History of football Essay

football game game (as well as rugger and soccer) are believed to have descended from the ancient Greek spikelet up of harpaston. Harpaston is mentioned frequently in classical literature, where it is often referred to as a very rough and rude high. The rules of this ancient tout were quite simple Points were awarded when a musician would cross a goal line by either charge the ball, running with it across the goal line, or throwing it across the line to another(prenominal) pseud. The other teams objective was simply to stop them by any means possible.There was no specific field length, no side line boundaries, no specified number of hornswoggleers per team, only a glaring lack of rules. Harpaston Luckily (for everyone) uniforms & equipment have improved dramatically. Most newfangled versions of football game are believed to have originated from England in the twelfth century. The game became so popular in England that the kings of that time (Henry II and Henry IV) actual ly verboten football. They believed that football was taking a guidance interest from the traditional sports of England, such as fencing and archery. Evolution and the Beginnings of Standardization.Football didnt really begin to meditate on any consistency of rules and boundaries until it was picked up as a sport in the sevener major public schools of England in the early 1800s. sixer of the seven schools were largely playing the same game (including Eton, Harrow and Winchester) time the seventh, rugby School (founded in 1567) was playing a markedly divers(prenominal) version of football. The other schools moved ahead refining their rules and eventually their game became cognize as association football or soccer, which was played back accordingly much as it is today. Rugby School went in a different direction.How and why the game developed differently at Rugby School appears to have been lost in history, but what is known is that by the 1830s, running with the ball at Rug by School was in mutual use and 18 foot goal posts had been added with a cross-bar at 10 feet above the ground. The inclusion of the cross-bar was accompanied by a rule that a goal could only be scored by the ball passing oer the bar from a place kick or drop kick. patently this was done to make scoring easier from further out and excessively to turn away the horde of defenders standing in and blocking the mouth of the goal.Players who were able to stir up down the ball behind the opponents goal line were awarded a try-at-goal the player would make a mark on the goal line and then walk back onto the field of play to a point where a place kick at the goal was possible (a conversion). There was also an off-your-side rule used to keep the teams apart. Passing the ball forward was not allowed. By the mid-1860s British schools and universities had taken up Rugbys game and honored the school by giving the new football the holler of rugby.The game shortly went trans-Atlantic to Ame rica and landed on fertile soil. root of American Football The birth date of football in the linked States is generally regarded by football historians as November 6, 1869, when teams from Rutgers and Princeton Universities met for the first extramural football game. In those early games, there were 20 players to a team and football still more(prenominal) closely resembled rugby than modern football. The game of football has a history of constant rule changes.Rule changes have been apply to bolster the excitement of the game of football andto increase the games safety. In 1873, representatives from Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale Universities met in New York City to formulate the first intercollegiate football rules for the increasingly popular game. These four teams established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA) and set 15 as the number of players allowed on for each one team. Walter Camp, the coach at Yale and a dissenter from the IFA over his desire for an xi man team, helped begin the final step in the evolution from rugby-style play to the modern game of American football.The IFAs rules committee, led by Camp, soon cut the number of players from fifteen to eleven, and also instituted the size of the playing field, at one hundred ten yards. In 1882 Camp also introduced the dodge of downs. After first allowing three attempts to advance the ball five yards, in 1906 the distance was changed to ten yards. The fourth down was added in 1912. Within a decade, c erstrn over the increasing brutality of the game led to its bar by some colleges. Nearly 180 players had suffered serious injuries, and eighteen deaths had been account from the brutal mass plays that had become common practice.So in 1905, chairperson Theodore Roosevelt called upon Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to help save the sport from demise. At a meeting surrounded by the schools, reform was agreed upon, and at a second meeting, attended by more than sixty other schools, t he group appointed a seven member Rules Committee and set up what would later become known as the National Collegiate Athletic Association, or the NCAA. From this committee came the legalisation of the forward pass, which resulted in a redesign of the ball and a more open style of play on the field.The rough mass plays, which once caused so many serious injuries, were require by the committee. Also prohibited was the locking of arms by teammates in an effort to clear the way for their ball carriers. The length of the game was shortened, from seventy to sixty minutes, and the neutral zone, which separates the teams by the length of the ball before each play begins, was also established. though refinements to the game would continue to the present day, the modern game of American football had arrived.