subject: Playing Arena Football In America [print this page] Arena football is a sport that many people still do not know about. Although this sport is not new, it has yet to gain the popularity of American Football.
To understand where arena football better you have to understand where arena football comes from. Arena football is a sport that was created from American football.
American football has its roots in rugby. Rugby introduced the idea that the ball could be run and/or kicked over a line for points.
The United Kingdom made rugby popular which had a large influence on what American football would end up being. There are many differences between the two sports and both are played in American today.
Walter Camp is considered the father of American football because he was the man that made the first set of rules separating American football from rugby. The rules that he instituted have been said to have created what American football.
Two of the most prevalent rules that Camp instituted were the line of scrimmage and the down-and-distance rules. Understanding both of these rules are necessary if you are going to try and understand the game of football.
The line of scrimmage is an imaginary line that separates the offense from the defense. The players are not allowed to cross that line until the next play has started.
Starting the next play happens when the ball is snapped, that is usually when the ball is tossed to the quarterback. As soon as the ball has been snapped the players are allowed to pass this imaginary line.
The down-and-distance rule is unique to football. This is the system by which the ball will change possession.
Each team gets four tries, or downs, to advance the ball ten yards. If they are not able to advance the ball ten yards within their four tries the team that has possession of the ball loses possession to the other team.
Football also allows players to throw a forward pass. This forward pass is not allowed in rugby.
College football had a big part in forming what American football is today. The early coaches began to change the rules and develop a game that would be entertaining to watch and fun to play.
Each school played by its own set of rules on the intramural fields. The sport began to gain a lot of popularity in many of the schools in the United States.
Because there were no consistent rules early football was very dangerous and very chaotic. Many of the games consisted of massive amounts of people trying to advance the ball by any means necessary.
The injury rates were high and the colleges began to ban the sport. Harvard and Yale both banned football in the late eighteen hundreds.
The National Football League was formed in 1920 and it was mostly popular among the Midwestern industrial towns in the United States. It did not take long for the rest of the nation to catch on to this sport and it eventually became popular from the West to East coast.
The Super Bowl determines which football team is given the title of the best team in the United States. This game is televised and on an annual basis it has been the most watched television event.
There are many rules in football that are different than the rules in arena football. A large population of people started to feel like they wanted football to be a quicker sport than it is right now.
One of the ways to do this was to limit the number of substitutions that the coaches were able to make. In football a coach has an unlimited number of substitutions.
This means that there is a group of people that play on the offensive line, a group of people that play on the defensive line and group of people for other special plays. These groups of people come in and out of the game at the coaches will.
Instead of having so many substitutions the arena football founders felt that the game would be better if players had to play offense and defense. The increased amount of responsibility on players would make them better athletes.
The decreased number of substitutions also increases the pace of the game. The founders of arena football felt that this increase of space would make the game more entertaining.
Arena football is thriving in America today. There are leagues and professional players that participate in this sport every day.
It will not be long before more people know what arena football is and will start to follow the sport.
