A Short History of Football - By: Tauqeer Hassan

Football also known as American Football is a sport played between two teams competing for territory on a football field using a ball and set play. The objective of the game is getting the ball to the opposing team’s goal line by either scoring a running touchdown or by kicking the ball over the post and between the uprights of the goal. It is not like soccer which has a goal keeper; instead it is more similar to Rugby and Australian Rules football.

Rugby which was the predecessor of Football was invented in England during 1860s. Its forerunners are similar to soccer and dates back to the middle ages when groups of rival villages competed to score a goal against each other.

In England during the 1860s, some schools, universities and clubs got together to form a set of rules allowing different teams from different schools and districts to play with each other. The published rules were the predecessor of modern soccer. However, every teams did not accept them and chose make their own code known as rugby.

The rules of football date back to the English parent games. American Football is also native to North America and old versions were played in the early 1800s in Princeton. The game was called ‘Ballown’ and it eventually became known as football but the rules kept on changing.

A similar form of game was played at Harvard University which was greatly enjoyed by senior students. The game was called ‘Bloody Monday’ as it was played on first Monday of the academic year.

When the rules of rugby and soccer were agreed on in England, the US entered a new period of prosperity brought about by the end of the civil war. Princeton and Rutgers created their own rules and played the very first intercollegiate game of football on the 6th November 1869.

When the intercollegiate games were admired, the representatives from Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia and Yale met to formulate a set of rules to be used for future intercollegiate games. They established the Intercollegiate Football Association and adopted many of the rules of rugby.

Football in the Americas was very much similar to rugby had its dissenters. One was Walter Camp of Yale who wanted a shorter playing field and fewer players.

American style football became more popular with Americans than the older rugby styled game. Colleges in the US soon adopted Camps new rules and established American Football as the leading football code.

During the 1890s, many colleges banned the game for being very rough with serious injuries. Later President Roosevelt called on the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), successor to IFA, to eliminate brutality from the game. Changes were made which were so successful to American Football that non college teams based around community athletic clubs formed and began to compete against each other.

Professional football and the NFL started to dominate with increasing viewers by the 1950s. A rival association called the American Football League (AFL) started in areas not already serviced by NFL teams and quickly competed for the best players, viewers and network broadcasting contracts numbers, and network broadcasting contracts. In 1970, NFL and AFL were merged and expressed as an important moment in the history of American Football. A stronger league also emerged and created the Super Bowl as its defining championship game.

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You might also want to learn about history of football and also who invented football.

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