America has a lot of sports that can be consider a “favorite past time”, but in the three one will defiantly find the word football. Football is consider America’s favorite past time because of what it does to people. Example Dwayne Johnson also known as The Rock. He played football in high school as well as collage and is now actor and a professional entertainer. Sadly theirs a problem, people seem to forget or don’t even know how the wonderful sport of football came to be. Theirs a saying “acknowledge the people who paved the way” that quote mean recognized those who help make what u have now a reality.
Football is such an unique sport because it was made up two individual sports soccer and rugby. According to football historians the birth date of football in the United States date back to November 6, 1869. The National Football League didn’t just appear out of nowhere, it first started off as collages playing more of a rugby style football. The two universities that kick start football was Rutgers and Princeton. The game of football has a history of constant rule changes because it starting up from two sports.
Before rules were implemented you couldn’t really call football, football. But thanks to a man named Walter Camp football was able to set a foundation on which the rules committee will build on. “Camp was a student at Yale from 1876 to 1882 and an avid athlete, playing on Yale football team” ( History of American Football). Camp was also a fixture at the rules conventions. In the early games their wasn’t much organization or rules when teams played, Camp changed that. Camp establish the line of scrimmage, the exchange between a quarterback and center, awarding six points for a touchdown and three points for a field goal, lowering the number of players from 20 to 11 a side. ”The game of football is divided into four periods, known as quarters, each consisting of 15 minutes of playing time” (Professor Stelzer). “Walter Camp proceeded with overseeing and influencing the development of the game for the further enjoyment of participants, spectators, and indirectly anyone wanting to wage a sport bet”(American football and its heritage).
Like any sport we want to make sure that the athletes stay healthy; in the early stages of football that was not happing. Football was never a safe game, even today it’s a very dangerous sport to play. In the early 1900’s football was the most dangerous sport to play, reason being that players were not equip like they are now today. In 1905 the “Concern over the increasing brutality of the game lead to its band in some collages. Nearly 180 players had suffered serious injuries, and eighteen death had been reported from the brutal mass plays that had become common practice” (A brief history of the game). The game had become so dangerous to the players physical health that president Roosevelt threatened to band the game as a hole if it didn’t clean up its act. This created some more rules to the game to ensure greater safety to the players. The forward pass was introduce as well as receivers being able to catch the ball anywhere on the field of play, tightening up the line of scrimmage at the sap of the ball, rough mass plays were prohibited, the locking of arms by teammates to clear the way for the ball carrier was band, the length of the game was shortened and the neutral zone was established. These rules were put into play by the National Collegiate Athletic Association also known as the NCAA.
In 1906 the game of football had spread beyond a few ivy league schools. What started as an established sport around the east coast of the United States in the early 1900’s rapidly grew among colleges further into mainland. Within a 20 year period, football was a sport that stretched from the east , through the heartland of the west coast. In 1920 was when the national professional league was born. In 1922 it transformed into the vastly familiar National Football League witch had 18 teams at the time. Although football coming along their were still problems making the sport go national.