College football
College football is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football first gained popularity in the United States.
Like gridiron football generally, college football is most popular in the United States and Canada. While no single governing body exists for college football in the United States, most schools, especially those at the highest levels of play, are members of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In Canada, collegiate football competition is governed by U Sports for universities. The Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association governs soccer and other sports but not gridiron football. Other countries, such as Mexico, Japan and South Korea, also host college football leagues with modest levels of support.
Unlike most other major sports in North America, no official minor league farm organizations exist for American football or Canadian football. Therefore, college football is generally considered to be the second tier of American and Canadian football; ahead of high school competition, but below professional competition. In some parts of the United States, especially the South and Midwest, college football is more popular than professional football. For much of the 20th century, college football was generally considered to be more prestigious than professional football.
The overwhelming majority of professional football players in the National Football League and other leagues previously played college football. The NFL draft each spring sees 224 players selected and offered a contract to play in the league, with the vast majority coming from the NCAA. Other professional leagues, such as the Canadian Football League and United Football League, hold their own drafts each year which also see primarily college players selected. Players who are not selected can still attempt to obtain a professional roster spot as an undrafted free agent. Despite these opportunities, only around 1.6% of NCAA college football players end up playing professionally in the NFL.
History
Even after the emergence of the professional National Football League, college football has remained extremely popular throughout the U.S. Although the college game has a much larger margin for talent than its pro counterpart, the sheer number of fans following major colleges provides a financial equalizer for the game, with Division I programs – the highest level – playing in huge stadiums, six of which have seating capacity exceeding 100,000 people. In many cases, college stadiums employ bench-style seating, as opposed to individual seats with backs and arm rests. This allows them to seat more fans in a given amount of space than the typical professional stadium, which tends to have more features and comforts for fans. Only three stadiums owned by U.S. colleges or universities, L&N Stadium at the University of Louisville, Center Parc Stadium at Georgia State University, and FAU Stadium at Florida Atlantic University, consist entirely of chair back seating.Early history
Modern North American football has its origins in various games, all known as "football", played at public schools in Great Britain in the mid-19th century. Early 19th century American college students played a disorganized game resembling medieval mob football. In 1827, a Harvard tradition known as "Bloody Monday" began, which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore classes. Violent games such as this were banned from college campuses around 1860.By the 1840s, students at Britain's Rugby School were playing a game in which players were able to pick up the ball and run with it, a sport later known as rugby football. The game was taken to Canada by British soldiers stationed there and was soon being played at Canadian colleges. The first documented gridiron football game was played at University College, a college of the University of Toronto, on November 9, 1861. In 1864, at Trinity College, also a college of the University of Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on rugby football.
On November 6, 1869, Rutgers University faced Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey, in the first collegiate football game. The game more closely resembled soccer than rugby or gridiron football. It was played with a round ball, and used a set of rules based on The Football Association's first set of rules.
By 1873, representatives from Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules, based closely on association football. Before this meeting, each school had its own set of rules and games were usually played using the home team's own particular code. However, the colleges coming to an agreement on soccer-like rules were unable to obtain the crucial support of Harvard University, which had been playing its own intramural football based on an informal style called the "Boston game".
File:HarvardMcGill.jpg|thumb|The McGill vs. Harvard football game in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1874; Harvard won 3–0.
Unable to agree upon rules with American colleges, Harvard instead played multiple games against McGill University in 1874. In as much as Rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the McGill team played under a set of rules which allowed a player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to McGill, was to count tries, as well as goals, in the scoring. In the Rugby rules of the time, a try only provided the attempt to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the try did not score any points itself. Harvard players were enthusiastic about McGill's rules and quickly abandoned most of the "Boston game."
In 1875, Harvard played with adapted McGill rugby rules against Tufts, and then against its closest rival, Yale. Yale and Harvard agreed to play under a set of rules called the "Concessionary Rules", which involved Harvard conceding something to Yale's soccer and Yale conceding a great deal to Harvard's rugby. On November 13, 1875, Yale and Harvard played each other for the first time ever, where Harvard won 4–0. At the first The Game, as the annual contest between Harvard and Yale came to be named, the future "father of American football" Walter Camp was among the 2000 spectators in attendance. Spectators from Princeton also carried the game back home, where it quickly became the most popular version of football.
On November 23, 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met at the Massasoit House hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts to standardize a new code of rules based on the rugby game first introduced to Harvard by McGill University in 1874. Three of the schools—Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton—formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, as a result of the meeting. Yale initially refused to join this association because of a disagreement over the number of players to be allowed per team and Rutgers were not invited to the meeting. The rules that they agreed upon were essentially those of rugby union at the time with the exception that points be awarded for scoring a try, not just the conversion afterwards.
Although American football was developed with input from McGill University, Canada had formed a separate amateur rugby league in 1873, the Foot Ball Association of Canada. The Canadian Rugby Football Union, founded in 1880, closely imitated American football rules, but interest in collegiate sports in Canada flagged over the succeeding decades and American football developed much more rapidly.
Walter Camp: father of American football
Walter Camp is widely considered to be the most important figure in the development of American football. Following the introduction of rugby-style rules to American football, Camp became a fixture at the Massasoit House conventions where rules were debated and changed. He reduced the number of players from 15 to 11 and established the line of scrimmage and the snap from center to quarterback. Originally, the snap was executed with the foot of the center. Later changes made it possible to snap the ball with the hands, either through the air or by a direct hand-to-hand pass.Camp's new scrimmage rules revolutionized the game, though not always as intended. Princeton, in particular, used scrimmage play to slow the game, making incremental progress towards the end zone during each down. Rather than increase scoring, which had been Camp's original intent, the rule was exploited to maintain control of the ball for the entire game, resulting in slow, unexciting contests. At the 1882 rules meeting, Camp proposed that a team be required to advance the ball a minimum of five yards within three downs. These down-and-distance rules, combined with the establishment of the line of scrimmage, transformed the game from a variation of rugby football into the distinct sport of American football.
Scoring table
Expansion
College football expanded greatly during the last two decades of the 19th century. Several major rivalries date from this time period.November 1890 was an active time in the sport. In Baldwin City, Kansas, on November 22, 1890, college football was first played in the state of Kansas. Baker beat Kansas 22–9. On the 27th, Vanderbilt played Nashville at Athletic Park and won 40–0. It was the first time organized football played in the state of Tennessee. The 29th also saw the first instance of the Army–Navy Game. Navy won 24–0.
East
Rutgers was first to extend the reach of the game. An intercollegiate game was first played in the state of New York when Rutgers played Columbia on November 2, 1872. It was also the first scoreless tie in the history of the fledgling sport. Yale football starts the same year and has its first match against Columbia, the nearest college to play football. It took place at Hamilton Park in New Haven and was the first game in New England. The game was essentially soccer with 20-man sides, played on a field 400 by 250 feet. Yale wins 3–0, Tommy Sherman scoring the first goal and Lew Irwin the other two.After the first game against Harvard, Tufts took its squad to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine for the first football game played in Maine. This occurred on November 6, 1875.
Penn's Athletic Association was looking to pick "a twenty" to play a game of football against Columbia. This "twenty" never played Columbia, but did play twice against Princeton. Princeton won both games 6 to 0. The first of these happened on November 11, 1876, in Philadelphia and was the first intercollegiate game in the state of Pennsylvania.
Brown entered the intercollegiate game in 1878. Penn State played its first season in 1887, but had no head coach for their first five years, from 1887 to 1891. In 1891, the Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Football Association was formed. It consisted of Bucknell University, Dickinson College, Franklin & Marshall College, Haverford College, Penn State, and Swarthmore College. Lafayette College, and Lehigh University were excluded because it was felt they would dominate the Association. Penn State won the championship with a 4–1–0 record. Bucknell's record was 3–1–1. The Association was dissolved prior to the 1892 season.
The first nighttime football game was played in Mansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892, between Mansfield State Normal and Wyoming Seminary and ended at halftime in a 0–0 tie. The Army–Navy game of 1893 saw the first documented use of a football helmet by a player in a game. Joseph M. Reeves had a crude leather helmet made by a shoemaker in Annapolis and wore it in the game after being warned by his doctor that he risked death if he continued to play football after suffering an earlier kick to the head.