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American football game between the Tennessee Titans and the Houston Texans in 2005.

American football, known in the United States and Canada simply as football,^[1] is a competitive team sport known for mixing strategy with physical play. The object of the game is to score points by advancing the ball^[2] into the opposing team's end zone. The ball can be advanced by carrying it (a running play) or by throwing it to a teammate (a passing play). Points can be scored in a variety of ways, including carrying the ball over the goal line, catching a pass from beyond the goal line, tackling an opposing ball carrier in his own end zone, or kicking the ball through the goal posts on the opposing side. The winner is the team with the most points when time expires at the end of the last play.

American football is also played outside the United States. National leagues exist in Germany, Sweden, Japan, Mexico and the United Kingdom. The National Football League ran a developmental league in Europe from 1991–1992 and 1995–2006.

[edit] History

An early American football team, from the turn of the twentieth century

The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and soccer. 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. Also like soccer American football has twenty two players on the field of play. Further more, player position references are used such as the term "halfback" and "fullback".

American football resulted from several major divergences from rugby football, most notably the rule changes instituted by Walter Camp, considered the "Father of American Football". Among these important changes were the introduction of the line of scrimmage and of down-and-distance rules. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, gameplay developments by college coaches such as Amos Alonzo Stagg, Knute Rockne, and Glenn "Pop" Warner helped take advantage of the newly introduced forward pass. The popularity of collegiate football grew as it became the dominant version of the sport for the first half of the twentieth century. Bowl games, a college football tradition, attracted a national audience for collegiate teams. Bolstered by fierce rivalries, college football still holds widespread appeal in the US.^[3][4][5]

Walter Camp

The origin of professional football can be traced back to 1892, with William "Pudge" Heffelfinger's $500 contract to play in a game for the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. In 1920 the American Professional Football Association was formed. This league changed its name to the National Football League (NFL) two years later, and eventually became the major league of American football. Primarily a sport of Midwestern, industrial towns in the United States, professional football eventually became a national phenomenon. Football's increasing popularity is usually traced to the 1958 NFL Championship Game, a contest that has been dubbed the "Greatest Game Ever Played". A rival league to the NFL, the American Football League (AFL), began play in 1960; the pressure it put on the senior league led to a merger between the two leagues and the creation of the Super Bowl, which has become the most watched television event in the United States on an annual basis.^[6]

[edit] Basic strategy

Because the game stops after every down, giving teams a chance to call a new play, strategy plays a major role in football. Each team has a playbook of dozens to hundreds of plays. Ideally, each play is a scripted, strategically sound team-coordinated endeavor. Some plays are very safe; they are likely to get only a few yards. Other plays have the potential for long gains but at a greater risk of a loss of yardage or a turnover.

Generally speaking, rushing plays are less risky than passing plays. However, there are relatively safe passing plays and risky running plays. To deceive the other team, some passing plays are designed to resemble running plays and vice versa. These are referred to as play-action passes and draws. There are many trick or gadget plays, such as when a team lines up as if it intends to punt and then tries to run or pass for a first down. Such high-risk plays are a great thrill to the fans when they work. However, they can spell disaster if the opposing team realizes the deception and acts accordingly.

The defense also plans plays in response to expectations of what the offense will do. For example, a "blitz" (using linebackers or defensive backs to charge the quarterback) is often attempted when the team on defense expects a pass. A blitz makes downfield passing more difficult but exposes the defense to big gains if the offensive line stems the rush.

Many hours of preparation and strategizing, including film review by both players and coaches, go into the days between football games. This, along with the demanding physicality of football (see below), is why teams typically play at most one game per week.

[edit] Physicality

A halfback leads fellow backs through an agility drill at the Air Force Academy

American football is a collision sport. To stop the offense from advancing the ball, the defense must tackle the player with the ball by knocking or pulling him down. As such, defensive players must use some form of physical contact to bring the ball-carrier to the ground, within certain rules and guidelines. Tacklers cannot kick or punch the runner. They also cannot grab the face mask of the runner's helmet or lead into a tackle with their own helmet. Despite these and other rules regarding unnecessary roughness, most other forms of tackling are legal. Blockers and defenders trying to evade them also have wide leeway in trying to force their opponents out of the way. Quarterbacks are regularly hit by defenders coming on full speed from outside the quarterback's field of vision. This is commonly known as a blindside.

To compensate for this, players must wear special protective equipment, such as a padded plastic helmet, shoulder pads, hip pads and knee pads. These protective pads were introduced decades ago and have improved ever since to help minimize lasting injury to players. An unintended consequence of all the safety equipment has resulted in increasing levels of violence in the game. Players may now hurl themselves at one another at high speeds without a significant chance of injury. The injuries that do result tend to be severe and often season or career-ending and sometimes fatal. In previous years with less padding, tackling more closely resembled tackles in Rugby football. Better helmets have allowed players to use their helmets as weapons. This form of tackling is particularly unwise, due to the great potential for brain or spinal injury. All this has caused the various leagues, especially the NFL, to implement a complicated series of penalties for various types of contact. Most recently, virtually any contact with the helmet of a defensive player on the quarterback, or any contact to the quarterback's head, is now a foul.

Despite protective equipment and rule changes to emphasize safety, injuries remain very common in football. It is increasingly rare, for example, for NFL quarterbacks or running backs (who take the most direct hits) to make it through an entire season without missing some time to injury. Additionally, 28 football players, mostly high schoolers, died from direct football injuries in the years 2000-05 and an additional 68 died indirectly from dehydration or other examples of "non-physical" dangers, according to the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research.^[7] Concussions are common, with about 41,000 suffered every year among high school players according to the Brain Injury Association of Arizona.^[8] In 1981, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who played football in high school, commented on the contact of the sport: "[Football] is the last thing left in civilization where men can literally fling themselves bodily at one another in combat and not be at war."^[9]

Extra and optional equipment such as neck rolls, spider pads, rib protectors (referred to as "flak jackets"), and elbow pads help against injury as well, though they do not tend to be used by the majority of players due to their lack of requirement.

The danger of football and the equipment required to reduce it make regulation football impractical for casual play. Flag football and touch football are less violent variants of the game popular among recreational players.

[edit] Outside the United States

Outside the United States, the sport is referred to as "American football" (or a translation thereof) to differentiate it from other football codes such as association football and rugby football. In Australia and New Zealand the game is known as Gridiron football, although in the United States the term gridiron refers only to the playing field itself.^[10] In much of the world, the term football is unambiguous and refers to Association Football.

The NFL has attempted to introduce the game to other nations and operated a developmental league, NFL Europa, with teams in five German cities and one in the Netherlands, but this league folded following the 2007 season. The professional Canadian Football League and collegiate Canadian Interuniversity Sport play under the only slightly different Canadian rules.

In the UK, 46 teams play in the British American Football League. The BAFL is comprised of three levels: The Premier, of which there are 7 teams; BAFL 1, of which there are 12 teams; and BAFL 2, of which there are 27 teams. While the lower level teams have their own championship games during BritBowl Weekend, only Premier league teams face each other in the BritBowl which is it traditionally held in Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium.

In Japan, the X-League is a professional league with 60 teams in four divisions, using promotion and relegation. After the post-season playoffs, the X-League champion is determined in the Japan X Bowl. There are also over 200 universities fielding teams, with the national collegiate championship determined by the Koshien Bowl. The professional and collegiate champions then face each other in the Rice Bowl to determine the national champion.

In Germany, the German Football League whose elite division is called bundesliga, has 12 teams partitioned into north and south conferences. The finalists from the playoffs determine the German champion during the German Bowl.

In Hungary, 18 registered teams participate in a the MAFL's two division league structure. The sport has grown significantly since 2004 and with some top Division I teams participating in the CEFL.

The International Federation of American Football is the governing body for American football with 45 member associations from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. The IFAF also oversees the American Football World Cup, which is held every four years. Japan won the first two World Cups, held in 1999 and 2003. Team USA, which had not participated in the previous World Cups, won the title in 2007.

Major American leagues have also held some regular season games outside of the United States. On October 2, 2005, the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers played the first regular season NFL game outside of the United States, in Mexico City's Estadio Azteca,^[11] From 2007, the NFL has played or has plans to play at least one regular season game outside of the United States. The NCAA will also play games outside of the U.S. In 2012, The United States Naval Academy will play the University of Notre Dame in Dublin, Ireland.

[edit] See also

• American football in the Netherlands
• American football on Thanksgiving
• Comparison of American football and rugby league
• Eight-man football
• Fantasy football (American)
• Glossary of American football
• Gridiron football
• List of American football players
• List of American football stadiums by capacity
• List of American football teams in Germany
• List of American football teams in the Netherlands
• List of American football teams in the United Kingdom
• List of defunct sports leagues
• List of leagues of American and Canadian football
• Nine-man football
• Pro Football Hall of Fame
• Six-man football
• Sprint Football
• Strat-O-Matic Football
• Street football (American)

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• "Digest of Rules" National Football League. Retrieved on 2007-10-31.
• History and the basics. National Football League. Retrieved on 2005-12-28.
• Playing with the Percentages When Trailing by Two Touchdowns. Montana State University. Retrieved on 2005-12-24.

[edit] Further reading

• Sports Illustrated magazine dated December 4, 2005; "Football America", a series of articles attesting to the pervasive popularity of American football in the United States at all levels.

[edit] External links

• Top 10 Super Bowl Commercials
• NCAA's complete college football rules; available as a PDF file
• Movie of 1903 football game between the University of Chicago and the University of Michigan
• National Football League Official Signals.
• Annual Survey of Football Injury Research
• Brief explanation of the sport by the BBC aimed at a non-american audience
• American Football at the Open Directory Project
• American Youth Football
• Football rules and the history