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About American football

American football

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.

Outside of the United States, Canada, and a few other countries such as American Samoa, the sport is usually referred to as American football (or sometimes as gridiron) to differentiate it from other football games, especially association football and rugby football. American football evolved as a separate sport from rugby football in the late 19th century. Arena football is a variant of American football.

History of Football (Pre 1900)

At the turn of the seventeenth century, English colonial settlers brought the game of soccer (more commonly known as football around the world) to the United States

The game was introduced to colleges some 200 years after the game first came to the United States, and in 1867, the first set of rules for American football were drawn up at Princeton College.

The Princeton rules, as they were called, specified twenty-five players to a team, with the rules the same as football (soccer).

About the same time, Rutgers also formulated a set of rules, and Rutgers and Princeton met for a game on 6 November 1869 at New Brunswick. Rutgers' rules were a modified version of the London Association Football rules. The game was essentially the same as football (soccer), but the ball could be batted with the hand, but running with the ball and throwing it was not allowed.

The goals were the same width as football (soccer), 7.3 metres (24 feet) and the pitch measured 110 metres by 69 metres (360 feet by 225 feet).

The winner was the first team to score six goals. Rutgers won 6-4. The teams met again two weeks later, using Princeton's rules, with the first team to eight goals winning. Princeton's rules also allowed for a free kick to be given when a clean catch was made. Princeton won 8-0.

The game became popular in other colleges, especially Columbia and Yale. Harvard revived football in 1871 and they played what was known as the 'Boston Game'. That was again very similar to football (soccer), but the ball, which was at that time still round, could be picked up and players could run with it. By then, the game was beginning to resemble rugby.

In fact, rugby had a big influence on American football. Harvard played the McGill University Football Club of Montreal twice in 1874. McGill played rugby, and Harvard were interested in the game. They discussed the possibility of drawing up a new set of rules with Yale.

Princeton and Columbia were invited to the meeting and in 1876 the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed, with the rules being very similar to Rugby Union.