History of Football.

Football (soccer and rugby) were all believed to be the byproduct of the Greek game called, "harpaston." Harpaston meant "a very rough and brutal game." In harpaston the objective was to get the ball across the goal line, by either kicking it, running or passing it diagonally to another player. The defending team's objective was to stop the opposing team from scoring by any means necessary.

After harpaston, then came the beginning of football by standardizing certain rules in the early 1800's which separated soccer, football and rugby to their own sports. The game became popular within England/Europe and then eventually made it's way over to America in 1857.  In 1857, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, and Rutgers universities sent representatives to adapt the American football rules. These four universities were the first four teams in America. Each of these teams consisted of 20 players. Originally there was 15 players on the field per team, which eventually got reduced down to 11 players per side.

Continuous modifications to the rules happened as the field was stretched to 110 yards in 1882, this is when the system of "downs" was put into affect. Originally each team had 3 downs, to get the ball a total of five yards. In 1906 it was changed from five yards, to ten yards and finally in 1912 players were given an extra down to make it the ten yards. These rules are still affect till today.

In 1905, president Roosevelt saved the demise of football, because numerous universities started to ban football due to the brutality of the game. There was extreme amounts of serious injuries and even deaths to players due to the brutality and lack of limitations to the brutality allowed in football. Theodore Roosevelt prohibited a lot of previously allowed tactics from football to lessen the amounts of injuries in the sport. As well the game times was shortened to 60 minutes, and the forward pass was introduced at the same time.

Football has always been an extremely popular sport in the United States, and has become increasingly popular in Canada. The NFL (National football League) was created in 1895. This game was played in a little town of Latrobe Pennsylvania. As well this was the very first professional game of football to be played in the United States. After this game being played it sparked a fury of other professional teams within America, which resulted in the formation of the NFL.

Canada created their own specialized rules and league after the NFL was created. Canadian Football league was the name of the league Canada created, also known as the CFL. This technically happened in the late 1950's. Previously the Canadian Rugby Football Union (CRFU) competed for trophy, which was eventually called the Grey Cup. Football and (CRFU) started competing for the grey cup from the 1930's to the formation of the CFL in the late 1950's.