HISTORY OF FOOTBALL
This section provides a brief history of the beginnings of American Football, as well as the birth of professional football.
Football is a sport that is derived from both rugby and soccer, but it also has traces back to Ancient Greece with a game called harpaston. Harpaston was described in ancient literature as a brutal and violent game with very limited rules. The objective was to score points by either kicking a ball across a goal line, running it, or passing it to a teammate, strikingly similar to today's version of American football.
American football took shape primarily at the collegiate level. On November 6. 1869, Yale and Princeton squared off in what would be the first college football game. 1875 saw the change from a round, soccer-esque ball to a oblong shape used in rugby, and in 1876 goalposts were added.
Walter Camp is known as the Father of American Football because of the changes he made to the game in 1880, most of which are still around today. A former halfback and coach at Yale, he reduced the number of players per team on the field from fifteen to eleven and created the concept of a line of scrimmage, an imaginary line drawn where a down starts. A three-down system was formed, with the fourth down being added twenty years later. A few years later, Walter Camp and the newly-formed NCAA legalized the forward pass, which helped to make the game more spread out and prevented many serious injuries that occurred from the mass formations that were so popular. In 1875, there were a mere six college teams, but at the turn of the century, Walter Camp had transformed the sport, and over 250 clubs existed.
Professional football began when William "Pudge" Heffelfinger accepted $500 to compete in one match for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club on November 12, 1892. The PAC thought that offering compensation to a player was an illegal act, but no evidence was uncovered of the transaction until over eighty years afterward. The pay was well worth the arguments for the AAC, as they defeated the PAC, 32-0.
In 1918, the American Professional Football Association was formed, the first professional football league. Two years later it was renamed the National Football League, now the most popular sports league in the United States. Two teams from its inaugural season are still existence: the Chicago Cardinals, who relocated to Phoenix, Arizona in 1988, and the Decatur Staleys, who became the Chicago Bears in 1922.
This section provides a brief history of the beginnings of American Football, as well as the birth of professional football.
Football is a sport that is derived from both rugby and soccer, but it also has traces back to Ancient Greece with a game called harpaston. Harpaston was described in ancient literature as a brutal and violent game with very limited rules. The objective was to score points by either kicking a ball across a goal line, running it, or passing it to a teammate, strikingly similar to today's version of American football.
American football took shape primarily at the collegiate level. On November 6. 1869, Yale and Princeton squared off in what would be the first college football game. 1875 saw the change from a round, soccer-esque ball to a oblong shape used in rugby, and in 1876 goalposts were added.
Walter Camp is known as the Father of American Football because of the changes he made to the game in 1880, most of which are still around today. A former halfback and coach at Yale, he reduced the number of players per team on the field from fifteen to eleven and created the concept of a line of scrimmage, an imaginary line drawn where a down starts. A three-down system was formed, with the fourth down being added twenty years later. A few years later, Walter Camp and the newly-formed NCAA legalized the forward pass, which helped to make the game more spread out and prevented many serious injuries that occurred from the mass formations that were so popular. In 1875, there were a mere six college teams, but at the turn of the century, Walter Camp had transformed the sport, and over 250 clubs existed.
Professional football began when William "Pudge" Heffelfinger accepted $500 to compete in one match for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club on November 12, 1892. The PAC thought that offering compensation to a player was an illegal act, but no evidence was uncovered of the transaction until over eighty years afterward. The pay was well worth the arguments for the AAC, as they defeated the PAC, 32-0.
In 1918, the American Professional Football Association was formed, the first professional football league. Two years later it was renamed the National Football League, now the most popular sports league in the United States. Two teams from its inaugural season are still existence: the Chicago Cardinals, who relocated to Phoenix, Arizona in 1988, and the Decatur Staleys, who became the Chicago Bears in 1922.