History of football

                    Football originated in the early 1800's in England from a sport called rugby. Rugby was a popular sport that eventually spread all over the world.  It was first played in the United States  in 1869 and in a couple of years it took its modern form.  Football history had constant rule changes to increase the protection of player and to boost the excitement of the game.

           Representatives from multiple universities met in New York City to decide the fundamental rules for college football teams to follow.  The teams then established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA). The Association, led by Walter Camp, decided that 15 would be the number of players in a game. Walter Camp was the coach at Yale University and later wanted to change the number of players to 11 to make it more interesting.  The Intercollegiate Football Association changed the numbers of players to 11 and that helped the transformation from rugby to the modern game of American football.

            The number of players from 15 to 11 caused to make the standard playing field decrease to 110 yards.  In 1882, West Camp introduced the system of downs.  The system of downs allowed the attacking team three attempts to advance the ball 5 yards.  Many players made it seem to easy to advance the ball 5 yards, so the committee changed the distance to 10 yards, in 1906.  In about six years later the association added the fourth down making a long game.

          After Football took form, there was a lot of concerns of the brutality of the sport and lots of problems occurred.  Many colleges banned the sport because nearly 180 player were seriously injured and 18 deaths reported from brutal plays that were common practices.  The president Roosevelt was a fan of the sport and was aware of the situation. He held a meeting with the Football Association members to fix the problem and still performed this beautiful game without any injuries.  At the meeting the schools agreed on a system and selected 7 members to represent a Rules Committee association.  The Rules Committee later became known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).

      The purpose of the committee was to make the sport a safer environment for the players, so the following rules were established.

• legalization of the forward pass (redesign of the ball and more open space to play)
• prohibition of rough mass plays (caused many injuries)
• prohibition locking of arms by teammates (cleared way for the ball carrier to run freely)
• length of game shortened to six minutes (less body contact for players)
• neutral zone (separated the teams before each play)

      Football Leagues and other independent teams had meetings to agree on a schedule and a final championship game to play by next year and allowed competitive teams to join. In 1920 the National Football League was established. According to the National Football League website there’s only to foundings teams still remaining in the NFL.  The Decatur Staleys (Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (Arizona Cardinals).  The first championship game was held in 1933 and by 1958 when the championship game was played it became known as “The Greatest Game Ever Played”.

Click links below if you want to read more about the History of Football:

http://inventors.about.com/od/fstartinventions/a/HistoryFootball.htm
http://www.essortment.com/all/americanfootbal_rwff.htm
http://www.knowledgegalaxy.net/who_invented_football/who_invented_football.html
 http://www.whoinventedit.net/who-invented-football.html