NFL / American Football Facts

NFL / American Football Facts

Football is a popular sport in North America. Known as football in the United States and Canada, it is often called gridiron or American football in different parts of the world. It evolved from rugby football, and the first game was played in 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers. The NFL (National Football League) was established in 1920, and by 1922 it was already considered to be the premier league. In 1960 the American Football League was created, and by 1970 the NFL and the AFL merged, with a championship game to be played between the leagues each year. This championship game is known as the Super Bowl and the winner is awarded the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

Interesting Football Facts:

-There are 32 teams in the NFL, each vying for the Super Bowl win at the end of the season.

-The first game to be televised was between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939. There were approximately 500 television sets in new York able to play the game.

-In 1906 president Theodore Roosevelt made major changes to football, and introduced the forward pass. He felt the rules needed changing because of the number of athlete's deaths in the game.

-The 1967 NFL championship game was the coldest in history with a wind chill of -48 degrees. It has become known as the ‘Ice Bowl'.

-In 1939, quarterback Frank Filchock set a record that has not been broken to date, only matched. He connected for a 99-yard touchdown pass.

-The last NFL player to play without a helmet was Dick Plasman. He played without a helmet from 1937 to 1941, and when he returned from military service he had to wear one as they had become mandatory in 1943.

-Quarterback Paul D. Hubbard invented the huddle to keep the other team from reading his hand signals.

-Although there are four quarters in a football game, lasting 15 minutes each. They only actually play for a total of about 11 minutes of that time.

-The Chicago Bears are the only football team not to change their name or city since 1922, when the NFL was formed from the previous American Professional Football Association.

-All NFL footballs are manufactured in the village Ada, in Ohio, at the Wilson factory.

-The Baltimore Ravens are not named after the bird. They are named after the poem "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.

-The Dallas Cowboys play in Arlington Texas; they haven't played in Dallas since '71.

-The first NFL team to put their logo on their helmets were the St. Louis Rams.

-The only team in the NFL to be a publicly owned corporation is the Green Bay Packers.

-Deion Sanders played in both Major League Baseball and the National Football League at the same time. He hit a homerun and scored a touchdown in the same week. He is also the only person to play in the Super Bowl and the World Series.

-The NFL is tax-exempt as it is considered to be a non-profit.

-An NFL rookie earns a minimum of $420,000 a year.