Essay on American Football

Submitted By chrisstanford
Words: 547
Pages: 3

Beaten, bloody, and drained of energy, the two teams in competition still thirst for victory and strive to defeat their opponents. Both teams can smell victory in the air and give their all to come out on top of this football game. All kinds of emotions stir and, as the men pound at each other constantly, the crowd roars. Because of all of the intensity involved in the game, football is one of the world’s most popular sports; however, understanding the game of football is not easy. Football is a complex sport in its origin, evolution, and rules of the game. It has been changing since it was created.
> It is said that the forerunner of American football was a game called “harpaston,” played by the ancient Greeks.(1) Similar to modern football, the object of harpaston was to move a ball across a goal line by kicking, throwing, or running with it. However, most modern versions of football originated in England in the twelfth century. A certain form of football was known during this time, and it became so popular that it was banned because it took attention away from the military sport of archery. Modern football is a mixture of soccer- where a ball is kicked to opposite goals by two opposing teams and they have to defend their own goal and try to kick the ball into the opposite goal, and rugby- in which players run with the ball and tackle each other.
> The first football game was known as the “Boston Game,” and was played at Harvard University. Harvard accepted a challenge from McGill University, who carried the game on annually. After a couple years of the "Boston Game" other prep schools such as Yale, Princeton and Rutgers started to play the game. Yet, the NCAA wasn't completely formed till 1973.(2).
> The history of American football, a spectator sport in the United States, can be traced to early versions of rugby football. Both games have their origin in varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which a ball is kicked at a goal and/or run over a line. American football resulted from several major