The name football itself all the way back to the mob ball games or mob football games played around medieval Europe predominantly in the British Isles the word football itself is a combination of two words foot and ball which contrary to popular belief wasn’t supposed to describe the act of using her feet to kick or move the ball rather it was the title given to most peasant ball games by the aristocrats because the games were played on foot with a ball as opposed to the horse riding sports games more often enjoyed by the aristocrats these medieval mob football games were usually played between neighboring towns with rules varying.
All around Europe with some similarities being unlimited number of players on each team a ball and some sort of a goal which could range from just two goal posts in a field to the church window of the opposing counting mob football games were brought into the Americas by the English settlers heard there was still no official rules or organization for these mob football games and the towns in the Americas just as back in England play mob football games by their own rules.Howard just like mob football the college football games differed widely in rules from college to college.
Still involved large masses of people Princeton had a game called balloon as early as 1820 and in Harvard the tradition of bloody Monday began where masses of sophomores would play game of mob football against the freshmen Dartmouth had a game called old division football dating back to the 1830s however many of these college football games still wear masses of people trying to advance a ball to a go often times by any means necessary due to their natural brutality of these games many of them were discontinued or standardized by the 1870s what is considered the first official college football game was played in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers universities however even though this is considered the first college football game played the game itself didn’t resemble football at all and that is because they decided to play by the rules of London.
Football Association precursor to association football though the college is now trying to standardize the sport it was still House Rules game where the visiting team had to always play by the household rules and each of these colleges had differing rule sets it took the Canadian Montreal McGill University which played by the rugby union rules to influence the growing American football which up until now look more like association football to become more standardized and brought it closer to looking like modern American football it was in 1876.
When I represented us from Harvard Columbia Princeton and Yale made a Massachusetts mess aside house convention where they standardized the rules of college football based very closely on rugby union rules there were meanings of colleges before this to standardize the rules but it was the Massasoit convention that really brought all the colleges together and created a game that looked more like football today it was also in the Massasoit convention that the first American intercollegiate Association was founded with Harvard Columbia.
Princeton being the first founders and many colleges like Yale or Dartmouth joining later on who was during the turn of the 19th century that many of the rules we associated with football were created by college coaches eater in Massasoit house convention or many following conventions the line of scrimmage to snap the player interference and the down and distance rules were just a few of the new rules added to the already unique game of american football compared to other football or rugby games developing around the world during the 1905-06 reforms the forward pass became legal and even though this is consider one of the main differences between football and rugby.
The rule wasn’t utilized very much during the football games of the early 20th century first wholly professional football game was played with the college football rules in 1895 between the clubs of La Trobe Athletic Association and the Jeannette Athletic Club however there were only few professional football games in these early times as it was seen unethical to pay people for playing sports nonetheless many football league started to be formed but none of which will last for long I took all the way till 1920.
When the precursor of what is today NFL was born it was called the American professional football association and it started as a loosely bound agreement between 14 football teams to play each other and select a winner at the end of the season this league continued on evolving independently of college football and that is why there are certain differences in today’s college and professional football as the NFL was expanding a new significant rival League formed in 1960 called the American Football Association the sleek started to hold traction and started to steal the audience and players from the NFL so in 1966.
The Leakes formed a partnership and decided to hold a Super Bowl to decide which of the two best teams from each league should be the winner then in the 1970 the AFL merged with the NFL officially creating with few exception very much the National Football League we know today to understand the history of football you have to understand that since the start of the first college football convention to standardize the rules in the 1870s it took about hundred years to come to a game we would recognize as modern football today it took hundreds of college and professional league conventions with reforms and no changes oftentimes happening on scale of decades rather than years modern football was born just as any other sport through years of adaptation and evolution to come where this now and will most certainly go through many more changes going into the future just as it did in the past.
