how did the NFL start?
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The AFC and AFL joined forces...
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Rugby football originated at Rugby School in Rugby, England.\n\nActually, it is just a regularised form of a game which was played in many parts of England between villages (literally). The games were usually annual events and involved capturing an object from one 'camp' and carrying it successfully to the other.\n\nOne surviving example of this tradition still takes place at Haxey in Lincolnshire.\n\nhttp://www.petticoated.com/curious24.htm\n\nThe games were often exceedingly bloody and there are reports of people being killed playing.  I think that the game played at Rugby school might have been just as rough except that the school had a responsibility to the parents for the boys' safety!
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History and development\n\n\nThe Laws of the Game are based on efforts made in the mid-19th century to standardise the rules of the widely varying games of football played at the independent schools of England. The first set of rules resembling the modern game were produced at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1848, at a meeting attended by representatives from Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Shrewsbury, but they were far from universally adopted. During the 1850s, many clubs were formed, throughout the English-speaking world, independent of schools or universities, to play various forms of football. Some came up with their own distinct codes of rules, most notably the Sheffield Football Club (formed by former pupils from Harrow) in 1857, which led to formation of a Sheffield FA in 1867. In 1862, J.C. Thring of Uppingham School also devised an influential set of rules.\n\nThese efforts contributed to the formation of The Football Association (The FA) in 1863 which first met on the morning of 26 October 1863 at the Freemason's Tavern in Great Queen Street, London[1]. The only school to be represented on this occasion was Charterhouse. The Freemason's Tavern was the setting for five more meetings between October and December, which eventually produced the first comprehensive set of rules. At the final meeting, the first FA treasurer, who was the representative from Blackheath, withdrew his club from the FA over the removal of two draft rules at the previous meeting, the first which allowed for the running with the ball in hand and the second, obstructing such a run by hacking (kicking an opponent in the shins), tripping and holding. Other English rugby clubs followed this lead and did not join the FA but instead in 1871 formed the Rugby Football Union. The eleven remaining clubs, under the charge of Ebenezer Cobb Morley, went on to ratify the original fourteen rules of the game. Despite this, the Sheffield FA played by its own rules until the 1870s.\n\nToday the laws of the game are determined by the International Football Association Board (IFAB). The Board was formed in 1886[2] after a meeting in Manchester of The Football Association, the Scottish Football Association, the Football Association of Wales, and the Irish Football Association.\n\nThe world's first football league was founded in England in 1888 by Aston Villa director, William McGregor. The original format contained 12 clubs from the Midlands and the North of England.\n\nThe Fédération Internationale de Football Association FIFA, the international football body, was formed in Paris in 1904 and declared that they would adhere to the rules laid down by the IFAB. The growing popularity of the international game led to the admittance of FIFA representatives to the IFAB in 1913. Today the board is made up of four representatives from FIFA and one representative from each of the four British associations.\nFootball is popular among children as well as adults.
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The first professional football draft was held February 8, 1936, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Philadelphia.  Officially known as the "NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting", the 2006 Draft will be conducted at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.\nThe Draft was imposed as a means to ensure that parity would exist among the teams in the league and that the richer, large-market teams (such as New York) would not simply outbid their smaller opponents for college players.\nThe draft is seven rounds in length.  The order for Round 1 is determined based upon reverse order of the previous year's final standings (the worst team receives the #1 pick and the Super Bowl champ receives the #32 pick).
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Super Bowl I debuted in 1967.
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I agree with you totally. Football doesn't make much sense.\n\nI believe the game was originally called football because the players would kick the ball through the uprights for a score.\n\nWhatever, it should be called something else.
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i could give you a very good answer and explanation for this but im just sick and tired of people asking the same damn question over and over again.....email me and i will give you a good answer.......but if your just looking for a biased opinion on american football bashing then screw you........im just tired of always giving good answers and ppl picking answers that are to their biased beliefs or stupid one phrase answers....i know its just points but i put a lot of thought into answers and dont get the recognition for it\n\n\nok you challenged me and emailed me so i will give you the answer based on what i have read and what people have told me...and also theres several different reasons why it is called football not just one\nfirst i will use the help of wikipedia as most people do but i dont copy and paste because you could do that yourself and i wont insult your intelligence\n\nFirst you have to realize that when football first came to america the rules have changed over the years...american football comes from rugby...also called rugby football....they dont use there feet as much as association football but they still call it football.......but im going off on a tangent here...when football first came to north america it was played more like soccer than rugby....there was a great deal of kicking even more than rugby....they wanted to create a sport like rugby but had more kicking in it....the foreward pass only came out later and that grew more dominant than the latteral which was at first the only way(other than kicking of course) to score points.....another thing to remember is that football doesnt necessarily mean using the foot for the sports as said on wikipedia.....theres a strong possibility that it refers more to the fact that they play on foot....it explains that "football" was coined to express all sports played on feet by pesants during medival time so they can differentiate that from sports played on horses by aristocrates\n\nlisten the basic thing to remember is that there are a ton of theories and explanations for why football is called football when they use their hands but do you really think the americans are gonna change the name after so many years of history.......thats like saying why dont baseball players change their name to american cricket....i know football doesnt make 100% sence but the explanation is all in the history....either you live with it or not....sorry if i sound pissed but i've seen this question along with rugby players bashing football players calling it a pu$$y sport and that just gets me mad
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AWWYYY  SAAAYY THERE.\n\nThe real world is it now?\n\nSuch an unusual question!\n\nWe KRAZZEE yanks had to think of a name for a totally now game that WE invented over here in the UNREEAL world, so we thought about it for a very long time. At least five seconds and chose FOOTBALL  because the game starts by putting the ball in motion with a kick from the FOOT! \n\nThere now,  I hope that bloody well clears up that matter. \n\nCheerio old chap....
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1869\nRutgers and Princeton played a college soccer football game, the first ever, November 6. The game used modified London Football Association rules. During the next seven years, rugby gained favor with the major eastern schools over soccer, and modern football began to develop from rugby. \n1876\nAt the Massasoit convention, the first rules for American football were written. Walter Camp, who would become known as the father of American football, first became involved with the game. \n\n   \nIn an era in which football was a major attraction of local athletic clubs, an intense competition between two Pittsburgh-area clubs, the Allegheny Athletic Association (AAA) and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club (PAC), led to the making of the first professional football player. Former Yale All-America guard William (Pudge) Heffelfinger was paid $500 by the AAA to play in a game against the PAC, becoming the first person to be paid to play football, November 12. The AAA won the game 4-0 when Heffelfinger picked up a PAC fumble and ran 35 yards for a touchdown. \n\n1893\nThe Pittsburgh Athletic Club signed one of its players, probably halfback Grant Dibert, to the first known pro football contract, which covered all of the PAC's games for the year. \n\n1895\nJohn Brallier became the first football player to openly turn pro, accepting $10 and expenses to play for the Latrobe YMCA against the Jeannette Athletic Club. \n\n1896 \nThe Allegheny Athletic Association team fielded the first completely professional team for its abbreviated two-game season. \n\n1897\nThe Latrobe Athletic Association football team went entirely professional, becoming the first team to play a full season with only professionals. \n\n1898 \nA touchdown was changed from four points to five. \n\n1899\nChris O'Brien formed a neighborhood team, which played under the name the Morgan Athletic Club, on the south side of Chicago. The team later became known as the Normals, then the Racine (for a street in Chicago) Cardinals, the Chicago Cardinals, the St. Louis Cardinals, the Phoenix Cardinals, and, in 1994, the Arizona Cardinals. The team remains the oldest continuing operation in pro football. \n\n1900\nWilliam C. Temple took over the team payments for the Duquesne Country and Athletic Club, becoming the first known individual club owner. \n\n1902 \nBaseball's Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack, and the Philadelphia Phillies formed professional football teams, joining the Pittsburgh Stars in the first attempt at a pro football league, named the National Football League. The Athletics won the first night football game ever played, 39-0 over Kanaweola AC at Elmira, New York, November 21. All three teams claimed the pro championship for the year, but the league president, Dave Berry, named the Stars the champions. Pitcher Rube Waddell was with the Athletics, and pitcher Christy Mathewson a fullback for Pittsburgh. The first World Series of pro football, actually a five-team tournament, was played among a team made up of players from both the Athletics and the Phillies, but simply named New York; the New York Knickerbockers; the Syracuse AC; the Warlow AC; and the Orange (New Jersey) AC at New York's original Madison Square Garden. New York and Syracuse played the first indoor football game before 3,000, December 28. Syracuse, with Glen (Pop) Warner at guard, won 6-0 and went on to win the tournament. \n\n1903\nThe Franklin (Pa.) Athletic Club won the second and last World Series of pro football over the Oreos AC of Asbury Park, New Jersey; the Watertown Red and Blacks; and the Orange AC. Pro football was popularized in Ohio when the Massillon Tigers, a strong amateur team, hired four Pittsburgh pros to play in the season-ending game against Akron. At the same time, pro football declined in the Pittsburgh area, and the emphasis on the pro game moved west from Pennsylvania to Ohio. \n\n1904\nA field goal was changed from five points to four. Ohio had a
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From the Official Australian Football League (AFL) [Aussie Rules] site,\n\n"In 1857, Tom Wills, one of the founders of Australian Football, returned to Australia after schooling in England where he was football captain of Rugby School and a brilliant cricketer. Initially, he advocated the winter game of football as a way of keeping cricketers fit during off-season...." [1]
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Football is a game which dates back literally hundreds of years but it has changed form a lot over the centuries. It originally started as an unrecognisable game in which two whole villages would compete against each other to fight, kick, punch and brawl their way to carry a ball to a certain target area. The current version of the game started in England in the second half of the 19th century.\n\nAs for introducing it to the world, the first international game was between England and Scotland but I can't say for sure exactly when
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radio has been around since the late 1800's and american football began in the early 1900's
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Hi there...\n\nHere is the answer I found from the Word Detective site:\n\nThe use of "gridiron" as a metaphor for the football field, and, by extension, to the game itself, dates back to 1897. The original "gridirons" were just that: grids made of iron, used to cook fish or meat over an open fire. Early on in the history of football, someone in the cheap seats high in the stadium must have noticed that the parallel yardlines marking the field resembled a "gridiron," and so the metaphor was born. The first use of this sense of "gridiron" in print came in an account of the annual Harvard-Yale game carried in the Boston Herald.
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Money Money Money is your answer\n\nThe first time the Super Bowl was played in February was 2002, following the 2001 season.  There was a week that was cancelled after 9/11, which pushed the Regular season back a week, therefore pushing the playoffs back as well.  \n\nMore recently, the NFL has shyed away from having their opening weekend be the same weekend as Labor Day.  That way, the NCAA can have their own big opening weekend bash, then the NFL can follow suit a week later.  Both of which allow for more money to be made by each organization.  That pushes the start of the NFL season more towards mid September, throw in the 17 week schedule, and your regular season takes you right up to, if not into the new year.  They tinkered with cutting out the week between the conference championships and the Super Bowl, but again, that didnt leave them enough time to get things together for the teams or fans, not to mention that it allows the NFL to make more money off the event.  \n\nHope this helps!
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The first known African-American to play pro football was Charles Follis, with the Shelby Athletic Club in 1902.\n\nAs far as the NFL as we know it today.\nFirst African-American NFL Player - March 21, 1946\nThe Los Angeles Rams signed halfback Kenny Washington to an NFL contract.
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canada at least, they got their own league, the CFL, here, in europe, we have a pro league too called the NFLE (E for Europe), teams are mostly based in germany, otherwise, each european country has its own non-pro league\nTo answer your second question, no, (US) football and rugby are to different sports; they have some things in common, like, for instance, the shape of the ball (although the pigskin is a bit smaller than the rugby ball) and the way to score points (entering the endzone with the ball) although in tugby, the ball MUST touch the ground in order to score the 5 or 6 pts...
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Football, as a genre, has been around for hundreds of years.  The current version of the game played in America was first played in the 1870's