American football history review

Nowadays the sport industry is an important source of potential investments. American football popularity is becoming increasingly high in many countries, especially in the United States of America and Canada. It is noteworthy that the American football development borrowed certain elements from rugby, so, the American football history began in the 19th century.

American football, known in the United States simply as football, is a competitive team sport. The object of the game is to advance the football towards the opposing team's end zone and score points. The ball can be advanced by carrying the ball, or by throwing or handing it from one teammate to the other. Points can be scored in a variety of ways, including carrying the ball over the goal line, throwing the ball to another player past the goal line or kicking it through the goal posts. The winner is the team with the most points when the time expires.


Sports historians who major in American football claim that the beginnings of the American football history are rooted in the history of rugby. Rugby was played in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and had a great number of similarities to soccer. Rugby history began in the early 19th century (1823) at the great English Rugby Boys' School. Another game closely related to the American football is soccer (European football). Soccer was initiated in the United Kingdom, and the Europeans started playing it in the early 1820ies.

The Professional American football history began soon after the Intercollegiate Football Association's demise, approximately in 1895. In 1920, the American Professional Football Association was set up in the USA. In a year, APFA was reorganized and in 1922 APFA was renamed, so it was now called the National Football League. Unlike the American Professional Football Association that gave out franchises far and wide with little distinction, the National Football League set limits on the number of teams, which could not exceed ten. The American Professional Football Association, on the other hand, brought together 23 teams during the year since its origination and modification into the NFL. In 1970, fifty years after the origination of the first pro football corporation, it united NFL teams (16 teams) with AFL teams (10 teams) to compose one American football league with two divisions (conferences). In 1980ies, further expansion was conducted, so, by 1993-1994, the American football league consisted of 30 teams. The next step towards the league's growth was to restructure the NFL into 8 different conferences; each consisted of four teams.

The American football development had seen the emergence of an indoor league called Arena Football. This league still exists and the game is played, but it does not have the popularity that the National Football League has.

The American football history experienced another wave of development at the beginning of the 19th century. Some of Princeton students began playing the new game. The players used their hands first to put forward the ball. Afterwards they could use feet, too. The players' only goal was to transfer the ball over to the rival team. There were no fast and hard rules applied to this earliest predecessor of the game that we now call American football.

At Harvard, the sophomore and freshman students competed in a game that had resemblance to the American football. Those competitions took place every school year on the first Monday of the year. Because of its roughness, the competition was called "Bloody Monday". Similar games, having a resemblance to the Bloody Monday, became very popular in the Boston Common, and the American football popularity increased significantly.

Thus, American football, like other popular games, has its own great American football history that is more than a century old.


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