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Although there are mentions of Native Americans playing ball games, contemporary American football has its origins in long-established ball games played in villages and schools in Europe for several centuries before America was settled by Europeans.

There are reports of early settlers at Jamestown, Virginia playing games with inflated balls in the the first part of the 17th century.

Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional “mob football” played in England, especially on Shrove Tuesday. The games remained pretty much unorganized until the 19th century, when a lot of colleges took up the sport.

In those days, each school played its own variety of football. Princeton students played a game called “ballown” as early as 1820. A Harvard tradition known as “Bloody Monday” began in 1827, which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore students.

Dartmouth played its own version called “Old Division Football”, the rules of which were first published in 1871, although the game dates to at least the 1830s. All of these games, and others, shared certain rules.

They were largely “mob” type games, with large numbers of players trying to get the ball into a goal area, often by any means possible. The rules were simple and violent behavior and injury were common .

The brutality of these mob-style games led to extensive protests and a decision to abandon them. Yale, under pressure from the city of New Haven, banned the play of all forms of football in 1860, while Harvard did the same in 1861

Two basic types of football had developed by this time: “kicking” games and “running” (or “carrying”) games. A cross of the two, known as the “Boston game”, was played by a group known as the Oneida Football Club.

The club, considered by some historians as the first real football club in the United States, was formed in 1862 by schoolboys who played the “Boston game” on Boston Common.

Walter Camp is widely considered to be the most important character in the development of American football. He developed many of the rule changes and playing strategies which made American Football the unique sport that it has become today.

His first suggestion was to reduce the quantity of players from 15 to 11. The effect of this was to open up the game and place more emphasis on speed rather than strength.

Camp’s most well-known change, the creation of the line of scrimmage, was also designed to speed up play although many teams utilized it to slow down the play.

Camp therefore 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 creation of the line of scrimmage, transformed the game from a variant of rugby or soccer into the distinct sport of American football.

While it has had a long history as a college sport, professional football is a fairly modern institution . The first wholly professional game was not played until 1895 and the first known professional league, the National Football League was not created until 1902

At the end of the 1932 season, the Chicago Bears and the Portsmouth Spartans tied with the best regular-season records. To ascertain the champion, the league voted to hold its first playoff game.

Chicago won, 9?0. The playoff proved so popular that the league was restructured into two divisions for the 1933 season, with the two winners advancing to a pre-programmed championship game.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many subjects, but is at present concerned with London Olympics 2012 venues. Click a link if you are interested in 2012 London Olympics Volunteers.