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How Did Football Start

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Have you ever wondered how the sport of football ever got started? Well, it is believed to have began in Ancient Greece from the game harpaston. The rules of harpaston was to cross a goal line, running with a ball, and stopping a player from crossing the goal line by tackling just like American Football. Unlike football (american), harpaston lacked a lot of rules like field length and number of players. It is also believed by many that football may have originated from England in the mid 1200’s when Henry IV was in power. Football ended up becoming such a success in England that King Henry temporarily banned the sport for distracting the English citizens from the traditional English sports like archery. (Football wasn’t even considered a sport until the …show more content…

This game was also the first intercollegiate football game as well. In the early 1870’s four representatives from four different universities in the United States met in New York to come up with a way to bring excitement to the game of football as well as making sure the players were safe and had safety procedures while playing. Eventually, the four universities founded the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) and allowed 15 players to be on the field at one time versus the old rule of 20 players at a time. The first professional football player in the United States is considered to be William Heffelfinger from Yale University. The founder of football in America is considered by many to be Walter Camp. Walter Camp was the coach of the 1888 Yale Football team, played halfback for Yale, served on The IFA for 48 years, and came up with some of the rules of football still used today like a scrimmage line, 11 players on a field at one time, and the quarterback position. Mr. Camp passed away on March 14, 1925 with a legacy that is remembered to this

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