A Brief History Of Football

A variety of games identified as football were played in a variety of colleges throughout the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century.  Today football is as popular as ever and is played in amateur games, high schools, college games, and on a professional level.

History Of Football In America: Its Beginnings

Outside of the boundaries of the US, football is referred to as American football; this is done in order to differentiate American football regulations with those associated with rugby, Australian football, Gaelic football, and soccer.  Football in New Zealand and Australia is called Gridiron Football, while the word gridiron only references the field in American football.  Walter Chauncey Camp has been identified as the Father of the American version of football.  Camp was a sport writer, a coach, and a football player on an American team.  He has been identified as one of the most accomplished individual in football history, along with people like George Halas, Fielding Yost, Pop Warner, Amos Alonzo Stagg, and John Heisman.  He had been a football player during college at his time at Yale from 1876 until 1882.  He later became a head coach at the same college from the year 1888 until 1892.  Following his coaching career at Yale, he moved on to Stanford University and continued coaching.  Camp was so instrumental to the game of football in America that he was later inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in the early 1950s.

Camp helped in setting apart American football gaming from rugby style gaming.  He participated in a number of collegiate committees focused on devising rules of play for football.  Camp devised things like the regulation regarding the standard offensive arrangement of the football players, the football points system, the downs systems, and the snap back from center regulations.  He also introduced down and distance rules and the line of scrimmage.  Later, college coaches like Glenn Warner, Knute Rockne, Amoze Stagg, and Eddie Cochems would use the regulations and plays devised by Camp in football gaming.  A year later the American Professional Football Association was established.  For more information on the history of football in America visit http://www.buzzle.com/articles/history-of-american-football.html.

History Of Football In America: Its Evolution

College football became popular during the twentieth century.  During this time, Bowl games proved impressively popular, drawing huge crowds and people from all over the nation.  Professional football play is traced as far back as the early 1890s.  During that time, William Pudge Heffelfinger was paid $500.00 to play in a football game being played between the Pittsburg Athletic Cube and the Allegheny Athletic Association.  Later, in the year 1903 the very first Professional league for football was established, and then known as the Ohio League.  In 1919, the first championship professional football game was played between the Caton Bulldogs and the Buffalo Prospects. 

Following the development of the American Professional Football Association, the first game was played in 1920 in Dayton, Ohio.  The teams that played were the Columbus Panhandles against the Triangles, with the latter team winning with a score of fourteen to zero.  In 1922, the American Professional Football Association changed its moniker to the National Football League, otherwise known as the NFL that it is still known as today.  At one time football was merely popular in Midwestern towns in the US, but it soon became a national sensation.  It proved especially popular following the NFL Championship football game hosted in 1958; the latter game is still called by some the “greatest game ever played” in the history of football.  In 1960, the American Football League formed, then known as the AFL.  The latter organization was a rival to the well known NFL.  Eventually, these leagues merged and created the now famous Super Bowl.  The latter event is the most widely televised sporting event watched in the United States each year.  For more information on the history of football visit http://www.the-game.org/history-originsto1889.htm.

History Of Football Today

Today there are many forms of football in the US, including college, professional, and high school gaming.  Those football teams belonging to high schools commonly play other teams from local high schools or teams from within the same state.  Football games played at a college level are regulated by the NCAA, otherwise known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association.  College football teams will play other college teams from around the nation; there are four divisions in all in the NCAA currently.  In terms of professional football, the National Football League governs 32 teams and the United Football League governed five teams.  There are also semi professional teams for women and men, and leagues for indoor football.

The amateur football season will begin in August each year and will be played through until December or the month of January.  Professional football games are played well into the month of January and the Superbowl is usually slated around the first week of the month of February.  This means that football players deal with all sorts of different weather conditions and games are only canceled or postponed when the conditions of the weather are severe.  Every April the National Football Association holds a draft where players from colleges are chosen to be on NFL teams.  High school football games commence on Friday evenings.  College football games are held on Saturdays and professional games occur on Sundays, however, since the 1970s the National Football Association has also been hosting games on Monday nights.  Later, in 2006 games were played on Thursdays and Saturdays too, and were televised after college events.  For more details about football today visit http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~samuelpe/history-american-football.html.