American football

American football, known in the United States and Canada simply as football, is a competitive team sport known for its physical roughness despite being a highly strategic game. The object of the game is to score points by advancing the football into the opposing team's end zone. The ball can be advanced by carrying it, throwing it, or by handing it from one teammate to the other. Points can be scored in a variety of ways, including carrying the ball over the goal line, throwing the ball to another player past the goal line or kicking it through the goal posts on the opposing side. The winner is the team with the most points when the time expires and the last play ends.
Outside of the United States and Canada, the sport is usually referred to as American football (or sometimes as gridiron or gridiron football) to differentiate it from other football games.

History

Both American football and soccer have their origins in varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, and American football is directly descended from rugby football. The majority of the plays in a typical American football game involve handling the ball rather than kicking it.

Rutgers University and Princeton University played the first game of college football on Nov. 6, 1869 in New Brunswick, New Jersey, using the rules of the English Football (i.e., Soccer) Association. Rutgers won that first game, 6-4. From the 1820s to around 1890, Dartmouth College students played a football-like game now known as "Old Division Football," to which they published rules in 1871.

Encouraged by Yale University's Walter Camp, the schools began to adopt more standardized rules that would differentiate American football from rugby in the 1880s. The scrimmage was introduced in 1880 and the system of downs in 1882.

By the turn of the 20th century, football had become notoriously dangerous; 18 college players died in 1905 alone. Colleges responded with a series of rule changes to open up the game, most importantly the forward pass, along with outlawing dangerous formations such as the "flying wedge", and introducing and requiring better equipment such as helmets.

The game had achieved its modern form by 1912, when the field was changed to its current size, the value of a touchdown increased to 6 points, and a fourth down added to each possession. Originally dominated by the Ivy League, football soon captured the interest of colleges nationwide. By 1916, when the Rose Bowl game matching eastern and western teams became an annual event, football had developed a national following second only to baseball among team sports.

Professional football developed in the mill towns of Pennsylvania and the American Midwest in the early years of the 20th century. The NFL was founded in 1920 in Canton, Ohio. Professional football remained a largely regional sport of secondary importance until after World War II, when television broadcasts boosted NFL football's national appeal. The pro game surpassed both college football and baseball in popularity in the 1960s. The first Super Bowl—between the champions of the NFL and the rival American Football League—was played in 1967, and the leagues merged in 1970.