The idea behind American Football had existed for quite some time and there were a few leagues here and there but on this day in 1920, what would later be known as the National Football League was formed.
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Now I am very aware of the fact that American Football is a very localized thing. For the most part, only North Americans are very excited about it. I would say that many other nations are openly hostile about its existence and will utilize any opportunity to try to bag on people that like it. To those people, I say you can suck eggs. Let people enjoy what they want. You want to like Rugby or soccer(futball) better? go ahead, i can assure you, football fans do not care about this attitude and will continue to love the sport regardless of the criticism.
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The rules of the game were written at some point during 1876 or so and there had been teams and even small leagues up to 1920. However, this was the first point that there was even an attempt at a unified nationally organized league. It would take several years before it was organized in any sort of meaningful capacity and it was kind of left up to each individual team how many games they were going to have and who they would play against. So it was a little chaotic and for the most part there aren't even any records from the first couple of years.
Teams frequently moved as they were offered more lucrative deals by other communities and this process is still kind of a factor today - just think about how may cities the Rams and Cardinals have been in. However, it was established very early on that individual players were "off limits" if they were under contract by another team. Also, players could not currently be in college.
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At the start there were 14 teams (although some lists claim there was only 12) and all of them were located in the North East and Mid-West. It would be many years before the league would venture out of this area. The NFL hall of fame is currently located in Canton, Ohio because Ohio was so instrumental in the formation of the league, and the sport in general.
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black indicates the cities still have the clubs today
The league would be renamed as the National Football League (NFL) in 1922 and of course it remains that way to this day. So if you love Football like I do, today is a really important day in history. Go get a cake and blow out the nearly 100 candles that goes on top of it.
I think it is more exciting than MLS.
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well, that's not very difficult to accomplish :P
A great story about a famous sport, thank you!
To tell you the truth, I was skeptical about it for a long time. We saw it mostly in movies, and it looked so so weird for us! It is not similar to any other sport we knew, so it was like a crazy game for us. Absolutely strange. But it is so popular, it's like a philosophy of a big country, and I looked deeper at it and made myself to watch some games... and yes, it is really interesting I must admit, still strange but very adventurous:)
Do you like it?
Wow it's a long history yet cool, nice one 👍
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That is pretty awesome . I didn't watch a lot of sports growing up, but I love football now. The only thing I don't like about football is how expensive the tickets are if you want to go to a game. Even a pre-season game has crazy prices for their tickets. I guess that is the drawback of them playing so few games in a season. I still haven't made it to an MSU football game and I really need to fix that some day.
This is really a date to know for football fans. The NFL is part of American culture. Thanks for sharing!
Nice post about American Football @gooddream,
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