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145-673: The Boardwalk Bowl was a postseason college football game held indoors at the former Atlantic City Convention Hall (now Boardwalk Hall ) in Atlantic City, New Jersey , from 1961 to 1973. From 1961 through 1967, the Boardwalk Bowl featured an annual matchup between Pennsylvania Military College (now Widener University ) and the United States Merchant Marine Academy , and was known as the "Little Army–Navy Game ." Merchant Marine won six of

290-421: A bachelor's degree ), room and board for their time. As a result of the college system, first-time players (rookies) enter professional football older, more mature and more prepared for the professional game than players in other sports. The Canadian Football League has a special requirement that a minimum of half of each team's roster be composed of persons who were Canadian citizens at the time they first joined

435-563: A 0–0 tie. The Army–Navy game of 1893 saw the first documented use of a football helmet by a player in a game. Joseph M. Reeves had a crude leather helmet made by a shoemaker in Annapolis 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. In 1879, the University of Michigan became the first school west of Pennsylvania to establish

580-463: A 56-game undefeated streak that included a 1902 trip to play in the first college football bowl game , which later became the Rose Bowl Game . During this streak, Michigan scored 2,831 points while allowing only 40. Organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state of Minnesota on September 30, 1882, when Hamline was convinced to play Minnesota . Minnesota won 2 to 0. It

725-542: A cable or satellite service, to carry all of the league's games. The CFL on TSN exclusive contract began in 2008; previously, like the NFL, it split its broadcasts up between two providers. Other leagues have found it much more difficult to find an outlet on American television, much less one that pays a rights fee large enough to make it worthwhile. One of the reasons for the United Football League 's failure

870-668: A championship game or playoff, setting its championship with a vote of the league owners. The Akron Pros had the best record in 1920, and the Chicago Staleys were the 1921 "champions", albeit not without controversy . In 1922, the APFA changed its name to the National Football League . While the Ohio League mostly ceased to exist after the foundation of the NFL (other than a few independent teams such as

1015-522: A classroom setting, also attributed to him. While the NFL was still segregated, the AAFC's Browns became the first modern Professional Football team to sign black players. Although many of its teams outdrew NFL teams, by 1949 the AAFC's costs had risen so steeply that the league agreed to a 'merger' with the NFL. It was more of a 'swallowing' of the AAFC, with only the Browns, 49ers, and Colts being admitted to

1160-514: A college football team. On May 30, 1879, Michigan beat Racine College 1–0 in a game played in Chicago. The Chicago Daily Tribune called it "the first rugby-football game to be played west of the Alleghenies ." Other Midwestern schools soon followed suit, including the University of Chicago , Northwestern University , and the University of Minnesota . The first western team to travel east

1305-551: A current member of the National Football League. The Cardinals organization, which was originally based on Racine Street in Chicago, has operated near-continuously since 1913, but counts an earlier team that played from 1898 to 1906 as part of its history. The Watertown Red & Black is the oldest semi-professional club that is still in operation, tracing its history to 1896. While the practice of professional and semi-pro teams playing college and amateur teams

1450-564: A general environment of Canadian cultural protectionism . Indoor football has also developed in the United States, beginning with the Arena Football League , which formed in 1987. The AFL is the second longest running professional football league in the United States after the NFL, although its current incarnation is a separate entity from the original, which folded due to bankruptcy in 2008. From its debut until 1997,

1595-447: 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, where Harvard won 4–0. At the first The Game (as the annual contest between Harvard and Yale came to be named) the future "father of American football" Walter Camp was among the 2000 spectators in attendance. Walter, a native of New Britain, Connecticut , would enroll at Yale

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1740-548: A liking to the rugby game, and its use of the try which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as the touchdown . On June 4, 1875, Harvard faced Tufts University in the first game between two American colleges played under rules similar to the McGill/Harvard contest, which was won by Tufts 1–0. The rules included each side fielding 11 men at any given time,

1885-636: A lower level of play than the Western Hemisphere counterparts and have only recently begun contributing players to the NFL on a regular basis. Professional football is considered the highest level of competition in gridiron football. Whereas most of the other major sports leagues draw their players from the minor leagues, the NFL currently draws almost all of its players directly from college football . College football, in turn, recruits players from high school football , with most potential stars receiving athletic scholarships to play. The source for

2030-414: A more risk-oriented on-field approach that appealed to fans. The AFL also actively recruited from predominantly black colleges and other small colleges, a source the NFL virtually ignored. This led to a higher percentage of minority players, as well as several firsts, such as the first black number one draft choice ( Buck Buchanan , Chiefs); the first black middle linebacker , Willie Lanier , Chiefs; and

2175-501: A new code of rules based on the rugby game first introduced to Harvard by McGill University in 1874. Three of the schools—Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton—formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, as a result of the meeting. Yale initially refused to join this association because of a disagreement over the number of players to be allowed per team (relenting in 1879) and Rutgers were not invited to

2320-423: A novelty. Nevertheless, the rules of professional football at the outdoor level are nearly identical to those at the high school and college levels, with some minor exceptions (such as the locations of hash marks , procedures for overtime , and the number of feet required to be in-bounds to catch a forward pass ). Indoor football's rules are closely based on outdoor football but are heavily altered to compensate for

2465-593: A peak in 1925, when the aforementioned Maroons were hailed as the NFL champions by several newspapers after Pottsville defeated the Chicago Cardinals on December 6, even though there were still two weeks left in the season. This led to other teams scrambling to add extra games, including the Chicago Cardinals , who won two 'extra' games and claimed the championship. In the melee, the league cancelled games and suspended Pottsville's franchise. Through

2610-503: A player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to McGill, was to count tries (the act of grounding the football past the opposing team's goal line; there was no end zone during this time), as well as goals, in the scoring. In the Rugby rules of the time, a try only provided the attempt to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the try did not score any points itself. Harvard quickly took

2755-416: A professional roster spot as an undrafted free agent . Despite these opportunities, only around 1.6% of NCAA college football players end up playing professionally in the NFL. Even after the emergence of the professional National Football League (NFL), college football has remained extremely popular throughout the U.S. Although the college game has a much larger margin for talent than its pro counterpart,

2900-510: A rougher version of football called "the Boston Game" in which the kicking of a round ball was the most prominent feature though a player could run with the ball, pass it, or dribble it (known as "babying"). The man with the ball could be tackled, although hitting, tripping, "hacking" and other unnecessary roughness was prohibited. There was no limit to the number of players, but there were typically ten to fifteen per side. A player could carry

3045-533: A round ball instead of a rugby-style oblong ball. This series of games represents an important milestone in the development of the modern game of American football. In October 1874, the Harvard team once again traveled to Montreal to play McGill in rugby, where they won by three tries. In as much as Rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the McGill team played under a set of rules which allowed

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3190-517: A second American Football League of six teams was formed to challenge the NFL. It included another New York Yankees team, as well as the Cleveland Rams, the predecessor to today's Los Angeles Rams . Future American Football League (1960–1969) coach and Hall of Famer Sid Gillman played his only year of Professional Football with the Rams. Before this AFL's second year, the Rams jumped to

3335-463: A small sum to cover their expenses on an under-the-table basis, or arrange for amateur athletes to receive jobs in a company connected to the team (the Olympic Club of San Francisco, California is believed to have done the latter, thus creating the designation of " semi-pro " football in 1890, before football had gone professional); in most cases, the practice was within the rules of amateurism at

3480-450: A step back as the Ohio League relied more on local, cut-rate talent, such as player-promoter George Parratt , and its Pennsylvania counterpart also steered clear of major spending. Another bidding war was sparked in 1915, when a revived Bulldogs signed multi-sport athletic superstar Jim Thorpe to a contract. During the late 1910s, the Ohio League not only had to compete among its own teams for talent, but also against leagues in Chicago and

3625-537: 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, transformed the game from a variation of rugby football into the distinct sport of American football. Camp was central to several more significant rule changes that came to define American football. In 1881, the field was reduced in size to its modern dimensions of 120 by 53 1 ⁄ 3 yards (109.7 by 48.8 meters). Several times in 1883, Camp tinkered with

3770-555: A team that, with its ball-control style, would overpower the NFL and carry on to defeat AFL opponents in the first two AFL-NFL Championship Games after the 1966 and 1967 Professional Football seasons. The NFL champions in 1968, the Colts, and in 1969 the Minnesota Vikings , were each in turn considered to be "the best team in the history of the NFL." By 1969, the NFL had grown to 16 teams, with four teams directly attributable to

3915-527: A third New York Yankees team. The league was the first major Professional Football league to complete a double round robin schedule, in which each team played each other twice. The onset of World War II and the resultant draft dried up the source of players for professional football and the new league did not have enough resources to continue. Also forming in 1940 was the Pacific Coast Professional Football League ,

4060-601: A well-developed minor league system or pyramid , either official or otherwise. In North America, the top level of professional football is the National Football League , with the Canadian Football League second to the NFL in prominence and pay grade. Despite the much lower level of pay, the CFL has greater popularity in Canada because of its long history in the country, the NFL's limited presence in Canada, and

4205-480: A whole could not compete, and folded after the 1937 season. Also in 1936, the American Association was founded as a minor league. It played for five seasons, suspending operations for World War II, and returned under the "American Football League" name in 1946 before sputtering to a collapse in 1950. Still another try at an American Football League was made in 1940, with five franchises, including

4350-512: A youth, he excelled in sports like track , baseball, and association football, and after enrolling at Yale in 1876, he earned varsity honors in every sport the school offered. 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

4495-529: Is generally considered to be the second tier of American and Canadian football; ahead of high school competition , but below professional competition . In some parts of the United States, especially the South and Midwest , college football is more popular than professional football. For much of the 20th century, college football was generally considered to be more prestigious than professional football. The overwhelming majority of professional football players in

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4640-538: Is governed by U Sports for universities. The Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (for colleges) governs soccer and other sports but not gridiron football. Other countries, such as Mexico , Japan and South Korea , also host college football leagues with modest levels of support. Unlike most other major sports in North America , no official minor league farm organizations exist for American football or Canadian football . Therefore, college football

4785-631: Is widely regarded as having originated with a game played in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded non-university football club in Canada. Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional " mob football " played in Great Britain. The games remained largely unorganized until

4930-523: The Baltimore Colts (not related to today's Indianapolis Colts , which began play in Baltimore in 1953) fielded quarterback Y. A. Tittle . Paul Brown made many innovations to the game on and off the field, including year-round coaching staffs, precision pass patterns, face masks, and the use of "messenger guards". He was the first coach to film the opposition and break down those game films in

5075-714: The Brooklyn Dodgers and the Philadelphia Eagles . There were two fixed monochrome iconoscope cameras and a single play-by-play commentator, Skip Walz . Although the NFL as a whole continued to play through World War II, the schedule was reduced, rosters were seriously impacted, and the Steelers were forced to merge operations with other NFL teams in 1943 and 1944 , while the Cleveland Rams were forced to suspend operations in 1943. In 1936,

5220-567: The Canton Bulldogs . Ohio pioneered the concept of playing games on Sundays to avoid competition with college football games; this was illegal in Pennsylvania (as well as New York City) due to still-existing blue laws , but eventually became the professional standard. A fabricated betting scandal , coupled with a lack of competitive games and increasing price tags, effectively ruined the Ohio League by 1907. Professional football took

5365-713: The Chicago Bears ; Cowboys receiver Bob Hayes ; the Philadelphia Eagles ' and the Redskins' Charley Taylor . The AFL's influence on the NFL was evident in several ways: in 1962, the NFL emulated the junior league by arranging its own league-wide national television contract, with CBS; and late in the 'sixties, the NFL began recognizing the wide talent pool the AFL had tapped in small and predominantly black colleges , and it, too, started scouting and signing from those schools. Tired of raids on players and escalating salaries, in

5510-664: The Chicago Bulls to the Los Angeles Wildcats (actually based in Chicago) formed the first American Football League in competition with the NFL. Because of the 1925 shenanigans, the NFL's Rock Island Independents left the seven-year-old league to join the AFL. The major attraction of the new league was Red Grange of the Yankees, but the league folded after just one year, with the Yankees being absorbed into

5655-482: The Ironton Tanks and the pre-NFL Portsmouth Spartans ), the other regional leagues continued. The New York league continued throughout the 1920s, outlasting many of the teams that it had contributed to the NFL, albeit without championships. Western Pennsylvania's league lasted until 1940. 1924 saw the foundation of eastern Pennsylvania's Anthracite League , the last regional "major league." The Anthracite League

5800-569: The Liberty Bowl (played at Convention Hall in December 1964 ), showed the feasibility of playing football indoors and led the promoters of football games to look seriously at developing indoor facilities primarily for this purpose. College football NAIA : NJCAA : College football ( French : football universitaire ) is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur student-athletes at universities and colleges. It

5945-566: The NFL and other leagues previously played college football. The NFL draft each spring sees 224 players selected and offered a contract to play in the league, with the vast majority coming from the NCAA . Other professional leagues, such as the CFL and UFL , additionally hold their own drafts each year which also see primarily college players selected. Players who are not selected can still attempt to obtain

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6090-413: The National Football League of 1902 , the first all-professional league. The league hoped to draw fans by featuring stars such as Rube Waddell and Christy Mathewson touring Pennsylvania and New York. It was during this time that Blondy Wallace emerged as the biggest, and most controversial, name in professional football. The league didn't draw as many fans as hoped, but promoter Tom O'Rourke considered

6235-529: The New York Giants 23–17 in professional football's first sudden-death championship game, and repeated the victory against the same team in the 1959 NFL title game, this time by a score of 31–16. The Colts had folded after the 1950 season and from 1951 through 1959 the NFL had twelve teams, six each in the East and West conferences. The league during this period featured not only star players absorbed from

6380-572: The New York Pro Football League . New York, with future NFL teams such as the Buffalo Prospects , Tonawanda Kardex , and Rochester Jeffersons , introduced the playoff tournament to professional football; Buffalo won the last contest in 1919. World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic caused a severe disruption in professional football, which shut down most teams but allowed those that could continue (including most of

6525-693: The Old Main lawn on campus in State College, Pennsylvania . They compiled a 12–8–1 record in these seasons, playing as an independent from 1887 to 1890. In 1891, the Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Football Association (PIFA) was formed. It consisted of Bucknell University , Dickinson College , Franklin & Marshall College , Haverford College , Penn State, and Swarthmore College . Lafayette College , and Lehigh University were excluded because it

6670-473: The de facto major league (and, in fact, the only professional circuit) for football in the United States; it, like many of its successors, was not a "league" in the modern sense of a formalized organization, but rather an informal group of teams in free association with each other and any other team willing to play them. The oldest existing professional football club is the Arizona Cardinals ,

6815-538: The 1920s, the smaller cities gave up on top-level pro football, while larger cities such as Boston, New York and Philadelphia saw teams take root there. This portion of the NFL's existence saw the admission of the Boston Braves , owned by George Preston Marshall who was to exert major positive and negative influences on the league. In 1926, teams from nine cities ranging from the New York Yankees to

6960-401: The 19th century, when intramural games of football began to be played on college campuses. Each school played its own variety of football. Princeton University students played a game called "ballown" as early as 1820. In 1827, a Harvard tradition known as "Bloody Monday" began, which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore classes. In 1860, both the town police and

7105-533: The AAFC 'merger' but others such as halfback Frank Gifford ( New York Giants ); the Philadelphia Eagles ' quarterback Norm Van Brocklin and receiver Tommy McDonald ; and the Colts' quarterback Johnny Unitas and running back Lenny Moore . Television coverage of the league was spotty, with some teams starting in 1950 to have individual arrangements with the Dumont Network and NBC. CBS began to televise selected NFL regular season games in 1956, but there

7250-593: The ACFL unsuccessfully applied to join the AFL, two new leagues formed: the Professional Football League of America (PFLA), which ran from 1965 to 1967, and the more prominent Continental Football League (ContFL), which ran from 1965 to 1969. The ACFL lost three of its best teams to the ContFL, but survived. The ContFL and ACFL had different strategies: the ContFL had major-league aspirations, while

7395-553: The ACFL was happy as a developmental league and (like previous leagues run by the Rosentovers) allowed its teams to become farm teams to the AFL and NFL teams (for instance, the Hartford Knights were a farm team to the AFL's Buffalo Bills ). The ContFL arguably had better talent that went on to NFL and CFL stardom ( Ken Stabler , Don Jonas , Johnnie Walton and Sam Wyche ), but folded after 1969, and plans to take on

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7540-654: The AFL and NFL rivalry, several minor leagues thrived in this era as well. The United Football League lasted from 1961 to 1964 and was concentrated in the midwest. However, in 1962 it was quickly eclipsed by the Atlantic Coast Football League , which was run by the same people (the Rosentover family) as the previous American Association of the 1930s. When the UFL folded, and the Newark Bears of

7685-731: The AFL's planned expansion to Atlanta by offering that city's investor the Falcons ' NFL franchise. Ironically, the Falcons' replacement in the AFL were the Miami Dolphins who have appeared in five Super Bowls, winning two, while the Falcons were losers in their two appearances. Star NFL players during this period included the Browns' fullback Jim Brown ; the Green Bay Packers ' quarterback Bart Starr , fullback Jim Taylor and halfback Paul Hornung ; halfback Gale Sayers of

7830-582: The Arena Football League operated with a monopoly on the indoor game, due to a broad interpretation that virtually all of the league's rules, collectively known as arena football , were covered under its patent; the Professional Indoor Football League successfully defeated the AFL's legal action against it in 1997, opening the possibility for other indoor football leagues to form. Only one significant aspect of

7975-817: The Browns-dominated AAFC had had the same champion every year, six out of the Original Eight AFL teams won at least one AFL championship, and all but one (the lone exception being the Denver Broncos ) played in at least one post-season game. In addition to traditional eastern cities, it placed teams in Texas, in the West with the Broncos, Oakland Raiders and the Chargers, and eventually in

8120-466: The CFL head-to-head were abandoned. The ACFL also produced some significant talent (e.g. Marvin Hubbard , Jim Corcoran and the first female professional football player, placeholder Patricia Palinkas ) and lasted longer, through 1971, with a return season in 1973. The attempted major World Football League sapped the ACFL of most of its talent, and forced it to fold prior to the 1974 season. In 1970,

8265-445: The CFL). The NFL has, over the course of its history, recruited rugby union , association football and Australian rules football players from other countries (particularly those who are retired from competition in their home countries) to play in the league, almost always as kickers and punters. Broadcasting is an integral part of professional football. Not only does it provide the sport with exposure to an audience wider than just

8410-416: The College of New Jersey, in the first collegiate football game . The game more closely resembled soccer than football as it is played in the 21st century. It was played with a round ball , and used a set of rules suggested by Rutgers captain William J. Leggett , based on The Football Association 's first set of rules , which were an early attempt by the former pupils of England's public schools, to unify

8555-566: 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 founded Rugby Football Union , was drawn up for intercollegiate football games. Old "Football Fightum" had been resurrected at Harvard in 1872, when Harvard resumed playing football. Harvard, however, preferred to play

8700-495: The Midwest Kansas City and the deep South Miami . The league forced a merger with its rival, and made possible the Super Bowl at the end of the 1966 season. Although it lost the first two, by its demise it had beaten two NFL teams proclaimed as "the best in history" to win the final two World Championship games between two Professional Football league champions. The decade ended with the AFL retaining its original franchises, plus two expansion teams, and those ten teams represented

8845-399: The NFL added three of its teams, for a total of thirteen, but maintained the 14-game format. The first year after admitting the Cleveland Browns , the NFL was humbled by having the Browns, a team from what it had ridiculed as an inferior league, win its championship. The Browns went on to be NFL champions in three of their first six years in the league. In 1958, the Baltimore Colts defeated

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8990-407: The NFL and were replaced by the first Professional Football team to actually play its home games on the West Coast, the Los Angeles Bulldogs , who had several stars including quarterback Harry Newman and end Bill Moore . The Boston Shamrocks , with all-star end Bill Fleming , outdrew the NFL's Redskins in 1936, causing George Preston Marshall to move the team to Washington. However, the league as

9135-433: The NFL's merger with the American Football League ; each competing league had its own broadcaster, both of which kept the rights to their respective conference after the merger, while additional networks were sold showcase packages of once-a-week games held at night. In Canada, where the threat of competing sports leagues is far less, the CFL opts instead for an exclusive contract with TSN , available only by subscription to

9280-510: The NFL, are not permitted by the NCAA to be paid salaries. Colleges are only allowed to provide non-monetary compensation such as athletic scholarships that provide for tuition, housing, and books. With new bylaws made by the NCAA, college athletes can now receive "name, image, and likeness" (NIL) deals, a way to get sponsorships and money before their pro debut. Modern North American football has its origins in various games, all known as "football", played at public schools in Great Britain in

9425-402: The NFL, the Los Angeles Rams added them in 1946, as they were required by their stadium lease to integrate the team. The league had two five-team divisions, each team playing an unwieldy 11-game schedule, with some teams playing more home games than others. They increased to twelve games the following year, partly because of the success of the rival AAFC's 14-game format. After the AAFC folded,

9570-414: The NFL. In 1933, the league divided into the Eastern and Western divisions, and finally instituted a championship game between the division winners. Each team played from 10 to 13 games per season during this period, and by 1945, the league had two five-team divisions, with each team playing a 10-game regular season schedule. In 1936, to select and assign graduating college players to particular Pro teams,

9715-458: The New York squads) to pick up the talent that stayed stateside, effectively ending the Ohio League's decade-long monopoly on pro football talent. Barnstorming tours between the circuits, along with the continuing bidding wars, led to the regional circuits forming connections and laying the groundwork for the first truly national professional league. A year after the Buffalo Prospects won the first Professional Football championship game, teams from

9860-546: The North Carolina State Fairgrounds in Raleigh, North Carolina . On November 13, 1887, the Virginia Cavaliers and Pantops Academy fought to a scoreless tie in the first organized football game in the state of Virginia . 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 against Washington 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

10005-453: The Ohio League organized to form the new American Professional Football Conference; two months later, adding teams from the other regional circuits surrounding Ohio, the league changed its name to the American Professional Football Association (APFA). In an effort to expand beyond the midwest, the league staged a showcase game between Canton and Buffalo at the Polo Grounds in New York City (Buffalo won) in December 1920. The league did not have

10150-427: The Pioneer and Grantland Rice bowls, and the Camellia was the championship game. Grambling defeated Delaware in the only Boardwalk Bowl played under this format. The game was discontinued after 1973, when the NCAA made all of its quarterfinals unnamed games at campus venues; after 1977 the semifinals likewise were unnamed (though the D-II championship game remained a "bowl" through 1985). The Boardwalk Bowl, along with

10295-462: The audience attending at the stadium, but it can also provide revenue in the form of rights fees. The NFL relies on television for nearly half of its revenue; this is in part because the league only plays one game each week, leaving fewer opportunities for ticket sales than the other professional sports (in turn, however, NFL stadiums have among the highest per-game attendance thanks to large stadium capacities, figures only exceeded or matched by some of

10440-560: The ball only when being pursued. As a result of this, Harvard refused to attend the rules conference organized by Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City on October 20, 1873, to agree on a set of rules and regulations that would allow them to play a form of football that was essentially Association football; and continued to play under its own code. While Harvard's voluntary absence from

10585-481: The ball was advanced by kicking or carrying it, and tackles of the ball carrier stopped play – actions of which have carried over to the modern version of football played today Harvard later 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's soccer and Yale conceding

10730-473: The bench seating). This allows them to seat more fans in a given amount of space than the typical professional stadium, which tends to have more features and comforts for fans. Only three stadiums owned by U.S. colleges or universities, L&N Stadium at the University of Louisville , Center Parc Stadium at Georgia State University , and FAU Stadium at Florida Atlantic University , consist entirely of chair back seating. College athletes, unlike players in

10875-463: The boost it had received from the 1958 Colts-Giants sudden-death game. It was content with a 12-team league playing a 12-game schedule and featured "ball-control" football. When Texas oilmen Lamar Hunt and Bud Adams tried to purchase existing NFL franchises to move to Texas, or to establish new NFL franchises there, they were told that the conservative NFL was not interested. The result was that Hunt and Adams joined with six other businessmen to form

11020-434: The bowl sought to match the two best non-major teams in a 17-state Eastern Region stretching from New England to Florida. Delaware secured a bid to the game in four consecutive years (1968 through 1971) and won all four games. In 1973 , under the new Division II playoff system, the Boardwalk Bowl became a national quarterfinal, while the other three quarterfinals were nameless and played at campus sites. The semifinals were

11165-474: 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. Rugby league followed Camp's example, and in 1906 introduced the play-the-ball rule, which greatly resembled Camp's early scrimmage and center-snap rules. In 1966, rugby league introduced a four-tackle rule (changed in 1972 to a six-tackle rule) based on Camp's early down-and-distance rules. Camp's new scrimmage rules revolutionized

11310-563: The city of New Haven , banned the play of all forms of football in 1860. American football historian Parke H. Davis described the period between 1869 and 1875 as the 'Pioneer Period'; the years 1876–93 he called the 'Period of the American Intercollegiate Football Association'; and the years 1894–1933 he dubbed the "Period of Rules Committees and Conferences". On November 6, 1869, Rutgers University faced Princeton University , then known as

11455-489: The college authorities agreed the Bloody Monday had to go. 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 another 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

11600-664: The end of the first NFL. From there, professional football's focus moved north and west, as teams such as the Massillon Tigers and the short-lived Franklin Athletic Club went on buying sprees in an effort to defeat local teams. Massillon's buying spree led to the rise of the Ohio League , drawing much of the top professional football talent in America from Pennsylvania to Ohio, including Wallace, who signed with

11745-656: The entire NFL excluding blacks after 1934. Also joining the NFL around this time was one of the last teams from Pennsylvania's independent era, the Rooneys ; they became the Pittsburgh Pirates when they joined the NFL in 1933, later renaming themselves the Steelers as part of a complicated franchise swap and abortive merger attempt in 1940. In 1939, NBC broadcast the first-ever televised Professional Football game from Ebbets Field , an October 22 contest between

11890-822: The established league, even though the Buffalo Bills drew good crowds and raised funds from citizens to back the franchise. Players from the Bills and the other AAFC teams not 'merged' were distributed among the NFL teams. Motley, Graham, Groza, Hirsch and Tittle all starred in the NFL after the 'merger'. Of the three AAFC teams that joined the NFL: Following five years of what the league perceived to be weak leadership on behalf of commissioner Elmer Layden (of Four Horsemen fame), league officials appointed Philadelphia Eagles owner-founder Bert Bell as commissioner in 1946. After twelve years without black players in

12035-641: The existence of the AFL: the Vikings, Cowboys, and Falcons, added to compete with the AFL, and the New Orleans Saints , who were added as a reward to Louisiana federal legislators for their support of PL 89-800, which permitted the merger. Likewise, the AFL-NFL wars brought two teams to Missouri (one in each league), marking the first time NFL teams had played in the state since the 1930s. Concurrently with

12180-490: The first minor league compact with the NFL. The PCPFL folded in 1948 after years of declining attendance and the arrival of the NFL in its flagship Los Angeles market. A year after World War II, another new Professional Football league was formed – the All-America Football Conference (AAFC). It attracted some of the nation's best football players and posed a serious challenge to the NFL. Like

12325-485: The first Professional Football ' entry draft ' was held. The University of Chicago 's Heisman Trophy -winning running back Jay Berwanger was selected first overall by the Philadelphia Eagles . However, Berwanger chose not to play Professional Football. The league was dominated by the Chicago Bears , Green Bay Packers , and New York Giants , with stars like quarterback Sid Luckman (Bears); and fullbacks Tuffy Leemans (Giants) and Clarke Hinkle (Packers). Even with

12470-567: The first ever cooperative television plan for professional football, in which the proceeds of the contract were divided equally among member clubs. ABC and the AFL also introduced moving, on-field cameras (as opposed to the fixed midfield cameras of CBS and the NFL), and were the first to have players "miked" during broadcast games. But the American Football League was different from the AAFC in its overall competitive balance. While

12615-649: The first game in Virginia. On April 9, 1880, at Stoll Field , Transylvania University (then called Kentucky University) beat Centre College by the score of 13 + 3 ⁄ 4 –0 in what is often considered the first recorded game played in the South . The first game of "scientific football" in the South was the first instance of the Victory Bell rivalry between North Carolina and Duke (then known as Trinity College) held on Thanksgiving Day , 1888, at

12760-404: 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 the line of scrimmage and the snap from center to quarterback , was also passed in 1880. Originally, the snap was executed with the foot of

12905-553: The first modern black starting quarterback ( Marlin Briscoe , Broncos). The AFL was similar to the AAFC in that it offered innovations, like a return to the double round robin schedule introduced by the earlier league and had eight teams in two divisions like the AAFC. The AFL also introduced official scoreboard clocks, player names on jerseys, the two-point PAT conversion and important off-the field elements such as gate and TV revenue-sharing and national TV contracts. The AFL developed

13050-696: The first open professional after accepting $ 10 to play for the Latrobe Athletic Association ; Latrobe became the first all-professional club soon after. William Chase Temple would become the first man to directly bankroll a football team himself when he assumed "ownership" of the Duquesne Country and Athletic Club in either 1898 or 1899. Throughout the 1890s, the Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit would act as

13195-704: The first professional league on the West Coast. The PCPFL was notable for its continuous operation through World War II (it even spun off a second league in 1944 ) and for its open embrace of black talent that had been blacklisted from the NFL since the 1930s. Along with the American Association and the Dixie League , the PCPFL were members of the Association of Professional Football Leagues ,

13340-420: The first time a major sports league had merged with another without losing a franchise. The legacy of the American Football League is that virtually every aspect of today's wildly popular professional football, on and off the field, can be traced to innovations developed by the AFL and adopted by the NFL. After the sudden death of commissioner Bert Bell in 1959, Los Angeles Rams general manager Pete Rozelle

13485-404: The first time. The Yale team was coached and captained by David Schley Schaff, who had learned to play football while attending Rugby School . Schaff himself was injured and unable to play the game, but Yale won the game 3–0 nonetheless. Later in 1872, Stevens Tech became the fifth school to field a team. Stevens lost to Columbia, but beat both New York University and City College of New York during

13630-454: The following year. 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

13775-472: The fourth American Football League (1960–1969). The league started out by signing half of the NFL's 1960 first-round draft choices including the Houston Oilers ' Billy Cannon , and never slowed down. With future Hall of Fame Coaches Hank Stram ( Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs ) and Sid Gillman ( LA/San Diego Chargers ) as well as others like the Buffalo Bills ' Lou Saban , the league offered

13920-431: 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. The violence of these mob-style games led to widespread protests and a decision to abandon them. Yale , under pressure from

14065-517: The game); only one indoor team, the AFL's short-lived Toronto Phantoms (2000 to 2002), has ever played its games in Canada. The all-female Lingerie Football League had operations in Canada from 2011 to 2014, but that league dropped to amateur level by the time the LFL entered the country. Up until the 1970s, semiprofessional and minor football leagues would often develop lower end players into professional prospects. Though there are still numerous teams at

14210-404: 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 each down . 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

14355-405: The high school and college levels. Since interleague play is extremely rare, there is no need for a nationwide standard for all leagues, and each league will adopt and discard rules as they see fit. The Arena Football League had a patent on several of its rules that expired in 2007. Several professional leagues have experimented with rules in an effort to improve the quality of the game or to create

14500-472: The last two decades of the 19th century. Several major rivalries date from this time period. November 1890 was an active time in the sport. In Baldwin City, Kansas , on November 22, 1890, college football was first played in the state of Kansas . Baker beat Kansas 22–9. On the 27th, Vanderbilt played Nashville (Peabody) at Athletic Park and won 40–0. It was the first time organized football played in

14645-476: The league (prior to 2014, the restrictions were much tighter in that the person also had to be resident in Canada since childhood). As such, Canadian Interuniversity Sport feeds players to the CFL to meet these quotas, much as the NCAA does in the United States. The remaining half of the roster may be filled by either Canadians or by internationals (formerly imports ; these are typically American players who play in

14790-512: The league to be the best teams in America. O'Rourke brought a coalition of the two Philadelphia teams to his World Series of Football and immediately labeled them the favorite for the tournament, bestowing the team home-field advantage and naming it "New York." New York was upset by the Syracuse Athletic Club in the first round. An agreement between the baseball leagues to form modern Major League Baseball led directly to

14935-414: The league. The college football development system is a unique feature in the professional football system, stemming from the fact that the game of American football originated at the college level, unlike other sports that were products of independent clubs. Although ostensibly amateurs, college athletes are compensated with five years of free undergraduate college education (more than enough time to pursue

15080-611: The major college football teams and by the NASCAR Sprint Cup , both of which are also weekly events) and because the expense of the game (it has the largest rosters of any professional sport) makes the cost highly prohibitive. The NFL has sold broadcast rights to each of the major television networks , who pay large annual fees on top of the cost of production for the rights to air the game. The networks make back much of their money through advertising and retransmission consent fees. The use of multiple broadcasters dated to before

15225-498: The meeting made it hard for them to schedule games against other American universities, it agreed to a challenge to play the rugby team of McGill University , from Montreal , in a two-game series. It was agreed that two games would be played on Harvard's Jarvis baseball field in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 14 and 15, 1874: one to be played under Harvard rules, another under the stricter rugby regulations of McGill. Jarvis Field

15370-415: The meeting. The rules that they agreed upon were essentially those of rugby union at the time with the exception that points be awarded for scoring a try , not just the conversion afterwards ( extra point ). Incidentally, rugby was to make a similar change to its scoring system 10 years later. Walter Camp is widely considered to be the most important figure in the development of American football. As

15515-518: The mid-1960s, certain NFL owners secretly approached AFL principals, seeking a merger of the two leagues. The merger was agreed to in 1966, with a championship game to be played between the league titlists, and a merged schedule beginning with the 1970 season, when existing TV contracts could be re-worked. The decade was dominated in the NFL by the Packers, who won four NFL titles, and by the mid-to late 1960s their head coach Vince Lombardi had fashioned

15660-452: The mid-19th century. By the 1840s, students at Rugby School were playing a game in which players were able to pick up the ball and run with it, a sport later known as rugby football . The game was taken to Canada by British soldiers stationed there and was soon being played at Canadian colleges. The first documented gridiron football game was played at University College , a college of the University of Toronto , on November 9, 1861. One of

15805-730: The nearest college to play football. It took place at Hamilton Park in New Haven and was the first game in New England. The game was essentially soccer with 20-man sides, played on a field 400 by 250 feet. Yale wins 3–0, Tommy Sherman scoring the first goal and Lew Irwin the other two. After the first game against Harvard, Tufts took its squad to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine for the first football game played in Maine . This occurred on November 6, 1875. Penn 's Athletic Association

15950-620: The next year. He was torn between an admiration for Harvard's style of play and the misery of the Yale defeat, and became determined to avenge Yale's defeat. Spectators from Princeton also carried the game back home, where it quickly became the most popular version of football. On November 23, 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met at the Massasoit House hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts to standardize

16095-478: The participants in the game involving University of Toronto students was William Mulock , later chancellor of the school. A football club was formed at the university soon afterward, although its rules of play then are unclear. In 1864, at Trinity College , also a college of the University of Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on rugby football. Modern Canadian football

16240-600: The patent, the large rebound nets the AFL has used since its debut to keep balls in play, was fully protected; the patent expired in 2007, although no other professional indoor league has adopted rebound nets since. As of 2011, two national leagues (the AFL and the Indoor Football League ), along with several regional professional and semi-pro leagues, are in operation. As of 2011, no professional indoor football league has had any significant presence in Canada (despite an abundance of hockey arenas that are ideal for

16385-552: The pre-war AFL, it used a double round robin schedule. The league was dominated by a franchise owned and coached by Paul Brown : the Cleveland Browns , a team that would win the league's championship every year of its existence. The Browns featured players such as fullback Marion Motley , quarterback Otto Graham and kicker Lou Groza , while the San Francisco 49ers had running back Elroy 'Crazylegs' Hirsch and

16530-489: The rules of their various public schools. The game was played at a Rutgers Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey . 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

16675-625: The rules were changed to allow tackling below the waist, and in 1889, the officials were given whistles and stopwatches. After leaving Yale 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 annual All-American team every year from 1889 through 1924. The Walter Camp Football Foundation continues to select All-American teams in his honor. College football expanded greatly during

16820-408: The rules were formulated before the game. Professional gridiron football The best American football players are among the highest paid athletes in the world, with the highest salaries reaching tens of millions of dollars per year. Compared to the other major professional sports leagues of the United States and Canada , football has comparatively few levels of play and does not have

16965-409: The same team the next week; the sums were very large by the standards of the day, and like most payment arrangements, both players denied any payment ever took place for much of their lives. For several years afterwards, individual players and sometimes entire teams received compensation to play in "barnstorming" type games without rigid schedules and against a variety of opponents. John Brallier became

17110-591: The score of this contest. Washington and Lee also claims a 4 to 2 win over VMI in 1873. On October 18, 1888, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels 6 to 4 in the first intercollegiate game in the state of North Carolina . On December 14, 1889, Wofford defeated Furman 5 to 1 in the first intercollegiate game in the state of South Carolina . The game featured no uniforms, no positions, and

17255-431: The scoring rules, finally arriving at four points for a touchdown, two points for kicks after touchdowns , two points for safeties, and five for field 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—a referee and an umpire —were mandated for each game. A year later,

17400-456: The semi-pro level in both the United States and Canada, they have mostly dropped to regional amateur status, and they no longer develop professional prospects, in part due to the rise of indoor football. Though Japan ( X-League ) and Europe ( Austrian Football League and German Football League ) have professional football leagues composed primarily of national citizens along with a limited number of American Imports, these leagues are generally of

17545-638: The seven games in the series. The playing surface in these years consisted of natural grass sod that was grown outside and then moved indoors for the game. In 1968, the Boardwalk Bowl succeeded the Tangerine Bowl as one of the four regional finals in the College Division (which became Division II and Division III in 1973). The other three regionals were the Pecan (later Pioneer ), Grantland Rice , and Camellia bowls. During these years,

17690-427: The sheer number of fans following major colleges provides a financial equalizer for the game, with Division I programs – the highest level – playing in huge stadiums, six of which have seating capacity exceeding 100,000 people. In many cases, college stadiums employ bench-style seating, as opposed to individual seats with backs and arm rests (although many stadiums do have a small number of chair back seats in addition to

17835-524: The smaller field. Professional football evolved from amateur "club" football, played by general interest athletic clubs or associations . These clubs began playing football in the late 1870s, approximately ten years after the game took form in American colleges. Amateur club football established itself as a somewhat lower quality alternative to the more popular college football ; some of the better teams would play against college teams. Eventually, some ostensibly amateur teams would secretly begin paying players

17980-487: The state of Tennessee . The 29th also saw the first instance of the Army–Navy Game . Navy won 24–0. Rutgers was first to extend the reach of the game. An intercollegiate game was first played in the state of New York when Rutgers played Columbia on November 2, 1872. It was also the first scoreless tie in the history of the fledgling sport. Yale football starts the same year and has its first match against Columbia,

18125-491: The stellar fullback Cliff Battles , Marshall's team, now called the Redskins, was driven out of Boston in 1936 by a competing league, and he moved his franchise to Washington, D.C. as the Washington Redskins . Marshall introduced the marching band and a team song to Professional Football, along with other promotional efforts. However, he also refused to have black players on his team, and his influence resulted in

18270-617: The time. Many of the early semi-professional and professional teams were works teams consisting mostly of employees of the companies that sponsored them. The first record of an American football player receiving "pay for play" came in 1892 with Pudge Heffelfinger's $ 500 contract to play in a game for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, with the second being Ben "Sport" Donnelly 's $ 250 contract to play for

18415-466: The two schools organized a game for October 23, 1869, but it was rained out. Students of the University of Virginia were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim it organized a game against Washington and Lee College in 1871; but no record has been found of the score of this contest. Due to scantiness of records of the prior matches some will claim Virginia v. Pantops Academy November 13, 1887, as

18560-584: The vast majority of professional football players is the Division I Bowl Subdivision , with most coming from the five conferences with automatic bids into the College Football Playoff bowl games . Under current regulations, players must be at least three years removed from high school graduation to qualify to play in the NFL. Because of these barriers to entry , players who do not play college football have very few options for breaking into

18705-473: Was also the first time one team scored over 100 points and the opposing team was shut out. The next week, Princeton outscored Lafayette 140 to 0. The first intercollegiate game in the state of Vermont happened on November 6, 1886, between Dartmouth and Vermont at Burlington, Vermont . Dartmouth won 91 to 0. Penn State played its first season in 1887, but had no head coach for their first five years, from 1887 to 1891. The teams played its home games on

18850-512: Was at the time a patch of land at the northern point of the Harvard campus, bordered by Everett and Jarvis Streets to the north and south, and Oxford Street and Massachusetts Avenue to the east and west. Harvard beat McGill in the "Boston Game" on the Thursday and held McGill to a 0–0 tie on the Friday. The Harvard students took to the rugby rules and adopted them as their own, The games featured

18995-482: Was common in the 1890s, the Amateur Athletic Union began pressuring and threatening college teams with the loss of amateur status if they did so. Over the course of the first few years of the 20th Century, college and professional football began to diverge, until the NCAA formed in 1906, giving college football a separate sanctioning body. The stigma of being a professional athlete, and the threat it

19140-538: Was felt they would dominate the Association. Penn State won the championship with a 4–1–0 record. Bucknell's record was 3–1–1 (losing to Franklin & Marshall and tying Dickinson). The Association was dissolved prior to the 1892 season. The first nighttime football game was played in Mansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892, between Mansfield State Normal and Wyoming Seminary and ended at halftime in

19285-730: Was its having to pay for television coverage instead of being paid for the rights to it, along with its use of networks that were not widely available. Similarly, the Continental Football League only had one of its games televised nationally in its five-year existence, and the American Football Association blamed its failure on an inability to secure television coverage. Virtually all professional football teams broadcast at least some of their games on local radio. The rules of professional football are more likely to vary from league to league than

19430-562: Was looking to pick "a twenty" to play a game of football against Columbia. This "twenty" never played Columbia, but did play twice against Princeton. Princeton won both games 6 to 0. The first of these happened on November 11, 1876, in Philadelphia and was the first intercollegiate game in the state of Pennsylvania . Brown entered the intercollegiate game in 1878. The first game where one team scored over 100 points happened on October 25, 1884, when Yale routed Dartmouth 113–0. It

19575-428: Was named his replacement after a contentious, eight-day, 23-ballot stalemated election in which the league's favored candidate, Marshall Leahy , repeatedly fell one vote short of the supermajority of votes necessary to be elected commissioner. Whereas his predecessors generally put their league offices in the city of the teams they previously represented (the key issue that prevented Leahy from becoming Commissioner, as he

19720-401: Was no league-wide, national television (the Browns, for instance, held out and syndicated games themselves until the early 1960s when a league-wide contract was imposed). By the start of the 1960s, the NFL was complacent in its dominance of the market for Professional Football fans, and had little incentive to expand that market. The AAFC was history, and the NFL had chosen not to capitalize on

19865-542: 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; the fair 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 and Stevens Institute of Technology . Columbia University

20010-710: Was previously an employee of the San Francisco 49ers and was planning to move league offices to the West Coast), Rozelle instead agreed to establish a permanent office in New York City, where the league remains to this day. The 1960 NFL had ten teams, only two south of Washington, D.C. and/or west of Chicago (the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers), and none in the Southern United States , where college football still dominated. Though it had rebuffed efforts to move or expand, it immediately

20155-454: Was put on the defensive by the new AFL, first causing the owners of the proposed Minnesota franchise in that league to renege for an NFL franchise to start in 1961, and immediately establishing the Cowboys in previously rejected Dallas, as competition to Hunt's Dallas Texans . The NFL also expanded its footprint by moving the Chicago Cardinals to St. Louis, Missouri in 1960. Later, it impeded

20300-617: Was the 1881 Michigan team , which played at Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The nation's first college football league, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (also known as the Western Conference), a precursor to the Big Ten Conference , was founded in 1895. Led by coach Fielding H. Yost , Michigan became the first "western" national power. From 1901 to 1905, Michigan had

20445-656: Was the first game west of the Mississippi River . November 30, 1905, saw Chicago defeat Michigan 2 to 0. Dubbed "The First Greatest Game of the Century", it broke Michigan's 56-game unbeaten streak and marked the end of the "Point-a-Minute" years. Organized collegiate football was first played in the state of Virginia and the south on November 2, 1873, in Lexington between Washington and Lee and VMI . Washington and Lee won 4–2. Some industrious students of

20590-488: Was the third school to field a team. The Lions traveled from New York City to New Brunswick on November 12, 1870, and were defeated by Rutgers 6 to 3. The game suffered from disorganization and the players kicked and battled each other as much as the ball. Later in 1870, Princeton and Rutgers played again with Princeton defeating Rutgers 6–0. This game's violence caused such an outcry that no games at all were played in 1871. Football came back in 1872, when Columbia played Yale for

20735-420: Was through collegiate competition that gridiron football first gained popularity in the United States . Like gridiron football generally, college football is most popular in the United States and Canada. While no single governing body exists for college football in the United States, most schools, especially those at the highest levels of play, are members of the NCAA . In Canada, collegiate football competition

20880-584: Was to one's amateur status, meant that pseudonyms and nicknames were commonplace among professional players through the early part of the 20th century, in the hopes that covert professionals would not have themselves outed in a publicly released roster. Very few pro football players played under their given first names (John Brallier was a prominent exception). The next step in pro football stemmed from an unusual source: baseball. Teams from each championship city (Pittsburgh and Philadelphia), three in all, received support from baseball teams in their cities and formed

21025-633: Was won by the Pottsville Maroons , who, after one year (and winning the league title), jumped to the NFL. The Anthracite League remanifested itself as the Eastern League of Professional Football , an explicitly minor league, in 1926 and 1927. From 1922 through 1932, the NFL still declared as champions the team with the best record. There were no set schedules, and each team did not play the same number of games: some teams played against college or other amateur teams. The confusion reached

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