The American people love nothing more than a good football game. Each fall season, millions of people gear up to support their favorite team with jerseys, football cards, barbeques and tailgating activities. Trading sports cards has become a popular pastime with football fans perhaps even more so than the traditional trading of baseball cards. Fans cannot get enough of their favorite teams and those seasonal games.

Most football fans pick a team, whether it is college or NFL and stick with it throughout their lives. Because of this, fans get to know their team with the ultimate familiarity; many people literally grow up watching their favorite football team play each game of the season. With this kind of dedication, it is easy to be swept up in the fever of American football. This country has been reveling in the sport for so long, it almost feels as if it were always a part of our culture. But when and where did this sport first take shape?

Not too surprisingly, American football was derived from the classic sport of rugby. This game of the early nineteenth century saw its own beginnings take place at the Rugby Boy’s School in England. But there is another ingredient that helped football involved into the modern sport we know and love: the American development of “ballown” – a game which developed around the same time as rugby, with similar leanings. It was a group of Princeton athletes, who first began playing ballown, but they were not alone, other east coast universities were developing their own games along a similar vein. Back in those days, the game resembled something similar to what was being played across the pond in England. Basically, each team would try to advance into the other team’s goal zone using any force that could be summoned. As the middle of the century drew closer, teams began using an inflatable ball, and the game changed into a sport of passing, kicking and running.

In those early days, there were more injuries than there are even today. Because of a definite lack of rules, the game was much more violent in its early forms. Because the violence continued to escalate, many universities thought twice about allowing it to be played on campus. It was Theodore Roosevelt acting as president who tried to persuade those Ivy League schools to form more coherent guidelines and make the sport a safer activity. The Intercollegiate Football Association was formed to help keep the game within the bounds of its new rules.

Football became the game we know thanks to Walter Camp, a Yale student during the late 1870s. He worked as the head of the IFA’s committee on rules, proposing a number of changes that would be familiar to current sports fans. He asked that the number of players be reduced from 15 to 11, and developed the idea of a line of scrimmage – one of football’s main features today. It was also he who created the terms of advancing the ball a minimum of five yards within three downs.

Ellie Lewis recently sold her old football cards to a collector for a nice profit. Her son purchased sports cards to give to his younger brother.

For more information about football cards go to
http://baseballcardshop.net/footballcards.html .

Author Bio: Ellie Lewis recently sold her old football cards to a collector for a nice profit. Her son purchased sports cards to give to his younger brother.

Category: Business
Keywords: football cards,sports cards