DEVELOPMENT OF AMERICAN FOOTBALL

• Many games known as “football”were being played at colleges and Universities in the United States in the first half of the 19 th century.
• In US simply as football and it may be referred to as Gridiron informally or outside the US and Canada.
• American football resulted from several major divergence from rugby and soccer.
• The major forms as high school football, college and professional football, which are played under slightly different rules.
• Water Camp a Yale graduate and considered to be the “Father of American Football”.
• Football was almost banned in the 1906 after a dozen and a half deaths (and many more serious injuries)-President Theodore Roosevelt saved the game –convincing
college representatives to initiate strictes rules to make the game less brutal and dangerous.
• In the first 90 years of football, college football was far more popular than pro football..
• The game was (and still is, at many schools) all about tradition and the many rivalries between collages
• Pro football emerged – equal to college football-after being televised nationally in the 1960s.
• American evolved from two games that were popular in other parts of the world: soccer and rugby
• The game developed in the prestigious‘Ivy League’universities.
• In the early 1800 s there were no generally accepted rules to the name –so universities allowed running with the hall