Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan. ZM / PanoramaC/ZM / PanoramaC
LE Scan Sport – American football, born in the second half of the 19th century, this year’s biggest crowd, the Superbowl, is scheduled for the next night (0:30 am in France), starting with rugby at fifteen.
On November 6, 1869, the teams of Princeton and Rutgers met in a college game, which is considered the first game in the history of American football. Indeed, with 25 players on each side of the field – as opposed to 11 today – without the offside rule, the game is a far cry from the standards of modern American soccer.
During the 19th century, many sports derived from rugby and European football were practiced by American students. Each university practiced its sport according to its own rules – “balloon”, “old division football” or the “Boston game”. Light years away from today’s Super Bowl, the game between Princeton and Rutgers was the first experiment in harmonizing the rules of the game between different universities.
Four years later, Yale, Columbia, Princeton and Rutgers instituted the first varsity football rules. In 1876, Harvard introduced a new code closer to rugby, introducing a touchdown rule instead of a try.
Walter Camp, “Father of American Football”
Walter Camp (1859-1925).
In the 1880s a Yale student, Walter Camp, revolutionized American football by giving it its own identity, away from rugby. The man nicknamed the “Father of American Football” set some of the game’s basic rules, such as the line of scrimmage – the imaginary line separating the two teams during each engagement – and the dimensions of the field (109m 48.8). I am). Walter also instituted camp downs — periods of possession of the ball during which a team must make a touchdown — and invented the quarterback position.
American football spread to universities in the late 19th century and the Rose Bowl, the first major official tournament, took place in Pasadena, California in 1902. Later, American football would experience other technological changes and become professional, most notably the creation of the NFL (National Football League) in 1922. The tradition of the Super Bowl was born in 1967.
