History of Football

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Origin

         Football orginated from the a cross of the games of soccer and rugby, but a form of the roughness and violence was seen in the origin of soccer. Soccer was believed to have orginated from a game played by warriors thousands of years ago. After a battle the winning army would cut the heads off of their enimies and kick it around the battle field trying to cross the opponets "goal line." The warriors knocked each other around and threw punches all to advance the head across the "goal line." This was used to boost the warriors' morale after losing many lives. The game was passed down and developed in all parts of the world. A form was played by African Natives and American Indians as a form of leisuree activity. In England a ball made of animal bladder and filled with saw dust was kicked through the streets. People would violently knock each other around and anyone walking down the street minding their own buisness. The King of England heard the complants and banded "hustling over large foot balls" citing it was an excuse for violence.          When America was being colonized the game was played by the colonist (most likely learned from the Native Americans). The game was even played by Union soilders during the Civil War to boost moral and alieve aggression and fustration from the war. It carried over into colleges in the form of hazing. At Harvard on the first Monday of the fall semester the Sophomores would go out to the meadow and place a ball on the ground. They would then dare the freshman class to touch the ball or pick it up. If a freshman picked the ball up the sophomores would chase him down a beat him to a "bloody pulp." The game was called Class Rush and it took place every year on what became known as "Bloody Monday."
The College Game

         Rugby came over to America in the mid 1800's about the same time as the Class Rush. Every school had their own version of play. Rugby being a steming of soccer involved two teams trying to advance a ball across the others goal. Each college and high school had their own rules and the game varied so much till it wasn't totally like the orginal game of rugby it came from. With each school playing their own version it almost made it impossible for interscholastic play. Water Camp, a Yale University football player, was the person most responsible for unifying the rules and modernizing the game. He took the old college kicking game like soccer and the newer rugby style game and intertwined them. Camp introduced the system of getting 10 yards for a first with the concept of four downs and the concept of the center snapping the the ball to the quarterback. With the rules set the game began to grow as intercollegiate play became easier.

Protection in the Game

         With greater number of colleges playing each other the bigger and more wide spread the game became. The usual dress uniform did not include padding or any protection at all. A large number of injuries occured to game related injuries were enormous for any type of college sport. In 1905 after ten young men were killed playing the game President Theodore Roosevelt demanded that something be done to curve the violence and injuries or he would outlaw the game in America. So quickly colleges institued the use of padded britches and shirts and rules that toned down the violence. For head protection many players wore leather straps over their heads as a helmet, but most didn't wear these helmets because they weren't required.


The Formation of Pro Football

         Jim Thorpe was the first famous character to come out of the sport of football. Thrope was a Native American and was an exceptional athlete. He played baseball and was an olympic track athlete along with playing football professionally for the Canton Bulldogs. When Thorpe played for the Canton Bulldogs in 1915 the professional league was unorganized and really was just a bunch of teams loosely organized playing each other from time to time for crowds of local people. In 1920 many teams started to pop up all over. George Halas went to the owner of the Staley Starch Company of Decatur, Illinois and asked him to support a pro football team. The owner of Staley said yes and gave Halas the money to start the team. The team became know as the Decatur Staleys aslo nicknamed the "Blues" for the navy blue shirts they wore with orange stripes on the chest. Halas would move the team into Chicago a year later and rename them the Bears. Around this time buisnesses were sponsering teams all over. In Green Bay a packing company sponsered a team called the Green Bay Packers. The Bears and Packers came into the league to play opponents such as the Deluth Eskimos, Pottsville Maroons, Rochester Jeffersons, Dayton Triangles, New York Giants, Washington Redskins, and Providence Steamrollers. Most of these early professional teams were found in the northeast and midwest where there were large number of factories to sponser the teams. During this time professional ball was secondary and college football was the biggest game. Most of the early NFL player didn't even go to college just factory workers who wanted to play the game and earn a bonus from the company. In order to make pro football big it was going to need a big name to play for one of its teams to bring people in. So George Halas set out to do that. He did so by signing the biggest name in College ball a the time Harold "Red" Grange, the "Galloping Ghost." Grange was playing for the University of Illinois at the time and it was against the rules for the players to play pro ball on the side so when Grange signed with Halas to play with the Bears he was expelled from school and kicked off the team. Grange's contract gave him a whopping $3,000 per game or 30% of the game ticket intake. This contract would pail in comparrison to the multimillion dollar contracts that big name college players get now, but in 1925 this was a considerable amount of money. Grange's first game was to be on Thanksgiving Day against the Chicago Cardnials. Right after Grange signed with the Bears attendence jumped for the Bears' home game at Soilder Field, with 7500 for the Chicago Bears-Green Bay Packers game just to see Grange sit calmly on the bench wearing his coon skin fur coat. Halas hyped Grange's debut against the Cardnials greatly and jacked the gate prices up to $1.75 a pop. During that Thanksgiving game 36,000 people crowed into Soilder Field to watch the "Galloping Ghost" do his work. Grange's first game was less than steller and the crowd booed him. Still yet more and more people crowed into the Stadiums every Sunday afternoon in hopes of seeing the "Galloping Ghost" score a touchdown to win the game. With the entering of Grange into the professional game it encouraged more big name college stars to sign with pro teams.
         With popularity growing like wild fire there became a need to have a Champion so around 1933 the NFL seperated the teams up into two divisions the Eastern and Western divisions and at the end of the season winners of the two divisions played each other in the NFL Championship Red Grange lead the Chicago Bears to the first ever undisputed NFL Champions. (NFL Champions) Each and every year people would look forward to seeing if thier team would make it to the Championship. During the 1940's many Americans looked to the game to take their minds off the killing taking place in Europe and in the Pacific at least for two hours.
         Then in 1940 the most memorable thing occured in football that still stands in the record books to this day and will more than likely remain there. The Chicago Bears did what most thought would ever happen. Chicago scored 73 points in a routing of the Washington Redskins. No one thought that many points could be scored in one game by one team. It was unheard of when the hightest number of points usually scored in a game was 30-35. The biggest thing about the game was the final score: Chicago 73 Washington 0. That score still stands today as the biggest defeat in football history not to mention sports history. This increased the sale of tickets for fans looking for wild high scoring games. This put the offense up to be the main part of the game that people came to see. They didin't want to see a low scoring defensive battle thay wanted to see two high powered offenses light up the scoreboard.
         As the 1950's rolled in it ment a lot of changes for the NFL. Plastic began to be used for protection and more and more players began to wear helmets made of plastic. Also there was an increased number of African Americans coming into the game from the all the Negro Leagues that had sprung up all over counting in high urban areas and even in some rural areas. Joe Perry of the San Francisco 49ers and Charley Taylor of the Redskins took places of the great running backs like Grange. In actuallity thought these were not the first African Americans to play in the NFL. The first black man to play in the NFL was a young quarterback by the name of Fritz Pollard. Pollard was quarterback for the Akron Pros and Providence Steamrollers back in the 1920's. Pollard would also later go on to coach the Steamrollers. Hed faced a great deal of racism, but for the most part was one of the most respected players of his time. He was pioneers why before the time of the Civil Rights movement and Jackie Robinson broke into baseball. Pollard laied the ground work for men like Perry, Taylor and the primer back of the 1950's and '60's Jim Brown.

The Formation of the AFL: Movement to Modern NFL

         For a long time the NFL monoplolized the industry of professional football. That was until 1960. In 1960 the American Football League (AFL) was formed to rival the NFL. It consisited of ten teams:
Miami Dolphins
Oakland Raiders
Dallas Texans (Kansas City Chiefs)
Boston Patriots
New York Titans (New York Jets)
Buffalo Bills
San Diego Chargers
Houston Oilers
Denver Broncos
Cincinnati Bengals

These teams played their own AFL Championship. (AFL Champs) The AFL began to became very popular in the US with the beginning of TV coverage. With the two big networks of NBC and CBS broadcasting the games gave both leagues equal coverage. With this equal coverage the people began to demand to see one Champion between the two leagues.

The Super Bowl

         Finally the demand of the fans were met and on January 15, 1967 the NFL Champion Green Bay Packers played the AFL Champion Kansas City Chiefs in the first World Championship of football. The Packers beat the Chiefs 35 to 10. Green Bay's coach Vince Lombardi said after the game "This game is so big that it is Super Bowl." And so the name stuck. Lombardi coached his Pakcers back the next year to the Super Bowl where they beat the Oakland Raiders.
         Lombardi was known as best motivators of his time and it showed in his team. He had such sayings as "Winning isn't everything.....it is the only thing." Lombardi didn't make it back to the Super Bowl after the Packers beat the Raiders. He left the Packers and took the position as the Washington Redskins General Manager and head coach. Lombardi died of cancer a year later and in honor of the coach the league named the Super Bowl trophy after him.
         By the time Super Bowl III rolled around there was talk of the NFL being superior to the AFL by far. The 1969 Super Bowl had the great Johnny Unitus and his Baltimore Colts representing the NFL taking on a young and cocky Joe Nameth and the New York Jets of the AFL. All during the week prior to the match-up reporters hounded Nameth asking him how he would beat the NFL Colts and the great Johnny Unitus and when asked about the NFL dominance Nameth became fed up. He told the reporter "I guarntee you a New York Jet-AFL victory!!" Nameth backed up his talk as he led the Jets to a 16 to 7 victory over the Colts. This game was significant in that it proved the AFL could be competitive with the NFL. Then to reenforce that the AFL Kansas City Chiefs beat the NFL Minnesota Vikings the next year.(Super Bowls)

Merger of the Leagues

         In 1971 the NFL and AFL decided to merge into one league called the NFL. The new league would seperated into two confrences the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). Each Conference was then broken up into three division a Eastern, Central, and Western division. The League was realized and in the shuffle teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cleveland Browns, and Baltimore Colts were taken out of what was once the NFL and put in with what was once the AFL. The NFL now resembled what it currently looks like today.

Expansion and Moving

         In 1976 the new NFL expanded for the first time since merging in 1971. The last time the NFL expanded it was seperate from the AFL and they brought in the Atlanta Falcons and the New Orleans Saints. In 1976 the NFL brought in the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the NFC and the Seattle Seahawks to the AFC. Then the league expanded once again in 1995 adding the Carolina Panthers to the NFC and the Jacksonville Jaguars to the AFC. Then in 1999 the league brought the Cleveland Browns. The Cleveland Browns are an interesting situation. They were one of the orginal NFL teams and in 1996 the owner of the Browns, Art Modelle, decided to move the team to Baltimore. The league was against it and so were the people of the Cleveland. When Modelle moved the team out of Cleveland the city sued Modelle for all rights to the name Browns and won. Modelle had to then change the name of his team to the Baltimore Ravens. The NFL then set up a provision for the Browns to be reinstated back into the NFL by 1999. The Cleveland Browns are owned by the city of Cleveland and are guranteed not to move anywhere. The Browns moving isn't new to the NFL. Teams have moved before mainly for better stadiums, tax cuts in different cities, or lack of fan support. The Colts moved from Baltimore to Indiannapolis so they would have a domed stadium, the Rams moved from Los Angeles to St. Louis, the Cardnials moved from St. Louis to Arizona, Raiders have jumped back and forth between Los Angeles and Oakland, and the Houston Oilers moved to Nashville, Tennessee and renamed themselves the Tennessee Titans. So city hoping isn't new to the NFL. Just gives cities more reason to compete with each other. If they don't want to wiat till the NFL expands they can try and lure a team to move there. The NFL is looking to expand in the future with their eyes on putting a teams back in Houston and Los Angeles and a team in Canada isn't out of the question. The NFL has done a great job at spreading football around the world with "American Bowls" in forigen cities and the NFL Europe football league. So who knows where the next NFL team might pop up?




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