How Football Developed as a Game in the United States

American football has evolved from two popular games in other parts of the world: soccer and rugby. The first form of American football appeared on November 6, 1869, when teams from Princeton and Rutgers universities, two universities in New Jersey, competed in a game that was closer to a rugby match than a football game.
Walter Camp, an exciting Yale player and a driving force behind many new rules, is known as the father of American football. Camp helped write the first rules of football—which was already played on East Coast universities and Canada—in about 1876.
In 1880, Camp composed the rules that reduced the number of players per team from 15 to 11 (total of the day) and replaced rugby with the center shot to put the ball into play. (In scrum, players from both sides get close together tightly. The players then attempt to obtain possession of the ball with their feet. Gaining the ball with their hands is unique in American football – both rugby and soccer prevent this.)
Camp also defended the rule that a team needs to gain 5 yards in three plays in order to maintain possession. Today, teams must earn 10 yards in three plays or decide to bet for fourth.
Camp devised plays, formations, and established rulers. However, his biggest suggestion was intervention, which was introduced in 1888. The intervention – which allowed players to hit below the waist for the first time – made the game more violent. An offensive strategy known as the flying wedge was also popular, in which an entire team (ten players) huddled in front of a single wedge-shaped ball carrier.
Football was nearly banned in 1906 after a dozen and a half deaths (and many serious injuries), but President Theodore Roosevelt saved the game by persuading college representatives to start stricter rules to make the game less brutal and dangerous.
Although the game has cleaned up over the years, soccer is a high impact collision sport, and with collision comes pain and injury. Even with the bases and protective gear in place, players are still vulnerable on the field.
In the first ninety years of football, college football was more popular than professional football. The game was (and still is, in many schools) about tradition and many intercollegiate rivalries. Eighty years ago, having over 50,000 fans attend a great college game wasn’t unusual. During that same period, the NFL games – which officially began in 1920 – were fortunate to attract 5,000 fans.
Professional football emerged as the equal of college football after its matches began being broadcast nationally in the 1960s, but it took decades for the NFL to replace college football. And to this day, many colleges enjoy just as much fan support as some of the NFL franchises.