American Football Essay Research Paper Football at

American Football Essay, Research Paper

Football: at the turn of century

Without question, football is the most popular sport in America. Football is also a sport that is enjoyed all over the world by people of all ages. Football is also an activity that the family can all enjoy as in example dad can play with his son on a Sunday team. Mom and sister can watch, or the whole family can go out on Saturday to watch college football or on Sunday for the big pro games. Football can bring people together if all of them love the game. However example above is just the fan s point of view; there are a lot more than just the game of football helped to form the leagues and build today is football. College and professional football had developed so much that by the turn of the century; football became one of the most popular sports in America.

Football had been form for more than 100 years but during that time it was just a fun games where everyone could play.

Professional football is more than 100 years old, but for its first 50-odd years the sport was the sad-sack cousin of college football. (Peterson 3)

Football developed from rugby and soccer began 1820 at Princeton University which first football was known as ballown . The football s rule at the time was totally different from the modern day football. During that time football was such a brutal sport because it has no set rules; the only rule was to be set by the home team. Football started to get serious was when the colleges began to play them competitively in 1880s. That was also the time that football rules has a major changes by the Yale undergraduate, Walter Camp. Walter provided the new set of organized rules in football; which is a lot safer than before. He has also introduced quarterback position, which is now one of the most important position in football. (History of American football 1)

The field of play was 110 yards apart from each goal line. The field has no end zone. There are one line on each side at the end of the field called in goal lines. There was no forward past allowing in the game. The goal posts were located at the end of each side; it about 18 and half feet apart the cross bar was 10 feet high on the goal line. At the time the game was still similar to rugby. When the game later got popular and more fans came in to see the game, each clubs and universities began to build their own stands and stadiums. (Peterson 16)

College football began to get more serious than before as the rivalry between colleges grew bigger. Colleges that were into the seriousness football were Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Rutgers, Columbia, Pennsylvania and McGill University of Montreal. (Peterson 13) Later many colleges began to join in to Ivy League in which all the team members were student athletes. In 1890 college football began to expand westward to schools such as Washington and Jefferson, Ohio State, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, and many of colleges there began to play football that year. Notre Dame started in 1887, and the University of Southern California in 1888. (Peterson 14) There were a lot of different between the new form teams and the one that was already there.

But quality football first rate football IMPORTANT football was the exclusive preserve of four schools: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a school that was just coming up to football par with the first three, Pennsylvania. It was not sectional chauvinism at work when 129 out of 132 All- America berths between 1889 and 1900 were filled by players from those four schools. The best players were really there. (PFRA Research 8)

This Ivy League idea was the starting point of the professional Football league but people had not yet realizing. As the games were being, played there was little support from the local fans. At the time, baseball was by far the most popular sport in town. People would rather go and see baseball than a football game. That was long before the formation of National Football League (NFL) which formed in 1920. (Peterson 3)

Starting around 1892 the only way for a man to play football professionally was to go to college or join Athletics club. In colleges the players were needed to study as well as play football, and for some people it was quite difficult to get into the colleges. The other way was that if scouts of had spotted players while the players were in their high school. If they were good enough the players will get recruited to joined the colleges. (Peterson 16)

Athletic clubs were at the bottom of the social clubs ranking. During that time if a person gain a place into a social club that was the starting point of moving up in to higher places in society.

Infancy of professional football: Membership in them was generally the first step toward gaining admission in the more exclusive Union Leagues and University Clubs or the top-level Metropolitan Men s Clubs (Peterson 23)

Later the social event became more of an issue for athletic clubs so the restriction of getting except in to the clubs was even more difficult. As the result the clubs were losing a lot of matches in the sport events. The clubs realizes that they would not be able to get good players in to the club and people would prefer to talk to winners than to the losers. If the clubs still kept the old routine the club would not go far at all. As the result they changed the rule