Background

American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football. Both sports have their origin in varieties of football played in the UK in the mid to 19th century, where a football is kicked at a goal and or run over a line. Football resulted from several major differences from rugby. Walter Camp is considered the father of American Football. Collegiate football’s popularity grew dramatically in the first half of the 20th century. Bowl games, which are affiliated with collegiate football, attracted national audience for collegiate teams due to the many intense rivalries within college teams.

Professional football can be traced back to 1892. In 1920 the American Professional Football Association now known as the National Football Association was formed with the name changing in 1922.

Fun Facts

The NFL is the highest level of professional football in America. It has two conferences – the AFC and the NFC and each has four divisions for a total of 16 teams in each conference. Thirty-two teams make up the NFL. A regular season is comprised of 17 weeks with teams playing 16 weeks and off with a bye week. The season currently starts on the Thursday night in the first full week of September (the Thursday after Labor Day) and runs weekly to late December or early January with most games played on Sundays and one big game on Monday night. At the end of each regular season, six teams from each conference (at least one from each division) play in the playoffs, a twelve-team single-elimination tournament that leads to the big championship game also known as the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl takes place at a pre-selected site. The site is typically a city with an NFL team as well.

The winners of a Super Bowl hold the title until the next year’s Super Bowl game is over which marks the end of football season.

Basic Rules

Football is played by two opposing teams, each fielding 11 players. A football game consists of four quarters, each with 15 minutes. A football game is played on a rectangular field, 100 yd (91.4 m) long and 53.5 yd (48.9 m) wide. At both ends of the 100-yard dimension, white lines called goal lines mark off the entrances to the end zones. Each team defends one end zone. A team must carry, pass, or kick the ball into the 10-yd (9-m) end zone on the opponents’ half of the field to score. Each play must begin on or between the hash marks.

The hash marks are 53 ft 4 in (16.3 m) from each sideline in college and high school football, and 70 ft 9 in (21.6 m) from each sideline in the National Football League (NFL). Before each play, the officials place the ball either between the hash marks or on the hash mark closest to the end of the previous play.