May 1874: Visiting athletes from McGill University in Montreal introduce Harvard athletes to a rugby-like game that becomes the basis of American football. The next year Harvard introduces the game to Yale. A student named Walter Camp soon joins the Yale team and later becomes a coach who helps to standardize the rules of the game, including the system of downs.
Here, at Electro-Mech, we not only make LED and electronic football scoreboards for both football and all sports, but we also take pride in knowing all there is to know about sports. Check out some of our other articles that cover a wide variety of football news and history as well as other sports. For now, let’s talk about some important dates in football history.
1890: Amos Alonzo Stagg, a former star end at Yale, is hired as football coach at Springfield College in Massachusetts. Two years later he moves to the University of Chicago, where he becomes one of the great innovators in the history of American football. He plays a key role in the development of the forward pass and also creates several offensive formations, including the T formation.
October 1905: President Theodore Roosevelt meets with college football representatives to create a safer game. Fighting, gang tackling, and mass formations such as the flying wedge have created a violent game; 18 players die during the 1905 season alone. Reforms in the rules stemming from this meeting eliminate many of these problems and also legalize the forward pass.
August 1920: Representatives of four teams meet in an auto showroom in Canton, Ohio, to form the American Professional Football Association. Eight more teams join the league for its inaugural season. The teams include Buffalo, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, and Green Bay. In 1922 the league is renamed the National Football League (NFL).
November 1925: Pro football has its first sellout crowd at Wrigley Field in Chicago for a Thanksgiving Day game featuring Red Grange and the Chicago Bears. Grange had starred as a running back at the University of Illinois and becomes the first national attraction in the history of the national football league.
November 1935: 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.
November 1946: In one of the most anticipated games in college football history, Army and Notre Dame battle to a 0-0 tie. The “Black Knights” of Army feature running backs Glenn Davis and Doc Blanchard, who won the Heisman in consecutive years. Notre Dame is coached by Frank Leahy, whose 1948 team would be considered by some experts to be the greatest college football team of all time.
November 1957: The Oklahoma Sooners defeat Missouri 39-14 to win their 46th game in a row, a record that still stands. The win streak covers parts of five seasons. Oklahoma would finally lose the following week to Notre Dame.
December 1958: Often named the greatest NFL game ever played, the 1958 championship game sees the Baltimore Colts defeat the New York Giants 23-19 in overtime. Colts quarterback Johnny Unitas leads a last-minute drive to tie the game in the fourth quarter and then makes a daring pass to the Giants’ one-yard line in overtime to set up the winning touchdown.
August 1959: 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.
April 1965: 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.
January 1967: The first Super Bowl is played in Los Angeles, with the Green Bay Packers of the NFL defeating the Kansas City Chiefs of the AFL 35-10. The event rapidly grows in popularity until it becomes the most-watched sporting event in the United States.
November 1998: 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.
September 2004: 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.