Origins of Football



Walter Camp, famously known as
the father of American football.

 We can trace the origins of American football back to 1869, when Rutgers and Princeton played in the first college soccer football game, which was a combination of soccer, football, and rugby. Over the next few years, these three diverged into separate sports. In eastern colleges, rugby became more popular than soccer, and football subsequently emerged from rugby. It is interesting to think that the roots of these three popular sports crossed paths back in the 19th century. In 1876, Walter Camp, known as the father of American football, helped to write the first rules of football.

Over the next few decades, several football clubs emerged, notably the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. The intense rivalry between these two teams led to Pudge Heffelfinger being paid $500 in 1892 by the AAA to play in a game against the PAC, essentially making him the first professional football player ever. The first completely professional football team to play an entire season, the Latrobe Athletic Association, came five years later in 1897. As time went on in the 19th century, several rules of the game (i.e. the point value of field goals and touchdowns, the legalization of the forward pass) were slowly modified and altered.

Why do you think that football emerged as the dominant sport in America, as opposed to soccer? It seems that we would follow Europe's obsession with soccer, but we surprisingly did the opposite.