Football, the game, is a game that has been played through several generations in the dirt, grass and anywhere that there was ever enough space to throw and run the ball. Football is generally a game that is played outdoors by two teams that face each other, trying to run the ball to opposite endsof the field.
The ball that has been used over the years has varied in size, just as the size of the team has changed over the years and through out the different variations of the game as well. At one time the ball was a bag filled with soft material, other times the ball can be seen as a flat round object until you get to modern day leather footballs that are oval in shape andfilled with air.
You can see football in American history, in Canada, Australia, Greece, and in Scotland among other places as well. Some leagues use touch football, where you simply touch the person and they have to stop, others use Velcro flags attached to the belt, and other use tackling to push the person to the ground to stop them. The ball was never carried through the early centuriesof when football was played.
The oldest games of football are seen in Greece and in Rome. Other names for football in these countries were Harpaston, and Harpastum. Italy had another version of this game in ancient times where it was called Calcio.
Sometime in the 1200’s, England developed the game for entertainment and for a show of strength in numbers. In the 1800’s the game was taken to new heights when the game of football that never allowed a person to carry the ball was changed and a person could carry the ball across the finish line through his opponents. It was always a game of runningand throwing the ball or sack, until the 1900’s brought along newrules where kicking the ball was included in the game of football.
During the 1800’s and the 1900’s when schools were growing, the most prestigious and largest schools would train a team and face off against other schools nearby in a game of football that created competition between schools. Princeton and Harvard were two schools that used footballin their competition and entertainment of the students.
In the early years of the 1900’s football was still growing the U.S. were football leagues were being formed and rules were made to control these leagues. The first professional football game outside of collegefootball was played around this time in history.