| Part of theAmerican football series on the |
| History of American football |
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| Origins of American football |
| Close relations to other codes |
| Topics |
Thehistory of American football can be traced to early versions ofrugby football andassociation football. Both games have their origin in multiple varieties offootball played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which afootball is kicked at agoal or kicked over a line, which in turn were based on the varieties ofEnglish public school football games descending from medieval ball games.
American football resulted from several major divergences from association football and rugby football. Most notably the rule changes were instituted byWalter Camp, aYale University athlete and coach who is considered to be the "Father of American Football". Among these important changes were the introduction of thehike spot, ofdown-and-distance rules, and of the legalization offorward pass andblocking.[1][2][3] In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, gameplay developments by college coaches such asEddie Cochems,Amos Alonzo Stagg,Parke H. Davis,Knute Rockne, andGlenn "Pop" Warner helped take advantage of the newly introducedforward pass. The popularity ofcollege football grew as it became the dominant version of the sport in the United States for the first half of the 20th century.Bowl games, a college football tradition, attracted a national audience for college teams. Boosted by fiercerivalries and colorful traditions, college football still holds widespread appeal in the United States
The origin ofprofessional football can be traced back to 1892,[4] withPudge Heffelfinger's $500 ($17,498 in 2024 dollars) contract to play in a game for theAllegheny Athletic Association against thePittsburgh Athletic Club. In 1920 the American Professional Football Association was formed. This league changed its name to theNational Football League (NFL) two years later, and eventually became themajor league of American football. Beginning primarily as a sport of Midwestern industrial towns in the United States, professional football eventually became a national phenomenon.
The modern era of American football can be considered to have begun after the1932 NFL Playoff game, which was the first indoor championship gamesince 1902 and the first American football game to featurehash marks, forward passes anywhere behind the line of scrimmage, and the movement of the goalposts back to the goal line. Other innovations to occur immediately after 1932 were the introduction of theAP Poll in 1934, the tapering of the ends of the football in 1934, the awarding of the firstHeisman Trophy in 1935, the firstNFL draft in 1936 and thefirst televised game in 1939. Another important event was the American football game at the1932 Summer Olympics, which combined with a similar demonstration game at1933 World's Fair, led to the firstCollege All-Star Game in 1934, which in turn was an important factor in the growth ofprofessional football in the United States.[5] American football's explosion in popularity during the second half of the 20th century can be traced to the1958 NFL Championship Game, a contest that has been dubbed the "Greatest Game Ever Played". A rival league to the NFL, theAmerican Football League (AFL), began play in 1960; the pressure it put on the senior league led to amerger between the two leagues and the creation of theSuper Bowl, which has become the most watched television event in the United States on an annual basis.[6]
InAncient Greece, men played a similar sport calledEpiskyros where they tried to throw a ball over a scrimmage while avoiding tackles.[7]
Forms of traditional football may have been played throughout Europe and beyond since antiquity. Many of these may have involved handling of the ball, and scrummage-like formations. These archaic forms of football, typically classified as mob football, could be played between neighboring towns and villages, involving an unlimited number of players on opposing teams, who could clash in a heaving mass of people struggling to drag an inflatedpig's bladder by any means possible to markers at each end of a town. By some accounts, in some such events any means could be used to move the ball towards the goal, as long as it did not lead to manslaughter or murder.[8] These antiquated games went into sharp decline in the 19th century when theHighway Act 1835 was passed banning the playing of football on public highways.[9]
Although there are some mentions ofNative Americans playing football-like games, modern American football has its origins in the traditional football games played in the cities, villages and schools of Europe for many centuries before America was settled by Europeans. Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional "mob football" played in England. The games remained largely unorganized until the 18th century, whenintramural games of football began to be played. Organized varieties of football began to take form in the 19th century in English public schools. According to legend,William Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran with it during a school football match in 1823, thus creating a new style of play in which running with the ball predominated instead of kicking. Football soon began to be played at colleges and universities in the United States. Each school played its own variety of football.Princeton University students played a game called "ballown" as early as 1820.[10] AHarvard tradition known as "Bloody Monday" began before 1827 (maybe as early as 1800)[11], which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore classes, played at The Delta, the space whereMemorial Hall now stands. (A poem, "The Battle of the Delta", was written about the first recorded match: "The Freshmen's wrath, to Sophs the direful spring / Of shins unnumbered bruised, great goddess sing!"[12]) In 1860, both the town police and the college authorities agreed that Bloody Monday had to go. The Harvard students responded by going into mourning for a mock figure called "Football Fightum", for whom they conducted funeral rites. The authorities held firm and it was a dozen years before football was once again played at Harvard.Dartmouth played its own version called "Old division football", the rules of which were first published in 1871, though the game dates to at least the 1830s. All of these games, and others, shared certain commonalities. They remained largely "mob" style games, with huge numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into a goal area, often by any means necessary. Rules were simple, and violence and injury were common.[13][14] The violence of these mob-style games led to widespread protests and a decision to abandon them.Yale, under pressure from the city ofNew Haven, banned the play of all forms of football in 1860.[13]
The game began to return to college campuses by the late 1860s. Yale, Princeton,Rutgers University, andBrown University began playing the popular "kicking" game during this time. In 1867, Princeton used rules based on those of the LondonFootball Association.[13] A "running game", resemblingrugby football, was taken up by theMontreal Football Club in Canada in 1868.[2] While the game between Rutgers and Brown is commonly considered the first American football game, several years prior in 1862, theOneida Football Club formed as the oldest known football club in the United States. The team consisted of graduates of Boston's elite preparatory schools and played from 1862 to 1865.[15]
On November 6, 1869,Rutgers University facedPrinceton University (then known as the College of New Jersey)in a game that was played with a round ball and used a set of rules suggested by Rutgers captainWilliam J. Leggett and accepted by Princeton captain,William Stryker Gummere, based on theFootball Association's first set of rules, which were an early attempt by the former pupils of England's public schools to unify the rules of their public schools games and create a universal and standardized set of rules for the game of football and bore little resemblance to the American game which would be developed in the following decades. It is still usually regarded as the first game ofintercollegiate American football.[2][3][13][16] The game was played at a Rutgers field. Two teams of 25 players attempted to score by kicking the ball into the opposing team's goal. Throwing or carrying the ball was not allowed, but there was plenty of physical contact between players. The first team to reach six goals was declared the winner. Rutgers won by a score of six to four. A rematch was played at Princeton a week later under Princeton's own set of rules (one notable difference was the awarding of a "free kick" to any player that caught the ball on the fly, which was a feature adopted from the Football Association's rules; thefair catch kick rule has survived through to modern American game). Princeton won that game by a score of 8–0.Columbia joined the series in 1870, and by 1872 several schools were fielding intercollegiate teams, including Yale andStevens Institute of Technology.[13]
Rutgers was first to extend the reach of the game. An intercollegiate game was first played in the state ofNew York when Rutgers playedColumbia on November 2, 1872. It was also the first scoreless tie in the history of the fledgling sport.[17]Yale football started the same year and had its first match against Columbia, the nearest college to play football. It took place atHamilton Park inNew Haven and was the first game in New England. The game used a set of rules based onassociation football with 20-man sides, played on a field 400 by 250 feet. Yale won 3–0, Tommy Sherman scoring the first goal and Lew Irwin the other two.[18]
By 1873, the college students playing football had made significant efforts to standardize their fledgling game. Teams had been scaled down from 25 players to 20. The only way to score was still to bat or kick the ball through the opposing team's goal, and the game was played in two 45-minute halves on fields 140 yards long and 70 yards wide. On October 20, 1873, representatives from Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules. Before this meeting, each school had its own set of rules and games were usually played using the home team's own particular code. At this meeting, a list of rules, based more on the Football Association's rules than the rules of the recently foundedRugby Football Union, was drawn up for intercollegiate football games.[13]
Harvard refused to attend the rules conference organized by the other schools and continued to play under its own code,[19] known as the "Boston game".[20][21] While Harvard's decision to maintain its code made it hard for them to schedule games against other American universities,[22] it agreed to playMcGill University, fromMontreal, in atwo-game series in 1874. Harvard won the first game, in which its rules were used, 3–0. The second game, which was played under rugby regulations, did not have a winner as neither team managed to score.[23]
Harvard quickly took a liking to the rugby game, and its use of thetry, which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as thetouchdown. On June 4, 1875, Harvard facedTufts University in the first game between two American colleges played under rules similar to the McGill/Harvard contest, which was won by Tufts.[24] The rules included each side fielding 11 men at any given time, the ball was advanced by kicking or carrying it, and tackles of the ball carrier stopped play.[25] Further elated by the excitement of McGill's version of football, Harvard challenged its closest rival, Yale, to which the Bulldogs accepted. The two teams agreed to play under a set of rules called the "Concessionary Rules", which involved Harvard conceding something to Yale'ssoccer and Yale conceding a great deal to Harvard's rugby. They decided to play with 15 players on each team. On November 13, 1875, Yale and Harvard played each other for the first time ever, with Harvard winning 4–0. At the firstThe Game—the annual contest between Harvard and Yale, among the 2000 spectators attending the game that day, was the future "father of American football"Walter Camp. Walter, who would enroll at Yale the next year, was torn between an admiration for Harvard's style of play and the misery of Yale's defeat and became determined to avenge Yale's defeat. Spectators from Princeton admired this type of game, and it became the most popular version of football there.[13]
Walter Camp is widely considered to be the most important figure in the development of American football.[1][2][3] As a youth, he excelled in sports liketrack, baseball, and association football, and after enrolling atYale in 1876, he earned varsity honors in every sport the school offered.[1]
Following the introduction of rugby-style rules to American football, Camp became a fixture at the Massasoit House conventions where rules were debated and changed. Dissatisfied with what seemed to him to be a disorganized mob, he proposed his first rule change at the first meeting he attended in 1878: a reduction from fifteen players to eleven. The motion was rejected at that time but passed in 1880. The effect was to open up the game and emphasize speed over strength. Camp's most famous change, the establishment of theline of scrimmage and thesnap fromcenter toquarterback, was also passed in 1880. Originally, the snap was executed with the foot of the center. Later changes made it possible to snap the ball with the hands, either through the air or by a direct hand-to-hand pass.[1]
Camp's new scrimmage rules revolutionized the game, though not always as intended. Princeton, in particular, used scrimmage play to slow the game, making incremental progress towards the end zone during eachdown. Rather than increase scoring, which had been Camp's original intent, the rule was exploited to maintain control of the ball for the entire game, resulting in slow, unexciting contests. At the 1882 rules meeting, Camp proposed that a team be required to advance the ball a minimum of five yards within three downs. These down-and-distance rules, combined with the establishment of the line of scrimmage andforward pass, transformed the game from a variation of rugby football into the distinct sport andfootball code of American football.[1]
Camp was central to several more significant rule changes that came to define American football. In 1881, the field was reduced in size to 110 by 531⁄3 yards (100.6 by 48.8 meters). Several times in 1883, Camp tinkered with the scoring rules, finally arriving at four points for a touchdown, two points forkicks after touchdowns, two points for safeties, and five forfield goals. Camp's innovations in the area of point scoring influenced rugby union's move to point scoring in 1890. In 1887, game time was set at two halves of 45 minutes each. Also in 1887, two paid officials—areferee and anumpire—were mandated for each game. A year later, the rules were changed to allow tackling below the waist, and in 1889, the officials were given whistles and stopwatches.[1]
The last, and arguably most important innovation, which would at last make American football uniquely "American", was the legalization of interference, orblocking, a tactic which was highly illegal under the rugby-style rules. Interference remains strictly illegal in both rugby codes. The prohibition of interference in the rugby game stems from the game's strict enforcement of itsoffside rule, which prohibited any player on the team with possession of the ball to loiter between the ball and the goal. At first, American players would find creative ways of aiding the runner by pretending to accidentally knock into defenders trying to tackle the runner. When Walter Camp witnessed this tactic being employed against his Yale team, he was at first appalled, but the next year had adopted the blocking tactics for his own team. During the 1880s and 1890s, teams developed increasingly complex blocking tactics including the interlocking interference technique known as theflying wedge or "V-trick formation", which was developed byLorin F. Deland and first introduced byHarvard in acollegiate game againstYale in 1892. Despite its effectiveness, it was outlawed two seasons later in 1894 through the efforts of the rule committee led byParke H. Davis, because of its contribution to serious injury.[26]
After his playing career at Yale ended in 1882, Camp was employed by the New Haven Clock Company until his death in 1925. Though no longer a player, he remained a fixture at annual rules meetings for most of his life, and he personally selected an annualAll-American team every year from 1889 through 1924. TheWalter Camp Football Foundation continues to select All-American teams in his honor.[27]
| Era | T.D. | F.G. | Con. | Con. (T.D.) | Saf. | Con. (S) | Def. con. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1883 | 2 | 5 | 4 | – | 1 | – | – |
| 1883–1897 | 4 | 5 | 2 | – | 2 | – | – |
| 1898–1903 | 5 | 5 | 1 | – | 2 | – | – |
| 1904–1908 | 5 | 4 | 1 | – | 2 | – | – |
| 1909–1911 | 5 | 3 | 1 | – | 2 | – | – |
| 1912–1957 | 6 | 3 | 1 | – | 2 | – | – |
| 1958–present | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 2 |
| Note: For brief periods in the late 19th century, some penalties awarded one or more points for the opposing teams, and some teams in the late 19th and early 20th centuries chose to negotiate their own scoring system for individual games. | |||||||
On November 23, 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met at theMassasoit House hotel inSpringfield, Massachusetts to standardize a new code of rules based on the rugby game first introduced to Harvard by McGill University in 1874. The rules were based largely on theRugby Football Union's code from England, though one important difference was the replacement of a kicked goal with a touchdown as the primary means of scoring (a change that would later occur in rugby itself, favoring the try as the main scoring event). Three of the schools—Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton—formed theIntercollegiate Football Association, as a result of the meeting. Yale did not join the group until 1879, because of an early disagreement about the number of players per team.[1]
The first game where one team scored over 100 points happened on October 25, 1884 whenYale routedDartmouth 113–0. It was also the first time one team scored over 100 points and the opposing team was shut out.[29] The next week, Princeton outscored Lafayette by 140 to 0.[30]
TheUniversity of Michigan became the first school west of Pennsylvania to establish a college football team. On May 30, 1879 Michigan beatRacine College 1–0 in a game played inChicago. TheChicago Daily Tribune called it "the first rugby-football game to be played west of theAlleghenies."[31] Other Midwestern schools soon followed suit, including theUniversity of Chicago,Northwestern University, and theUniversity of Minnesota. The first western team to travel east was the1881 Michigan team, which played at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.[32][33] The nation's first college football league, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (also known as the Western Conference), a precursor to theBig Ten Conference, was founded in 1895.[34]
On April 9, 1880 atStoll Field,Transylvania University (then called Kentucky University) beatCentre College by the score of13+3⁄4–0 in what is often considered the first recorded game played in theSouth.[35] The first game of "scientific football" in the South was the first instance of theVictory Bell rivalry betweenNorth Carolina andDuke (then known as Trinity College) held onThanksgiving Day, 1888, at theRaleigh, North Carolina Athletic Park.[36][37]
On November 13, 1887 theVirginia Cavaliers and Pantops Academy fought to a scoreless tie in the first organized football game in the state ofVirginia.[38] Students at UVA were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim that some industrious ones organized a game againstWashington and Lee College in 1871, just two years after Rutgers and Princeton's historic first game in 1869. But no record has been found of the score of this contest. Washington and Lee also claims a 4 to 2 win overVMI in 1873.[39] Washington and Lee won 4–2.[39] Some industrious students of the two schools organized a game for October 23, 1869 – but it was rained out.[40]
College football expanded greatly during the last two decades of the 19th century.[41] Several majorrivalries date from this time period.[42]
November 1890 was an active time in the sport. InBaldwin City, Kansas, on November 22, 1890, college football was first played in the state ofKansas.Baker beatKansas 22–9.[43] On the 27th,Vanderbilt playedNashville (Peabody) atAthletic Park and won 40–0. It was the first time organized football played in the state ofTennessee.[44] The 29th also saw the first instance of theArmy–Navy Game.Navy won 24–0.[45]
The firstnighttime football game was played inMansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892 betweenMansfield State Normal andWyoming Seminary and ended at halftime in a 0–0 tie.[46] The Army-Navy game of 1893 saw the first documented use of afootball helmet by a player in a game.Joseph M. Reeves had a crude leather helmet made by a shoemaker inAnnapolis and wore it in the game after being warned by his doctor that he risked death if he continued to play football after suffering an earlier kick to the head.[47]
The beginnings of the contemporarySoutheastern Conference andAtlantic Coast Conference started in 1892. Upon organizing the firstAuburn football team in that year,George Petrie arranged for the team to play theUniversity of Georgia team at Piedmont Park inAtlanta, Georgia. Auburn won the game, 10–0, in front of 2,000 spectators. The game inaugurated what is known to college football fans as the Deep South's Oldest Rivalry. It was in 1894 theSouthern Intercollegiate Athletic Association (SIAA) was founded on December 21, 1894, by Dr.William Dudley, a chemistry professor atVanderbilt.[48] The original members wereAlabama,Auburn,Georgia,Georgia Tech,North Carolina,Sewanee, andVanderbilt.Clemson,Cumberland,Kentucky,LSU,Mercer,Mississippi,Mississippi A&M (Mississippi State),Southwestern Presbyterian University,Tennessee,Texas,Tulane, and theUniversity of Nashville joined the following year in 1895 as invited charter members.[49] The conference was originally formed for "the development and purification of college athletics throughout the South".[50]
It is thought that the firstforward pass in football occurred on October 26, 1895 in a game between Georgia andNorth Carolina when, out of desperation, the ball was thrown by the North Carolina back Joel Whitaker instead of punted andGeorge Stephens caught the ball.[51] On November 9, 1895John Heisman executed ahidden ball trick utilizing quarterbackReynolds Tichenor to getAuburn's only touchdown in a 6 to 9 loss toVanderbilt. It was the first game in the south decided by a field goal.[52] Heisman later used the trick againstPop Warner's Georgia team. Warner picked up the trick and later used it at Cornell against Penn State in 1897.[53] He then used it in 1903 at Carlisle against Harvard and garnered national attention, the play was soon made illegal.[54]
The1899 Sewanee Tigers are one of the most successful teams of the sport's early years, finishing with a record of 12–0 and outscoring opponents 322 to 10. Known as the "Iron Men", with just 13 men they had a six-day road trip with five shutout wins overTexas A&M;Texas;Tulane;LSU; andOle Miss. It is recalled memorably with the phrase "... and on the seventh day they rested."[55][56]Grantland Rice called them "the most durable football team I ever saw."[57]
The first college football game in Oklahoma Territory occurred on November 7, 1895 when the 'Oklahoma City Terrors' defeated theOklahoma Sooners 34 to 0. The Terrors were a mix of Methodist college students and high schoolers.[58] The Sooners did not manage a single first down. By next season, Oklahoma coachJohn A. Harts had left to prospect for gold in the Arctic.[59][60] Organized football was first played in the territory on November 29, 1894 between the Oklahoma City Terrors and Oklahoma City High School. The high school won 24 to 0.[59]
In 1891, the firstStanford football team was hastily organized and played a four-game season beginning in January 1892 with no official head coach. Following the season, Stanford captain John Whittemore wrote toYale coachWalter Camp asking him to recommend a coach for Stanford. To Whittemore's surprise, Camp agreed to coach the team himself, on the condition that he finish the season at Yale first.[61] As a result of Camp's late arrival, Stanford played just three official games, against San Francisco'sOlympic Club and rivalCalifornia. The team also played exhibition games against two Los Angeles area teams that Stanford does not include in official results.[62][63] Camp returned to the East Coast following the season, but coached Stanford for two further years from 1894–1895.[64]
USC first fielded an American football team in 1888. Playing its first game on November 14 of that year against the Alliance Athletic Club, in which USC gained a 16–0 victory. Frank Suffel andHenry H. Goddard were playing coaches for the first team which was put together by quarterback Arthur Carroll; who in turn volunteered to make the pants for the team and later became a tailor.[65] USC faced its first collegiate opponent the following year in fall 1889, playingSt. Vincent's College to a 40–0 victory.[65] In 1893, USC joined the Intercollegiate Football Association of Southern California (the forerunner of theSCIAC), which was composed of USC,Occidental College,Throop Polytechnic Institute (Cal Tech), andChaffey College.Pomona College was invited to enter, but declined to do so. An invitation was also extended toLos Angeles High School.[66]
TheBig Game between Stanford and California is the oldest college football rivalry in the West. The first game was played on San Francisco'sHaight Street Grounds on March 19, 1892 with Stanford winning 14–10. The term "Big Game" was first used in 1900, when it was played on Thanksgiving Day in San Francisco. During that game, a large group of men and boys, who were observing from the roof of the nearby S.F. and Pacific Glass Works, fell into the fiery interior of the building when the roof collapsed, resulting in 13 dead and 78 injured.[67][68][69][70][71] On December 4, 1900, the last victim of the disaster (Fred Lilly) died, bringing the death toll to 22; the "Thanksgiving Day Disaster" remains the deadliest accident to kill spectators at a U.S. sporting event.[72]
In May 1900,Fielding H. Yost was hired as the football coach atStanford University,[73] and, after traveling home to West Virginia, he arrived inPalo Alto, California, on August 21, 1900.[74] Yost led the 1900 Stanford team to a 7–2–1 record, outscoring opponents 154 to 20.[75] The next year in 1901, Yost was hired byCharles A. Baird as the head football coach for theMichigan Wolverines football team.[76] Led by Yost, Michigan became the first "western" national power. From 1901 to 1905, Michigan had a 56-game undefeated streak that included a 1902 trip to play in the first college footballbowl game, which later became theRose Bowl Game. During this streak, Michigan scored 2,831 points while allowing only 40.[77]
In 1906, citing concerns about the violence in American Football, universities on theWest Coast, led byCalifornia andStanford, replaced the sport with rugby union.[78] At the time, the future of American football was very much in doubt and these schools believed that rugby union would eventually be adopted nationwide.[78] Other schools followed suit and also made the switch includedNevada,St. Mary's,Santa Clara, andUSC (in 1911).[78] However, due to the perception that West Coast football was inferior to the game played on theEast Coast anyway, East Coast and Midwest teams shrugged off the loss of the teams and continued playing American football.[78] With no nationwide movement, the available pool of rugby teams to play remained small.[78] The schools scheduled games against local club teams and reached out to rugby union powers in Australia, New Zealand, and especially, due to its proximity, Canada. The annualBig Game between Stanford and California continued as rugby, with the winner invited by theBritish Columbia Rugby Union to a tournament in Vancouver over the Christmas holidays, with the winner of that tournament receiving the Cooper Keith Trophy.[78][79][80]
"No sport is wholesome in which ungenerous or mean acts which easily escape detection contribute to victory."
From its earliest days as a mob game, football was a very violent sport.[13] The 1894 Harvard-Yale game, known as the "Hampden Park Blood Bath", resulted in crippling injuries for four players; the contest was suspended until 1897. The annual Army-Navy game was suspended from 1894 to 1898 for similar reasons.[82] One of the major problems was the popularity of mass-formations like theflying wedge, in which a large number of offensive players charged as a unit against a similarly arranged defense. The resultant collisions often led to serious injuries and sometimes even death.[83] Georgia fullbackRichard Von Albade Gammon died on the field from a concussion received against Virginia in 1897, causing some southern universities to temporarily stop their football programs.[84]
In 1905 there were 19 fatalities nationwide. PresidentTheodore Roosevelt reportedly threatened to shut down the game if drastic changes were not made.[85] However, though he lectured on eliminating and reducing injuries, and held a meeting of football representatives fromHarvard,Yale, andPrinceton on October 9, 1905, he never threatened to completely ban football. He lacked the authority to abolish the game and was actually a fan who wanted to preserve it. The President's sons were playing football at the college andsecondary levels at the time.[86]
Meanwhile,John H. Outland held anexperimental game inWichita, Kansas that reduced the number of scrimmage plays to earn a first down from four to three in an attempt to reduce injuries.[87] TheLos Angeles Times reported an increase in punts and considered the game much safer than regular play but that the new rule was not "conducive to the sport".[88] Finally, on December 28, 1905, 62 schools met in New York City to discuss rule changes to make the game safer. As a result of this meeting, the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States, later named theNational Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), was formed.[89] One rule change introduced in 1906, devised to open up the game and reduce injury, was the introduction of the legalforward pass. Though it was underutilized for years, this proved to be one of the most important rule changes in the establishment of the modern game.[90]
As a result of the 1905–1906 reforms, mass formation plays became illegal andforward passes legal.Bradbury Robinson, playing for visionary coachEddie Cochems atSt. Louis University, threw the first legal pass in a September 5, 1906, game againstCarroll College atWaukesha. Other important changes, formally adopted in 1910, were the requirements that at least seven offensive players be on the line of scrimmage at the time of the snap, that there be no pushing or pulling, and that interlocking interference (arms linked or hands on belts and uniforms) was not allowed. These changes greatly reduced the potential for collision injuries.[91] Several coaches emerged who took advantage of these sweeping changes.Amos Alonzo Stagg introduced such innovations as thehuddle, thetackling dummy, and the pre-snap shift.[92] Other coaches, such asPop Warner andKnute Rockne, introduced new strategies that still remain part of the game.[93][94]
Besides these coaching innovations, several rules changes during the first third of the 20th century had a profound impact on the game, mostly in opening up the passing game. In 1914, the first roughing-the-passer penalty was implemented. In 1918, the rules on eligible receivers were loosened to allow eligible players to catch the ball anywhere on the field—previously strict rules were in place only allowing passes to certain areas of the field.[95] Scoring rules also changed during this time: field goals were lowered to three points in 1909[3] and touchdowns raised to six points in 1912.[96] In addition, 1912 saw the introduction of the 10-yard longend zone at each end of the field, thus reducing the size of the main field from 110 to 100 yards, and a fourth down was added, among other rule changes.[97]
Star players that emerged in the early 20th century includeJim Thorpe,Red Grange, andBronko Nagurski; these three made the transition to the fledgling NFL and helped turn it into a successful league. SportswriterGrantland Rice helped popularize the sport with his poetic descriptions of games and colorful nicknames for the game's biggest players, including Notre Dame's "Four Horsemen" backfield andFordham University's linemen, known as the "Seven Blocks of Granite".[98]
In 1907 atChampaign, Illinois Chicago andIllinois played in the first game to have a halftime show featuring amarching band.[99] Chicago won 42–6. OnNovember 25, 1911Kansas andMissouri played the firsthomecoming football game.[100] The game was "broadcast" play-by-play over telegraph to at least 1,000 fans inLawrence, Kansas.[101] It ended in a 3–3 tie. The game betweenWest Virginia andPittsburgh on October 8, 1921, saw the first live radio broadcast of a college football game when Harold W. Arlin announced that year'sBackyard Brawl played atForbes Field onKDKA. Pitt won 21–13.[102] On October 28, 1922, Princeton and Chicago played the first game to be nationally broadcast on radio. Princeton won 21–18 in a hotly contested game which had Princeton dubbed the "Team of Destiny".[103]
In 1906 Vanderbilt defeatedCarlisle 4–0, the result of a Bob Blake field goal.[104][105] In 1907 Vanderbilt fought Navy to a 6–6 tie. In 1910 Vanderbilt held defending national champion Yale to a scoreless tie.[105]
Helping Georgia Tech's claim to a title in 1917, theAuburn Tigers held undefeated,Chic Harley led Big Ten championOhio State to a scoreless tie the week before Georgia Tech beat the Tigers 68–7.[106] The next season, with many players gone due to World War I, a game was finally scheduled atForbes Field withPittsburgh. The Panthers, led by halfbackTom Davies, defeatedGeorgia Tech 32–0.[107]
1917 saw the rise of another Southern team inCentre ofDanville, Kentucky. In 1921Bo McMillin led Centre upset defending national champion Harvard6–0 in what is widely considered one of the greatest upsets in college football history. The next year Vanderbilt fought Michigan to ascoreless tie at the inaugural game onDudley Field, the first stadium in the South made exclusively for college football. Michigan coachFielding Yost and Vanderbilt coachDan McGugin were brothers-in-law, and the latter the protege of the former. The game featured the season's two best defenses and included a goal line stand by Vanderbilt to preserve the tie. Its result was "a great surprise to the sporting world".[108] Commodore fans celebrated by throwing some 3,000 seat cushions onto the field. The game features prominently in Vanderbilt's history.[109] That same year, Alabama upsetPenn 9–7.[110]
Vanderbilt's line coach then wasWallace Wade, who in 1925 coachedAlabama to the south's firstRose Bowl victory. This game is commonly referred to as "the game that changed the south".[111] Wade followed up the next season with an undefeated record andRose Bowl tie.[112]
In the early 1930s, the college game continued to grow, particularly in theSouth, bolstered by fierce rivalries such as the "South's Oldest Rivalry", between Virginia and North Carolina and the "Deep South's Oldest Rivalry", betweenGeorgia andAuburn. Although before the mid-1920s most national powers came from theNortheast or theMidwest, the trend changed when several teams from the South and the West Coast achieved national success.Wallace William Wade's1925 Alabama team won the1926 Rose Bowl after receiving its first national title andWilliam Alexander's 1928Georgia Tech team defeatedCalifornia in the1929 Rose Bowl. College football quickly became the most popular spectator sport in the South.[113]
Several major modern college football conferences rose to prominence during this time period. TheSouthwest Athletic Conference had been founded in 1915. Consisting mostly of schools from Texas, the conference saw back-to-back national champions withTexas Christian University (TCU) in 1938 andTexas A&M in 1939.[114][115] ThePacific Coast Conference (PCC), a precursor to thePac-12 Conference (Pac-12), had its own back-to-back champion in theUniversity of Southern California which was awarded the title in 1931 and 1932.[114] TheSoutheastern Conference (SEC) formed in 1932 and consisted mostly of schools in theDeep South.[116] As in previous decades, the Big Ten continued to dominate in the 1930s and 1940s, with Minnesota winning 5 titles between 1934 and 1941, and Michigan (1933, 1947, and 1948) andOhio State (1942) also winning titles.[114][117]
As it grew beyond its regional affiliations in the 1930s, college football garnered increased national attention. Four newbowl games were created: theOrange Bowl,Sugar Bowl, theSun Bowl in 1935, and theCotton Bowl in 1937. In lieu of an actual national championship, these bowl games, along with the earlier Rose Bowl, provided a way to match up teams from distant regions of the country that did not otherwise play. In 1936, theAssociated Press began itsweekly poll of prominent sports writers, ranking all of the nation's college football teams. Since there was no national championship game, the final version of the AP poll was used to determine who was crowned theNational Champion of college football.[118]
The 1930s saw growth in the passing game. Though some coaches, such asRobert Neyland at Tennessee, continued to eschew its use and was the last college team to produce an undefeated, untied and unscored upon season in 1939. Several rules changes to the game had a profound effect on teams' ability to throw the ball. In 1934, the rules committee removed two major penalties—a loss of five yards for a second incomplete pass in any series of downs and a loss of possession for an incomplete pass in the end zone—and shrunk the circumference of the ball, making it easier to grip and throw. Players who became famous for taking advantage of the easier passing game included Alabama endDon Hutson and TCU passer"Slingin" Sammy Baugh.[119]
In 1935, New York City'sDowntown Athletic Club awarded the firstHeisman Trophy toUniversity of Chicago halfbackJay Berwanger, who was also the first everNFL draft pick in 1936. The trophy was designed by sculptorFrank Eliscu and modeled afterNew York University playerEd Smith. The trophy recognizes the nation's "most outstanding" college football player and has become one of the most coveted awards in all of American sports.[120]
During World War II, college football players enlisted in thearmed forces, someplaying in Europe during the war. As most of these players had eligibility left on their college careers, some of them returned to college atWest Point, bringing Army back-to-back national titles in 1944 and 1945 under coachRed Blaik.Doc Blanchard (known as "Mr. Inside") andGlenn Davis (known as "Mr. Outside") both won theHeisman Trophy, in 1945 and 1946 respectively. On the coaching staff of those 1944–1946 Army teams was futurePro Football Hall of Fame coachVince Lombardi.[117][121]
The 1950s saw the rise of yet moredynasties and power programs.Oklahoma, under coachBud Wilkinson, won three national titles (1950, 1955, 1956) and all tenBig Eight Conference championships in the decade while building a record 47-game winning streak.Woody Hayes led Ohio State to two national titles, in 1954 and 1957, and dominated the Big Ten conference, winning threeBig Ten titles—more than any other school. Wilkinson and Hayes, along with Robert Neyland of Tennessee, oversaw a revival of the running game in the 1950s. Passing numbers dropped from an average of 18.9 attempts in 1951 to 13.6 attempts in 1955, while teams averaged just shy of 50 running plays per game. Nine out of ten Heisman trophy winners in the 1950s were runners. Notre Dame, one of the biggest passing teams of the decade, saw a substantial decline in success; the 1950s were the only decade between 1920 and 1990 when the team did not win at least a share of the national title.Paul Hornung, Notre Dame quarterback, did, however, win the Heisman in 1956, becoming the only player from a losing team ever to do so.[122][123]
In January of 1956,Bobby Grier became the first black player to participate in theSugar Bowl. He is also regarded as the first black player to compete at a bowl game in theDeep South, though others such asWallace Triplett had played in games like the 1948 Cotton Bowl in Dallas. Grier's team, the Pittsburgh Panthers, was set to play against the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.[124] However, Georgia governorMarvin Griffin beseeched Georgia Tech to not participate in this racially-integrated game.[125][126] Griffin was widely criticized by news media leading up to the game, and protests were held at his mansion by Georgia Tech students. Despite the governor's objections, Georgia Tech upheld the contract and proceeded to compete in the bowl. In the game's first quarter, a pass interference call against Grier ultimately resulted in the Yellow Jackets' 7-0 victory. Grier stated that he has mostly positive memories about the experience, including the support from teammates and letters from all over the world.[127]
Following the enormous success of theNational Football League's1958 championship game, college football no longer enjoyed the same popularity as the NFL, at least on a national level. While both games benefited from the advent of television, since the late 1950s, the NFL has become a nationally popular sport while college football has maintained strong regional ties.[128][129][130]
As professional football became a national television phenomenon, college football did as well. In the 1950s, Notre Dame, which had a large national following, formed its own network to broadcast its games, but by and large the sport still retained a mostly regional following. In 1952, the NCAA claimed all television broadcasting rights for the games of its member institutions, and it alone negotiated television rights. This situation continued until 1984, when several schools brought a suit under theSherman Antitrust Act; theSupreme Courtruled against the NCAA and schools are now free to negotiate their own television deals.ABC Sports began broadcasting a national Game of the Week in 1966, bringing key matchups and rivalries to a national audience for the first time.[131]
New formations and play sets continued to be developed.Emory Bellard, an assistant coach underDarrell Royal at theUniversity of Texas, developed a three-backoption style offense known as thewishbone. The wishbone is a run-heavy offense that depends on the quarterback making last second decisions on when and to whom to hand or pitch the ball to. Royal went on to teach the offense to other coaches, includingBear Bryant at Alabama,Chuck Fairbanks at Oklahoma andPepper Rodgers atUCLA; who all adapted and developed it to their own tastes.[132] The strategic opposite of the wishbone is thespread offense, developed by professional and college coaches throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Though some schools play a run-based version of the spread, its most common use is as a passing offense designed to "spread" the field both horizontally and vertically.[133] Some teams have managed to adapt with the times to keep winning consistently. In the rankings of themost victorious programs,Michigan,Notre Dame, andTexas are ranked first, second, and third in total wins.[134]
| Growth of bowl games 1930–2020[135] | |
| Year | # of games |
|---|---|
| 1930 | 1 |
| 1940 | 5 |
| 1950 | 8 |
| 1960 | 8 |
| 1970 | 8 |
| 1980 | 15 |
| 1990 | 19 |
| 2000 | 25 |
| 2010 | 35 |
| 2020 | 40[136] |
In 1940, for the highest level of college football, there were only five bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar, Sun, and Cotton). By 1950, three more had joined that number and in 1970, there were still only eight major college bowl games. The number grew to eleven in 1976. At the birth of cable television and cable sports networks likeESPN, there were fifteen bowls in 1980. With more national venues and increased available revenue, the bowls saw an explosive growth throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In the thirty years from 1950 to 1980, seven bowl games were added to the schedule. From 1980 to 2010, an additional 20 bowl games were added to the schedule.[135][137] Some have criticized this growth, claiming that the increased number of games has diluted the significance of playing in a bowl game. Yet others have countered that the increased number of games has increased exposure and revenue for a greater number of schools, and see it as a positive development.[138]
With the growth of bowl games, it became difficult to determine a national champion in a fair and equitable manner. As conferences became contractually bound to certain bowl games (a situation known as atie-in), match-ups that guaranteed a consensus national champion became increasingly rare. In 1992, seven conferences and independent Notre Dame formed theBowl Coalition, which attempted to arrange an annual No. 1 versus No. 2 matchup based on the final AP poll standings. The Coalition lasted for three years; however, several scheduling issues prevented much success; tie-ins still took precedence in several cases. For example, the Big Eight and SEC champions could never meet, since they were contractually bound to different bowl games. The coalition also excluded the Rose Bowl, arguably the most prestigious game in the nation, and two major conferences—the Pac-10 and Big Ten—meaning that it had limited success. In 1995, the Coalition was replaced by theBowl Alliance, which reduced the number of bowl games to host a national championship game to three—theFiesta, Sugar, and Orange Bowls—and the participating conferences to five—theACC,SEC,Southwest,Big Eight, andBig East. It was agreed that the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams gave up their prior bowl tie-ins and were guaranteed to meet in the national championship game, which rotated between the three participating bowls. The system still did not include theBig Ten,Pac-10, or theRose Bowl, and thus still lacked the legitimacy of a true national championship.[137][139]
In 1998, a new system was put into place called the Bowl Championship Series. For the first time, it included all major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-10, and SEC) and all four major bowl games (Rose, Orange, Sugar and Fiesta). The champions of these six conferences, along with two "at-large" selections, were invited to play in the four bowl games. Each year, one of the four bowl games served as a national championship game. Also, a complex system of human polls, computer rankings, and strength of schedule calculations was instituted to rank schools. Based on this ranking system, the No. 1 and No. 2 teams met each year in the national championship game. Traditional tie-ins were maintained for schools and bowls not part of the national championship. For example, in years when not a part of the national championship, the Rose Bowl still hosted the Big Ten and Pac-10 champions.[139]
The system continued to change, as the formula for ranking teams was tweaked from year to year. At-large teams could be chosen from any of theDivision I conferences, though only one selection—Utah in 2005—came from a BCS non-AQ conference. Starting with the 2006 season, a fifth game—simply called theBCS National Championship Game—was added to the schedule, to be played at the site of one of the four BCS bowl games on a rotating basis, one week after the regular bowl game. This opened up the BCS to two additional at-large teams. Also, rules were changed to add the champions of five additional conferences (Conference USA, theMid-American Conference, theMountain West Conference, theSun Belt Conference and theWestern Athletic Conference), provided that said champion ranked in the top twelve in the final BCS rankings, or was within the top 16 of the BCS rankings and ranked higher than the champion of at least one of the"BCS conferences" (also known as "AQ" conferences, for Automatic Qualifying).[139] Several times after this rule change was implemented, schools from non-AQ conferences played in BCS bowl games, most notablyBoise State in the2007 Fiesta Bowl, in which they upsetOklahoma in overtime.[140] In 2009,Boise State playedTCU in theFiesta Bowl, the first time two schools from BCS non-AQ conferences played each other in a BCS bowl game.[141] The last team from the non-AQ ranks to reach a BCS bowl game wasNorthern Illinois in 2012, which played in (and lost) the2013 Orange Bowl.[142][143][144]
Due to the intensification of thecollege football playoff debate after nearly a decade of the sometimes disputable results of the BCS, the conference commissioners and Notre Dame's president voted to implement a postseason tournament to name a champion, which came to be called theCollege Football Playoff (CFP). CFP is the annual postseason tournament for theNCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). Just as its predecessors, such a postseason tournament has failed to receive official sanctioning from the NCAA.
CFP began with the2014 NCAA Division I FBS football season.[145] Originally, four teams played in two semifinal games, with the winners advancing to theCollege Football Playoff National Championship game.[146] The first season of the new system was not without controversy, however, after TCU and Baylor (both with only one loss) both failed to receive the support of the CFP selection committee.[147] The CFP was expanded to 12 teams as of the2024 NCAA Division I FBS football season.
In the early 20th century, football began to catch on in the general population of the United States and was the subject of intense competition and rivalry, albeit of a localized nature. Although payments to players were considered unsporting and dishonorable at the time, aPittsburgh area club, theAllegheny Athletic Association, of theunofficial western Pennsylvania football circuit, surreptitiously hired former Yale All-American guardPudge Heffelfinger. On November 12, 1892, Heffelfinger became the first known professional football player. He was paid $500 to play in a game against thePittsburgh Athletic Club. Heffelfinger picked up a Pittsburgh fumble and ran 35 yards for a touchdown, winning the game 4–0 for Allegheny. Although observers held suspicions, the payment remained a secret for years.[2][3][148][149]
On September 3, 1895 the first wholly professional game was played, inLatrobe, Pennsylvania, between theLatrobe Athletic Association and theJeannette Athletic Club. Latrobe won the contest 12–0.[2][3] During this game, Latrobe's quarterback,John Brallier became the first player to openly admit to being paid to play football. He was paid $10 plus expenses to play.[150] In 1897, the Latrobe Athletic Association paid all of its players for the whole season, becoming the first fully professional football team. In 1898,William Chase Temple took over the team payments for theDuquesne Country and Athletic Club, a professional football team based in Pittsburgh from 1895 until 1900, becoming the first known individual football club owner.[151]
Later that year, the Morgan Athletic Club, on theSouth Side of Chicago, was founded. This team later became theChicago Cardinals, then theSt. Louis Cardinals and now is known as theArizona Cardinals, making them the oldest continuously operating professional football team.[3]
The first known professional football league, known as theNational Football League (not the same as the modern league) began play in 1902 when several baseball clubs formed football teams to play in the league, including thePhiladelphia Athletics,Pittsburgh Pirates and thePhiladelphia Phillies. The Pirates' team thePittsburgh Stars were awarded the league championship. However, thePhiladelphia Football Athletics andPhiladelphia Football Phillies also claimed the title.[152] A five-team tournament, known as theWorld Series of Football was organized by Tom O'Rouke, the manager ofMadison Square Garden. The event featured the first-ever indoor pro football games. The first professional indoor game came on December 29, 1902, when theSyracuse Athletic Club defeated the "New York team" 5–0. Syracuse would go on to win the 1902 Series, while theFranklin Athletic Club won the Series in 1903. The World Series only lasted two seasons.[3][153]
The first black person to be paid for his play in football games is thought to be two-sport athleteCharles Follis, A member of the Shelby Steamfitters for five years starting in 1902, Follis turned professional in 1904.[154]
The game moved west intoOhio, which became the center of professional football during the early decades of the 20th century. Small towns such asMassillon,Akron,Portsmouth, andCanton all supported professional teams in a loose coalition known as the "Ohio League", the direct predecessor to today'sNational Football League. In 1906 theCanton Bulldogs–Massillon Tigers betting scandal became the first major scandal in professional football in the United States. It was the first known case of professional gamblers attempting to fix a professional sport. Although theMassillon Tigers could not prove that theCanton Bulldogs had thrown the second game, the scandal tarnished the Bulldogs' name and helped ruin professional football in Ohio until the mid-1910s.[155]
In 1915, the reformed Canton Bulldogs signed former Olympian andCarlisle Indian School standoutJim Thorpe to a contract. Thorpe became the face of professional football for the next several years and was present at the founding of the National Football League five years later.[3][156]
In 1920, theAmerican Professional Football Association (APFA) was founded, in a meeting at aHupmobile car dealership in Canton, Ohio.Jim Thorpe was elected the league's first president. After several more meetings, the league's membership was formalized. The original teams were:[96][157]
In its early years the league was little more than a formal agreement between teams to play each other and to declare a champion at season's end. Teams were still permitted to play non-league members. The 1920 season saw several teams drop out and fail to play through their schedule. Only four teams: Akron, Buffalo, Canton, and Decatur, finished the schedule. Akron claimed the first league champion, with the only undefeated record among the remaining teams.[96][158]
The APFA, which became the National Football League (NFL) in 1922,[159] had a limited number of black players. In the league's first seven years, nine African-Americans played in the APFA/NFL. Two black players took part in the league's inaugural season:Fritz Pollard andBobby Marshall. In 1921, Pollard coached in the league, becoming the first African-American to do so.[160]
In 1921, several more teams joined the league, increasing the membership to 22 teams. Among the new additions were theGreen Bay Packers, which now has the record for longest use of an unchanged team name. Also in 1921,A. E. Staley, the owner of the Decatur Staleys, sold the team to player-coachGeorge Halas, who went on to become one of the most important figures in the first half century of the NFL. In 1921, Halas moved the team to Chicago, but retained the Staleys nickname. In 1922 the team was renamed theChicago Bears.[161][162] The Staleys won the 1921 AFPA Championship, over theBuffalo All-Americans in an event later referred to as the "Staley Swindle".[163]
By the mid-1920s, NFL membership had grown to 25 teams, and a rival league known as theAmerican Football League was formed. The rival AFL folded after a single season, but it symbolized a growing interest in the professional game. Several college stars joined the NFL, most notablyRed Grange from theUniversity of Illinois, who was taken on a famous barnstorming tour in 1925 by the Chicago Bears.[161][164]Another scandal that season centered on a 1925 game between theChicago Cardinals and theMilwaukee Badgers. The scandal involved a Chicago player,Art Folz, hiring a group of high school football players to play for the Milwaukee Badgers, against the Cardinals. This would ensure an inferior opponent for Chicago. The game was used to help prop up their win–loss percentage and as a chance of wrestling away the 1925 Championship away from the first placePottsville Maroons. All parties were severely punished initially; however, a few months later the punishments were rescinded.[165] Also that year acontroversial dispute stripped the NFL title from the Maroons and awarded it to the Cardinals.[166]
At the end of the1932 season, theChicago Bears and thePortsmouth Spartans were tied with the best regular-season records. To determine the champion, the league voted to hold its firstplayoff game. Because of cold weather, the game was held indoors atChicago Stadium, which forced some temporary rule changes. Chicago won, 9–0. The playoff proved so popular that the league reorganized into two divisions for the1933 season, with the winners advancing to a scheduled championship game. A number of new rule changes were also instituted: the goal posts were moved forward to the goal line, every play started from between thehash marks, and forward passes could originate from anywhere behind theline of scrimmage (instead of the previous five yards behind).[167][168][169] In 1936, the NFL instituted the firstdraft of college players. With the first ever draft selection, the Philadelphia Eagles picked Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger, but he declined to play professionally.[170] Also in that year, another AFL formed, but it also lasted only two seasons.[171]
The 1930s represented an important time of transition for the NFL. League membership was fluid prior to the mid-1930s. In 1933, the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles were founded. 1936 was the first year where there were no franchise moves,[172] prior to that year 51 teams had gone defunct.[157] In 1941, the NFL named its first Commissioner,Elmer Layden. The new office replaced that of President. Layden held the job for five years, before being replaced by Philadelphia Eagles co-ownerBert Bell in 1946.[173]
During World War II, a player shortage led to a shrinking of the league as several teams folded and others merged. Among the short-lived merged teams were theSteagles (Pittsburgh and Philadelphia) in 1943, theCard-Pitts (Chicago Cardinals and Pittsburgh) in 1944, and a team formed from the merger of theBrooklyn Dodgers and theBoston Yanks in 1945.[157][173]
1946 was an important year in the history of professional football, as that was the year when the leaguereintegrated. TheLos Angeles Rams signed two African American players,Kenny Washington andWoody Strode. Also that year, a competing league, theAll-America Football Conference (AAFC), began operation.[173]
During the 1950s, additional teams entered the league. In 1950, the AAFC folded, and three teams from that league were absorbed into the NFL: theCleveland Browns (who had won the AAFC Championship every year of the league's existence), theSan Francisco 49ers, and the Baltimore Colts (not the same as the modern franchise, this version folded after one year). The remaining players were chosen by the now 13 NFL teams in adispersal draft. Also in 1950, the Los Angeles Rams became the first team to televise its entire schedule, marking the beginning of an important relationship between television and professional football.[173] In 1952, theDallas Texans went defunct, becoming the last NFL franchise to do so.[157] The following year a newBaltimore Colts franchise formed to take over the assets of the Texans. The players' union, known as theNFL Players Association, formed in 1956.[174]
At the conclusion of the1958 NFL season, theBaltimore Colts and theNew York Giants met atYankee Stadium to determine the league champion. Tied after 60 minutes of play, it became the first NFL game to go intosudden deathovertime. The final score wasColts 23,Giants 17. The game has since become widely known as "the Greatest Game Ever Played". It was carried live on theNBC television network, and the national exposure it provided the league has been cited as a watershed moment in professional football history, helping propel the NFL to become one of the most popular sports leagues in the United States.[174][175][176] Journalist Tex Maule said of the contest, "This, for the first time, was a truly epic game which inflamed the imagination of a national audience."[128]
In 1959, longtime NFL commissioner Bert Bell died of a heart attack while attending an Eagles/Steelers game atFranklin Field. That same year,Dallas businessmanLamar Hunt led the formation of the rivalAmerican Football League, the fourth such league to bear that name, with war hero and former South Dakota GovernorJoe Foss as its first Commissioner. Unlike the earlier rival leagues, and bolstered by television exposure, the AFL posed a significant threat to NFL dominance of the professional football world. With the exception of Los Angeles and New York, the AFL avoided placing teams in markets where they directly competed with established NFL franchises. In 1960, the AFL began play with eight teams and a double round-robin schedule of fourteen games. New NFL commissionerPete Rozelle took office the same year.[174]
The AFL became a viable alternative to the NFL as it made a concerted effort to attract established talent away from the NFL, signing half of the NFL's first-round draft choices in 1960. The AFL worked hard to secure top college players, many from sources virtually untapped by the established league: small colleges and predominantly black colleges. Two of the eight coaches of theOriginal Eight AFL franchises,Hank Stram (Texans/Chiefs) andSid Gillman (Chargers) eventually were inducted to the Hall of Fame. Led byOakland Raiders owner and AFL commissionerAl Davis, the AFL established a "war chest" to entice top talent with higher pay than they got from the NFL. Former Green Bay Packers quarterbackBabe Parilli became a star for theBoston Patriots during the early years of the AFL, and University of Alabama passerJoe Namath rejected the NFL to play for theNew York Jets. Namath became the face of the league as it reached its height of popularity in the mid-1960s. Davis's methods worked, and in 1966, the junior league forced a partial merger with the NFL. The two leagues agreed to have a commondraft and play in a common season-ending championship game, known as the AFL-NFL World Championship. Two years later, the game's name was changed to theSuper Bowl.[177][178][179]AFL teams won the next two Super Bowls, and in 1970, the two leaguescompleted their merger to form a new 26-team league. The resulting newly expanded NFL eventually incorporated some of the innovations that led to the AFL's success, such as including names on player's jerseys, official scoreboard clocks, national television contracts (the addition ofMonday Night Football gave the NFL broadcast rights on all of theBig Three television networks), and sharing of gate and broadcasting revenues between home and visiting teams.[177]
The NFL continued to grow, eventually adopting some innovations of the AFL, including the two-point conversion. It has expanded several times to its current 32-team membership, and the Super Bowl has become a cultural phenomena across the United States. One of the most popular televised events annually in the United States,[6] it has become a major source of advertising revenue for the television networks that have carried it and it serves as a means for advertisers to debutelaborate and expensive commercials for their products.[180] The NFL has grown to become the most popular spectator sports league in the United States.[181]
One of the things that have marked the modern NFL as different from othermajor professional sports leagues is the apparent parity between its 32 teams. While from time to time,dominant teams have arisen, the league has been cited as one of the few where every team has a realistic chance of winning the championship from year to year.[182] The league's complex labor agreement with itsplayers' union, which mandates a hardsalary cap and revenue sharing between its clubs, prevents the richest teams from stockpiling the best players and gives even teams in smaller cities such asGreen Bay and New Orleans the opportunity to compete for the Super Bowl.[183] One of the chief architects of this labor agreement was former NFL commissionerPaul Tagliabue, who presided over the league from 1989 to 2006.[184] In addition to providing parity between the clubs, the current labor contract, established in 1993 and renewed in 1998 and 2006, has kept player salaries low—the lowest among the four major league sports in the United States—[185] and has helped make the NFL the only major American professional sports league since 1993 not to suffer any player strike or work stoppage.[186]
Since taking over as commissioner before the2006 season,Roger Goodell has madeplayer conduct a priority of his office. Since taking office, several high-profile players have experienced trouble with the law, fromAdam "Pacman" Jones toMichael Vick. In these and other cases, Commissioner Goodell has mandated lengthy suspensions for players who fall outside acceptable conduct limits.[187] Goodell, however, has remained a largely unpopular figure to many of the league's fans, who perceive him attempting to change the NFL's identity and haphazardly damage the sport.[188][189][190]
Minor professional leagues such as theoriginal United Football League,Atlantic Coast Football League (ACFL),Seaboard Football League andContinental Football League existed in abundance in the 1960s and early 1970s, to varying degrees of success.[191] In 1970,Patricia Barzi Palinkas became the first woman to ever play on a men's semipro football team when she joined the Orlando Panthers of the ACFL.[192][193]
Several other professional football leagues have been formed since the AFL–NFL merger, though none have had the success of the AFL.[194][195] In 1974, theWorld Football League formed and was able to attract such stars asLarry Csonka away from the NFL with lucrative contracts.[196] However, most of the WFL franchises were insolvent and the league, despite having finished out its 1974 season, shut down late in its second season in 1975.[197]
In 1982, the originalUnited States Football League formed as a spring league (starting play in 1983), and enjoyed moderate success during its first two seasons behind such stars asJim Kelly andHerschel Walker.[198] In 1985, the league, which lost a considerable amount of money due to overspending on players, opted to gamble on moving its schedule to fall in 1986 (thus competing with the NFL and college/high school football) and filing a billion-dollar antitrust lawsuit against the NFL in an effort to stay afloat.[199][200][201] When the lawsuit only drew a three-dollar judgment, the first USFL folded.[202] A second incarnation of theUSFL, connected in name only to the original, started play in 2022.[203]
The NFL founded a developmental league known as theWorld League of American Football with teams based in the United States, Canada, and Europe. The WLAF ran for two years as an intercontential league, in 1991 and 1992. After a two-year hiatus, the league (which would eventually become NFL Europe [League] and later NFL Europa) returned in 1995 as a purely European league, operating until 2007.[204]
In 2001, the originalXFL was formed as a joint venture between theWorld Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment [WWE])[205] and theNBC television network. It folded after one season in the face of rapidly declining fan interest and a poor reputation. However, XFL stars such asTommy Maddox andRod "He Hate Me" Smart later saw success in the NFL.[206][207][208] In 2020, a newXFL began play. The league, owned byVince McMahon in its first season is vastly different from the original incarnation; after going on hiatus due toCOVID-19 pandemic midway through its first season, the league returned to play in 2023 under new management of a consortium led by former WWE wrestlerDwayne "The Rock" Johnson,Dany Garcia, and Gerry Cardinale (through Cardinale's fund RedBird Capital Partners).[209][210]
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Football is a popular participatory sport among youth. One of the earliest youth football organizations was founded in Philadelphia, in 1929, as the Junior Football Conference. Organizer Joe Tomlin started the league to provide activities and guidance for teenage boys who were vandalizing the factory he owned. The original four-team league expanded to sixteen teams in 1933 when Pop Warner, who had just been hired as the new coach of the Temple University football team, agreed to give a lecture to the boys in the league. In his honor, the league was renamed thePop Warner Conference.[211][212]
Today, Pop Warner Little Scholars—as the program is now known—enrolls over 300,000 young boys and girls ages 5–16 in over 5000 football andcheerleading squads, and has affiliate programs in Mexico and Japan.[212] Other organizations, such as thePolice Athletic League,[213]Upward,[214] and the National Football League's NFL Youth Football Program also manage various youth football leagues.[215]
Football is a popular sport for high schools in the United States. TheNational Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) was founded in 1920 as an umbrella organization for state-level organizations that manage high school sports, includinghigh school football. The NFHS publishes the rules followed by most local high school football associations.[211][216] More than 13,000 high schools participate in football, and in some places high school teams play in stadiums that rival college-level facilities. For example, theschool district serving theHouston suburb ofKaty, Texas opened a 12,000-seat stadium in 2017 that cost over $70 million to host the district's eight high school teams.[217] The growth of high school football and its impact on small town communities has been documented by landmark non-fiction works such as the 1990 bookFriday Night Lights and the subsequent fictionalizedfilm andtelevision series.[218]
American football has been played outside the U.S. since the 1920s and accelerated in popularity after World War II, especially in countries with large numbers of U.S. military personnel, who often formed a substantial proportion of the players and spectators.[219][220]
In 1998, theInternational Federation of American Football, was formed to coordinate international amateur competition. At present, 45 associations from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania are organized within the IFAF, which claims to represent 23 million amateur athletes.[221] The IFAF, which is based inLa Courneuve, France,[222] organizes the quadrennialWorld Championship of American Football.[223]
A long-term goal of the IFAF is for American football to be accepted by theInternational Olympic Committee as anOlympic sport.[224] The only time that the sport was played wasat the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but as ademonstration sport. Among the various problems the IFAF has to solve in order to be accepted by the IOC are building a competitive women's division, expanding the sport into Africa, and overcoming the current worldwide competitive imbalance that is in favor of American teams.[225]
Other codes of football share a common history with American football.Canadian football is a form of the game that evolved parallel to American football. While both games share a common history, there are someimportant differences between the two.[226] A more modern sport that derives from American football isArena football, designed to be played indoors inside ofice hockey or basketball arenas. The game was invented in 1981 byJim Foster and theArena Football League was founded in 1987 as the first major professional league to play the sport. Several other indoor football leagues have since been founded and continue to play today.[227]
American football's parent sport of rugby continued to evolve. Today, two distinct codes known asrugby union andrugby league are played throughout the world. Since thetwo codes split following a schism on how the sport should be managed in 1895, thehistory of rugby league and thehistory of rugby union have evolved separately.[228] Both codes have adopted innovations parallel to the American game; the rugby union scoring system is almost identical to the American game, while rugby league uses a gridiron-style field and a six-tackle rule similar to the system of downs in American Football.
Another game that can trace it history toEnglish public school football games is theAustralian rules football, which was first played inMelbourne, Victoria in 1858. The game, also known asAustralian football orAussie rules, is played between teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by kicking the oval ball between the middle goal posts (worth six points) or between a goal and behind post (worth one point). TheMelbourne Football Club published the firstlaws of Australian football in May 1859, which predates American football by at least 10 years, and making it the oldest of the world's majorfootball codes.[229][230]
Gaelic football is anIrish-specific sport, that can also trace its roots to the early days of football. The game is played between two teams of 15 players on a rectangular grass pitch. The objective of the sport is to score by kicking or punching the ball into the other team's goals (3 points) or between two upright posts above the goals and over a crossbar 2.5 meters (8.2 ft) above the ground (1 point). Unlike other similar football codes, the game ball is round (a spherical leather ball resembling avolleyball), and players advance it up the field with a combination of carrying, bouncing, kicking, hand-passing, and soloing (dropping the ball and then toe-kicking the ball upward into the hands). The game playing code was formally arranged by theGaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1885, and was played in the1904 Summer Olympics as ademonstration sport.
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{{cite web}}:|archive-url= is malformed: timestamp (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)Since there were no championship games in 1921, the championship was once again decided by a vote of the Association's executive committee in January 1922. The executive committee ruled that the Chicago Staleys were the champions, based on the generally accepted rule that if two teams play each other more than once in a season, the second game counts more than the first. Buffalo and Chicagoplayed on Thanksgiving Day, with Buffalo winning 7–6. The second game was held December 4. This time, Chicago won 10–7. Buffalo claimed that the second game was just a post-season "exhibition" game, and it should not count in the final standings. Chicago claimed that the Association did not have a set date for the end of the season, therefore the second game could not have been held in the "post-season".
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