preview

Evolution Of Football Research Paper

Decent Essays

Since the 19th century, football has been played and changed throughout the years (Stelzer 1). From only college students playing the sport, to having professional teams and players be watched from all over the country. Football’s history depicts the origin of this sport in order to show how football was played back then and how it should be played. Football was created by a rugby player named Walter Camp (Gorn and Goldstein 153). He combined the sports soccer and rugby, then later came up with the rules (Stelzer 1). “Walter Camp has been widely and accurately acknowledged as the father of American football” (Gorn and Goldstein 153). Camp explained how football should be played and the way to win a game. The sport involves teamwork, not …show more content…

The first professional football league was the American Professional Association, formed back in 1920 (Stelzer 4). Though that league didn’t work out so they gave way in 1922 to the National Football League (NFL) (4). When the NFL started, not many people watched their games. Throughout the years they gained more and more spectators. It wasn’t until the late 1950s and early 1960, that the NFL became America’s leading spectator sport (McChesney 62). After the NFL reach being big in America, “professional football attracted larger numbers of first-rate college players and increased patronage made the league economically viable” (Stelzer 4-5). The NFL also had some competition. The United States Football League (USFL), was a professional spring league, that would obtain some players from the NFL by paying them a higher salary (6). Consequently, after three years, the USFL folded, having all their players go to the NFL (6). The NFL then sought out to merge with the American Football League (AFL) in 1970. The champions from the AFL and NFL would meet to go against each in the AFL-NFL World Championship Game (6). The name of that game was soon changed into what is now known as the Super Bowl (6). Soon millions of people started watching the NFL on television. There are different ways to play football. Flag football and touch football, which eliminates much of the physical contact (Milbert 2). The rules are pretty much the same like regular football, just that in touch football, a play would end if a defensive player touches the ball carrier (2). “In flag football, a play ends when a defender pulls a piece of cloth, called a flag, from the belt of back pocket of the ball carrier” (2). These two variations of football are safer than normal football, so younger players can still play without being seriously

Get Access