The History of Football and the Impact on Our Society

The History of Football and the Impact on our Society

Abstract

In this paper I will try to explain the history of football and the impact that it can have on our society. I will try and explain the impact it has on the fans and the players. I will also try and explain how football represents our society as a whole.

Football (as well as rugby and soccer) is believed to have descended from an ancient Greek game called Harpaston . Harpaston was in a sense like football but had no side lines and no specific field length of field. It was also a rougher sport than our football of today. Points were awarded to teams by carrying the ball across the goal line, throwing it to someone on the other side of the goal line, or kicking it across the goal. It was up to the other team to stop this from happening by any means possible.

Modern versions of the game are believed to have originated in England around the twelfth century. However, the game had become so popular that King Henry II and King Henry the IV banned the game as they believed it took away from the sport of fencing and archery which at that time were traditional sports.

The beginning standards of football did not culminate until the early 1800's when the game was picked up by major public schools. Six of the seven were largely playing the same game (Eton, Harrow, and Winchester)- however the seventh, Rugby school (founded in 1567) was playing a different form of football.

Why the game at Rugby school had developed differently was lost in the history of the school. This is where the goal post was first erected. The goal was to make it easier to get a goal from further out by place kicking the ball or drop kicking the ball instead of running it into a horde of defenders guarding the goal line.

By the mid-1860's British schools had taken up the game of Rugby. The game soon landed on America's soil. The birthdate of American football per historians was November 6, 1869. This when teams from Rutgers and Princeton Universities played their first game. In early games there were 20 players on a team and football at that time still closely resembled rugby.

Representatives from Columbia, Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale met in New York City to establish the rules of intercollegiate football rules. They had decided to reduce the number of players on a team from 20 to 15. Thus the inception of the Intercollegiate Football Association or IFA. Walter Camp the coach at Yale who did not agree with the amount of people on the team and pushed for an 11 man team helped to evolve the game to from three downs to four and the size of the field to 110 yards. He also helped to change the yardage from 5 to 10 yards to advance the ball.

After a decade concern over the brutality of the game and the 18 deaths that occurred, led to the ban of the game. In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt called upon Harvard, Princeton, and Yale to help save football from demise. Thus the beginning of the National Collegiate Athletic Association or NCAA. This group consisted of a seven member Rules Committee. From this group of people the forward pass was legalized and the rough mass plays, which would cause serious injuries, were prohibited.

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