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Essay on History of American Football
By the middle of the 19th century, football had split into two distinct entities. Still popular today, these two sports were soccer and rugby. American football evolved from these two sports. The sport called soccer in the United States is still known as football throughout much of the world. Many of the northern colleges started playing it in the early 19th Century and Harvard and Yale University in 1876 brought the rules of rugby into the game and decided to use an oval shaped ball rather than the round ball and made an organization named the Inter-Collegiate Football Association.
WALTER CAMP, the coach at Yale and a dissenter from the IFA over his desire for an eleven-man team, helped begin the final step in the evolution from rugby-style play to the modern game of American football. The IFA’s rules committee led by Camp, soon cut the number of players from fifteen to eleven, and also instituted the size of the playing field at 110yards. In 1882 Camp also introduced the system of downs. After first allowing three attempts to advance ball five yards, in 96 it was changed to ten yards, the fourth down was added in 1912. Tackling below the waist had been legalized in 1888.
THE GAME:
Football is played by two teams, each fielding 11 players. Each team tries to move the ball down the field to score in the end zone of the field defended by its opponents. During a football game the teams are designated as the offensive team (the team in possession of the ball) and the defensive team (the team defending a goal line against the offensive team). Players involved in kicking situations are know as the special team and the football playing field is rectangular in shape.......
