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Ballown
Princeton University plays early unorganized version of what later would be known as Football. -
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Football History
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First College Football Game
Rutgers University and its neighbor, Princeton, played the first game of intercollegiate football on Nov. 6, 1869, on a plot of ground where the present-day Rutgers gymnasium now stands in New Brunswick, N.J. Rutgers won that first game, 6-4. -
First Forward Pass
Most sources credit St. Louis University's Bradbury Robinson from Bellevue, Ohio with throwing the first legal forward pass. On September 5, 1906, in a game against Carroll College, Robinson's first attempt at a forward pass fell incomplete and resulted in a turnover under the 1906 rules -
NFL Created
APFA is reorganized into NFL with Jim Thorpe as the president. -
NFL Draft is created
Burt Bell was a co-owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, and he was struggling to put a good product on the field. His Eagles team was having trouble securing top-level talent, so in 1935, Bell proposed that the National Football League consider going to a draft. This made it to where every year every team had a fighting chance. -
First Heisman Trophy
The Downtown Athletic Club in New York City begins awarding a trophy to the best college football player east of the Mississippi River. The following year the trophy is named the Heisman Trophy in honor of legendary coach John Heisman. The award criteria are later changed so that players throughout the country are eligible for the trophy. -
First telivised game
An NFL game airs on television for the first time, with NBC producing a local broadcast of a game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Philadelphia Eagles. Since fewer than 1,000 TV sets are known to exist in New York at the time, it is unclear whether anyone actually watches the broadcast. -
AFL is merged with NFL
This made the NFL leage more popular and larger. -
Astrodome first indoor stadium
The first domed indoor sports stadium, the Astrodome, opens in Houston. The University of Houston football team shares the facility with the Houston Astros baseball team. In 1968, the AFL’s Houston Oilers begin to use the Astrodome for home games. -
First Super Bowl
Greenbay packers defeat Kansas City Chiefs 35 to 10 in the first ever Super Bowl -
AFL is organized
A second major professional league, the American Football League, is organized in Chicago. Eight teams compete in the league’s inaugural season in 1960. The league survives through 1969, when it merges with the NFL. Teams that win AFL championships are the Houston Oilers, the Dallas Texans, the San Diego Chargers, the Buffalo Bills, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the New York Jets. -
Wild Card Teams Are Included in the Playoffs
This allowed more teams into the playoffs giving them a better chance of getting to the superbowl. -
Instant Replay is introduced
This made it to where the games calls and turn overs were more fair -
De La Salle
De La Salle High School of Compton, California, has its record high school football winning streak ended at 151 games. The streak had begun in 1992. -
First BCS Bowl
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) establishes the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), a formula designed to select the top two college football teams for a championship game at the end of each championship season. Several BCS determinations are to prove highly controversial.
