History of Football:
Source: Compton's Encyclopedia
"Many
football historians place the origin of football in rugby,
which began entirely by chance in
1823 at the famous Rugby boys' school in England. But at
the time American students at Princeton
University were already playing a game they called "ballown,"
in which they used their fists, and
later their feet, to advance the ball. The freshman and
sophomore classes at Harvard competed in a
type of football game on the first Monday of each school
year--called Bloody Monday because the
game was so rough. Organized football began earlier in
high schools than in colleges, with games on
the Boston Common starting in about 1860. A 17-year-old
student organized the Oneida Football
Club of Boston, which played between 1862 and 1865.
Colleges began to organize football games after the
American Civil War ended in 1865. The
so-called Princeton rules were established in 1867, with
25 players on each team. The first football
was patented that year. Rutgers College also established
football rules in 1867, and its location a
short distance from Princeton led the two schools into
what has been called the first intercollegiate
football game. It was played on Nov. 6, 1869, at Rutgers,
but the game was actually more like
soccer. Rutgers won that historic game, 6 goals to 4. For
the next few years some colleges
continued to play the soccer-type game.
In 1871 Harvard students began playing the so-called
"Boston Game," which included elements of
rugby (the player could pick up the ball and, if pursued,
run with it) and soccer (kicking a round ball
was still essential). Two years later representatives of
Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, and Yale met
in New York City to formulate the first intercollegiate
football rules for the soccer-style game.
(Harvard chose not to attend because its playing rules
were different.)
Next McGill University of Montreal challenged Harvard to
a series of games. The schools played two
games at Harvard in the spring of 1874--the first with
Harvard rules, and the second with
Canadian rugby rules, using the egg-shaped ball. After
the McGill games Harvard challenged Yale
to a football game that was played under mixed soccer and
rugby rules in November 1875. In 1876
Yale, Princeton, Harvard, and Columbia established the
Intercollegiate Football Association, which
set the size of the field at 140 by 70 yards and the
number of players on a team at 15.
The evolution from the rugby-style game to what became
the modern game of American football
began under the direction of Walter Camp, the Yale coach
who is known as the Father of American
Football. Yale had not officially joined the association
until 1879 because it was holding out for
11-man teams. Led by Camp, the rules committee soon cut
the number of players per side from 15
to 11. The committee also cut the size of the field to
110 by 53 yards. In addition, Camp
instituted a type of scrimmage in which a player snapped
the ball back by kicking it to the
quarterback. In 1882 Camp also introduced the system of
downs. (At first, a team had three downs
to advance the ball 5 yards or give up possession; the
number of yards was changed to 10 in 1906,
and the fourth down was added in 1912.) Tackling below
the waist was legalized in 1888.
Professional football began in 1895, in Latrobe, Pa.,
after the Intercollegiate Football Association
was disbanded in a shambles.
Within a decade concern about the increasing brutality of
the game led some colleges to ban
football. Mass plays, involving such formations as the
flying wedge, had seriously injured nearly 180
players, including 18 who were killed. In 1905 President
Theodore Roosevelt called on Harvard,
Princeton, and Yale to help save the sport.
Representatives of 13 Eastern schools met at year-end
and agreed on reforms. At a second meeting, attended by
more than 60 schools, the group appointed
a seven-member Football Rules Committee and set up the
Intercollegiate Athletic Association,
which five years later became the NCAA.
The new rules makers revolutionized football by
legalizing the forward pass, which resulted in a more
open style of play. They also prohibited all the rough
mass plays, and teammates were prohibited
from locking arms to clear a path for their ballcarrier.
To further minimize mayhem, they reduced
the length of the game from 70 to 60 minutes and
established the neutral zone, which separates
the teams by the length of the ball before each play
begins."
~From Compton's Interactive Encyclopedia~
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