American football was made popular by teams representing
colleges and universities. These teams dominated the
game for most of the first 100 years of football in the
United States. Even today, despite greatly increased
interest in professional football, intercollegiate
contests—played by some 640 team—are attended by more
than 35 million spectators each year.
Many college
stadiums hold more than 50,000 spectators; one stadium,
at the University of Michigan, holds more than 100,000.
Many of the major universities are now grouped in
conferences, such as the Big Ten (northern midwest), the
Big Eight (midwest), the Pacific Ten (western states),
the Southeastern Conference, and the Ivy League
(northeast).
The birth date of football in the United
States is generally regarded by football historians as
November 6, 1869, when teams from Rutgers and Princeton
universities met in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for the
first intercollegiate football game. In the early games,
each team used 25 players at a time. By 1873 the number
was reduced to 20 players, in 1876 to 15 players, and in
1880 to 11 players, where it has remained. In the 1900s,
college football became one of the country's most
popular sports spectacles.
Ranked among the greatest
United States sports heroes of the 20th century are such
student athletes as Jim Thorpe of Carlisle Institute;
George Gipp of the University of Notre Dame; Red Grange
of the University of Illinois; Tom Harmon of the
University of Michigan; Doak Walker of Southern
Methodist University; Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard, the
“Touchdown Twins” of Army (the U.S. Military Academy);
Joe Namath of the University of Alabama; and O. J.
Simpson of the University of Southern California.
In
1935 the Downtown Athletic Club of New York City
established an award honoring one of the outstanding
college football coaches in the country, John William
Heisman. Heisman is credited with legalizing the forward
pass in 1906. The John W. Heisman Memorial Trophy is
awarded annually to the outstanding college player of
the year, as decided by a national poll of
sportswriters. After World War II ended in 1945, college
athletes began to receive football scholarships, often
paying the player's room, board, tuition, and incidental
expenses while enrolled in college. |
