in Britain in the mid–1. English public school football games. American football resulted from several major divergences from association football and rugby football, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp, a Yale University and Hopkins School graduate considered to be the "Father of American Football".
Among these important changes were the introduction of the line of scrimmage, of down- and- distance rules and of the legalization of interference.[1][3] In the late 1. Eddie Cochems, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Parke H. Davis, Knute Rockne, and Glenn "Pop" Warner helped take advantage of the newly introduced forward pass. The popularity of college football grew as it became the dominant version of the sport in the United States for the first half of the 2. Bowl games, a college football tradition, attracted a national audience for college teams. Boosted by fierce rivalries and colorful traditions, college football still holds widespread appeal in the United States. The origin of professional football can be traced back to 1.
William "Pudge" Heffelfinger's $5. Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. In 1. 92. 0 the American Professional Football Association was formed. This league changed its name to the National Football League (NFL) two years later, and eventually became the major league of American football. Primarily a sport of Midwestern industrial towns in the United States, professional football eventually became a national phenomenon. The modern era of American football can be considered to have begun after the 1.
NFL Playoff game, which was the first American football game to feature hash marks, the legalization of the forward pass anywhere behind the line of scrimmage, the first indoor game since 1. Other innovations to occur immediately after 1. AP Poll in 1. 93. Heisman Trophy in 1. NFL draft in 1. 93. Another important event was the American football game at the 1. Summer Olympics, which combined with a similar demonstration game at 1.
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The piece originally stated that British football had no referees. While this was true in the earliest days of British football, they were eventually added. Today's Sports News at Covers. All the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL and College scores and betting information you need. Women of the gridiron. lfl football returns to texas, twofold; omaha heart ready for 2016 open tryout and season, name tony doremus as head coach.
World's Fair, led to the first College All- Star Game in 1. United States.[4] American football's explosion in popularity during the second half of the 2.
NFL Championship Game, a contest that has been dubbed the "Greatest Game Ever Played". A rival league to the NFL, the American Football League (AFL), began play in 1. Super Bowl, which has become the most watched television event in the United States on an annual basis.[5]Forms of traditional football have been played throughout Europe and beyond since antiquity. Many of these involved handling of the ball, and scrummage- like formations. Several of the oldest examples of football- like games include the Greek game of Episkyros and the Roman game of Harpastum.
Over time many countries across the world have also developed their own national football- like games. For example, New Zealand had Ki- o- rahi, Australia marn grook, Japan kemari, China cuju, Georgia lelo burti, the Scottish Borders Jeddart Ba' and Cornwall Cornish hurling, Central Italy Calcio Fiorentino, South Wales cnapan, East Anglia Campball and Ireland had caid, which an ancestor of Gaelic football. These archaic forms of football, typically classified as mob football, would be played between neighboring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who would clash in a heaving mass of people struggling to drag an inflated pig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town. By some accounts, in some such events any means could be used to move the ball towards the goal, as long as it did not lead to manslaughter or murder.[6] Sometimes instead of markers, the teams would attempt to kick the bladder into the balcony of the opponents' church. A legend that these games in England evolved from a more ancient and bloody ritual of kicking the "Dane's head" is unlikely to be true. These antiquated games went into sharp decline in the 1.
Highway Act 1. 83. A Native American college football team.
Although there are some mentions of Native Americans playing football- like games, modern American football has its origins in the traditional football games played in the cities, villages and schools of Europe for many centuries before America was settled by Europeans. Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional "mob football" played in England. The games remained largely unorganized until the 1. Each school played its own variety of football. Princeton University students played a game called "ballown" as early as 1. A Harvard tradition known as "Bloody Monday" began in 1. In 1. 86. 0, both the town police and the college authorities agreed the Bloody Monday had to go.
The Harvard students responded by going into mourning for a mock figure called "Football Fightum", for whom they conducted funeral rites. The authorities held firm and it was a dozen years before football was once again played at Harvard. Dartmouth played its own version called "Old division football", the rules of which were first published in 1. All of these games, and others, shared certain commonalities. They remained largely "mob" style games, with huge numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into a goal area, often by any means necessary. Rules were simple, violence and injury were common.[8][9] The violence of these mob- style games led to widespread protests and a decision to abandon them. Yale, under pressure from the city of New Haven, banned the play of all forms of football in 1.
Get all the latest football news, scores, results, rumours, fixtures and live action from the Premier League and around the world with Goal.com. American football (referred to as football in the United States and Canada, also known as gridiron elsewhere) is a sport played by two teams of eleven players on a. Live National Signing Day coverage, news on the latest college football commits, top prospects and analysis from Scout. College sports, NFL, hunting, fishing & more. This article or section may need to be cleaned up or summarized. This section has been split from/to Early history of American football and Modern history of American.
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The game began to return to college campuses by the late 1. Yale, Princeton, Rutgers University, and Brown University began playing the popular "kicking" game during this time. In 1. 86. 7, Princeton used rules based on those of the London Football Association.[8] A "running game", resembling rugby football, was taken up by the Montreal Football Club in Canada in 1. Pioneer period (1. On November 6, 1. Rutgers University faced Princeton University (then known as the College of New Jersey) in a game that was played with a round ball and, used a set of rules suggested by Rutgers captain William J. Leggett, based on the Football Association's first set of rules, which were an early attempt by the former pupils of England's public schools, to unify the rules of their public schools games and create a universal and standardized set of rules for the game of football and bore little resemblance to the American game which would be developed in the following decades.
It is still usually regarded as the first game of intercollegiate American football.[3][8][1. The game was played at a Rutgers field. Two teams of 2. 5 players attempted to score by kicking the ball into the opposing team's goal. Throwing or carrying the ball was not allowed, but there was plenty of physical contact between players. The first team to reach six goals was declared the winner. Rutgers won by a score of six to four.
A rematch was played at Princeton a week later under Princeton's own set of rules (one notable difference was the awarding of a "free kick" to any player that caught the ball on the fly, which was a feature adopted from the Football Association's rules; the fair catch kick rule has survived through to modern American game). Princeton won that game by a score of 8 - 0. Columbia joined the series in 1. Yale and Stevens Institute of Technology.[8]Rutgers was first to extend the reach of the game. An intercollegiate game was first played in the state of New York when Rutgers played Columbia on November 2, 1. It was also the first scoreless tie in the history of the fledgling sport.[1.
Yale football starts the same year and has its first match against Columbia, the nearest college to play football. It took place at Hamilton Park in New Haven and was the first game in New England. The game used a set of rules based on association football with 2. Yale wins 3- 0, Tommy Sherman scoring the first goal and Lew Irwin the other two.[1. By 1. 87. 3, the college students playing football had made significant efforts to standardize their fledgling game. Teams had been scaled down from 2.
The only way to score was still to bat or kick the ball through the opposing team's goal, and the game was played in two 4. On October 2. 0, 1. Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules. Before this meeting, each school had its own set of rules and games were usually played using the home team's own particular code. At this meeting, a list of rules, based more on the Football Association's rules than the rules of the recently founded Rugby Football Union, was drawn up for intercollegiate football games.[8]Harvard refused to attend the rules conference organized by the other schools and continued to play under its own code. While Harvard's voluntary absence from the meeting made it hard for them to schedule games against other American universities, it agreed to a challenge to play Mc. Gill University, from Montreal, in a two- game series.
Inasmuch as Rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the Mc. Gill team played under a set of rules which allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to Mc. Gill, was to count tries (the act of grounding the football past the opposing team's goal line; it is important to note that there was no end zone during this time), as well as goals, in the scoring.
In the Rugby rules of the time, a touchdown only provided the chance to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the touchdown did not count.
Harvard quickly took a liking to the rugby game, and its use of the try which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as the touchdown.