History Of American Football
The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football. Both games have their origin in multiple varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which a football is kicked at a goal or kicked over a line, which in turn were based on the varieties of English public school football games descending from medieval ball games. American football resulted from several major divergences from association football and rugby football. Most notably the rule changes were instituted by Walter Camp, a Yale University athlete and coach who is considered to be the "Father of American Football". Among these important changes were the introduction of the line of scrimmage, of down-and-distance rules, and of the legalization of forward pass and blocking. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, gameplay developments by college coaches such as Eddie Cochems, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Parke H. Davis, Knute Rockne, and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rugby Football
Rugby football is the collective name for the team sports of rugby union and rugby league. Canadian football and, to a lesser extent, American football were once considered forms of rugby football, but are seldom now referred to as such. The governing body of Canadian football, Football Canada, was known as the Canadian Rugby Union as late as 1967, more than fifty years after the sport parted ways with rugby rules. Rugby football started about 1845 at Rugby School in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, although forms of football in which the ball was carried and tossed date to the Middle Ages (see medieval football). Rugby football spread to other Public school (United Kingdom), English public schools in the 19th century and across the British Empire as former pupils continued to play it. Rugby football split into two codes in 1895, when twenty-one clubs from the North of England left the Rugby Football Union to form the Rugby Football League, Northern Rugby Football Union (renamed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Glenn Scobey Warner
Glenn Scobey Warner (April 5, 1871 – September 7, 1954), most commonly known as Pop Warner, was an American college football coach at various institutions who is responsible for several key aspects of the modern game. Included among his innovations are the single and double wing formations (precursors of the modern spread and shotgun formations), the three point stance and the body blocking technique. Fellow pioneer coach Amos Alonzo Stagg called Warner "one of the excellent creators". He was inducted as a coach into the College Football Hall of Fame as part of its inaugural class in 1951. He also contributed to a junior football program which became known as Pop Warner Little Scholars, a popular youth American football organization. In the early 1900s, he created a premier football program at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School—a federally-funded, off-reservation Indian boarding school. He also coached teams to four national championships: Pittsburgh in 191 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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AP Poll
The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadcasters from across the nation. Each voter provides their own ranking of the top 25 teams, and the individual rankings are then combined to produce the national ranking by giving a team 25 points for a first place vote, 24 for a second place vote, and so on down to 1 point for a twenty-fifth place vote. Ballots of the voting members in the AP poll are made public. College football The football poll is released Sundays at 2 pm Eastern time during the season, unless ranked teams have not finished their games. History The AP college football poll's origins go back to the 1930s. The news media began running their own polls of sports writers to determine, by popular opinion, the best college football teams in the country. One of the earliest su ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hash Marks
In sports, a hash mark or hash line is a short line/bar marking that is painted perpendicular to the sidelines or side barricades, used to help referees and players recognize on-field locations and visually measure distances. Hash marks serve the same function as the graduated markings on measuring tools such as rulers. Usage in ice hockey In ice hockey, the hash marks are two pairs of parallel lines on either side of the face-off circles in both ends of the rink. Players must remain on their team's side of the hash mark nearest their own goal during a face-off until the puck hits the ice. Usage in gridiron football In American football and Canadian football, the hash marks are two rows of lines near the middle of the field that are parallel to the side lines. These small lines ( wide by long) are used to mark the 1-yard sections between each of the 5-yard lines, which go from sideline to sideline. All plays start with the ball on or between the hash marks. That is, if the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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World Series Of Football (1902–03)
The World Series of Football was a series of football games played indoors at New York City's Madison Square Garden in 1902 and 1903. It originally comprised five teams, four from the state of New York and one from New Jersey. While none of the teams were really considered the best in the country, historians refer to the affair as a "World Series". However, it was hardly a series in the sense of two strong teams playing each other over several games. In fact, no team played another more than once and the team pairings were also considered odd. Under the 1902 system, the anticipated second-place team was automatically swept into the championship game without even playing a down while the expected first-place finisher had to fight its way through the brackets, effectively creating a cross between a traditional tournament and a " gauntlet-style" tournament for the first-place team. The series is best remembered for showcasing the first indoor professional football game in 1902. 19 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1932 NFL Playoff Game
The 1932 NFL Playoff Game was an extra game held to break a tie in the season's final standings in the National Football League. It matched the host Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans. Because of snowfall and anticipated extremely cold temperatures in Chicago, Illinois, it was moved indoors and played at the three-year-old Chicago Stadium on December 18 on a reduced-size field on Sunday night. Standings controversy Since the NFL's first season in 1920, the league title had been awarded to the team with the best regular season record based on winning percentage with ties excluded. While four of the first six championships were disputed, only once (in ) did two teams finish tied for first place in the standings: the Chicago Staleys, who became the Bears the following year, and the Buffalo All-Americans finished with identical 9-1 records, and had split a two-game series with each other, but league officials used a tiebreaker to controversially give the Staleys the title ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Major Professional Sports Leagues In The United States And Canada
The major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada commonly refer to the highest men's professional competitions of team sports in those countries. The four leagues traditionally included in the definition are Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL). Other prominent leagues include Major League Soccer (MLS) and the Canadian Football League (CFL). MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL are commonly referred to as the "Big Four." Each of these is the wealthiest professional club competition in its sport worldwide, and along with the English Premier League they make up the top five sports leagues by revenue in the world. In addition, the sports of these four leagues were all developed in their modern forms in North America, and all except American football have become popular internationally. Because the leagues enjoy a significant place in popular culture in the U.S. and C ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada and the highest professional level of American football in the world. Each NFL season begins with a three-week preseason in August, followed by the 18-week regular season which runs from early September to early January, with each team playing 17 games and having one bye week In sport, a bye is the preferential status of a player or team that is automatically advanced to the next round of a tournament, without having to play an opponent in an early round. In knockout (elimination) tournaments they can be granted eit .... Following the conclusion of the regular season, seven teams from each conference (four division winners and three wild card teams) advance to the p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pittsburgh Athletic Club (football)
The Pittsburgh Athletic Club or the Pittsburg Athletic Club football team, established in 1891, was based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1892 the intense competition between two Pittsburgh-area clubs, the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, led to William (Pudge) Heffelfinger becoming the first known professional football player. Heffelfinger was paid $500 by Allegheny to play in a game against Pittsburgh on November 12, 1892. As a result, Heffelfinger became the first person to be paid to play football. Allegheny would go on to win the game, 4–0, when Heffelfinger picked up a Pittsburgh fumble and ran it 35 yards for a touchdown. In 1893, Pittsburgh again made history when it signed one of its players, probably halfback Grant Dibert, to the first known pro football contract, which covered all of the team's games for the year. History Origins In 1891 the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, then called the East End Gymnasium Club, decided to field a footbal ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Allegheny Athletic Association
The Allegheny Athletic Association was an athletic club that fielded the first ever professional American football player and later the first fully professional football team. The organization was founded in 1890 as a regional athletic club in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, which is today the North Side of Pittsburgh. History Origins The Allegheny team was assembled in 1890. At that time athletic clubs and associations, ranging from the best with extensive facilities to local organizations with minimum meeting rooms, were in their prime as a source of fraternal fellowship for athletes. In most sports, Allegheny provided very little competition for the more established East End Gymnasium Club (EEGC), which in 1892 became the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Allegheny soon took up football largely when the club discovered that it could give them a recruiting edge over the East Enders. Many Allegheny club members had gone to eastern colleges and played football. Members O. D. Thompson and Jo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pudge Heffelfinger
William Walter "Pudge" Heffelfinger (December 20, 1867 – April 2, 1954), also spelled Hafelfinger, was an American football player and coach. He is considered the first athlete to play American football professionally, having been paid to play in 1892. Early life William Walter Heffelfinger was born in 1867 in the then-small city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Christopher B. Heffelfinger and Mary Ellen Totton, both of whom were born in Pennsylvania. Heffelfinger's father came by riverboat to Minneapolis, eventually joining the Union Army at the outset of the Civil War. He was wounded during the Battle of Gettysburg, and after the war started the family shoe manufacturing business. During Heffelfinger's lifetime, the family rose to prominence in Minneapolis. As a boy, Heffelfinger was nicknamed "Pudge". He played baseball and football in high school. Occasionally, during his junior and senior years of high school he also played for the University of Minnesota, in baseball, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Professional Football (gridiron)
In the United States and Canada, the term professional football includes the professional forms of American and Canadian gridiron football. In common usage, it refers to former and existing major football leagues in either country. Currently, there are multiple professional football leagues in North America: the two best known are the National Football League (NFL) in the U.S. and the Canadian Football League (CFL) in Canada. American football leagues have existed in Europe since the late 1970s, with competitive leagues all over Europe hiring American Imports to strengthen rosters. The Austrian Football League and German Football League top division are known as the best leagues in Europe. The Japan X-League is also a strong league that has a long history since 1971. The NFL has existed continuously since being so named in 1922. The best American football players are among the highest paid athletes in the world. Organization Compared to the other major professional sports leag ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |