subject: Funny Football Goals - Football Heroes Catch Our Hearts [print this page] Super Bowl Day! The championship with the National Football League! A hundred thousand spectators yelling and cheering within the stadium! The intensity with the competition vibrates over the television in each house! Excitement resonates everywhere! No one remains unaffected by this event!
The excitement all began in the 1860s when courageous players from Princeton and Rutgers played the very first football game in New Jersey. The Rutgers' players wore scarlet-colored scarves wrapped around their head like turbans. This was long before helmets were mandatory and also the Princeton players evidently played bare-headed. The competition was fierce. It was intense.
The rivalry between the schools was played out in two vicious games that resulted in football becoming banned for a time because it interfered with academic studies. This same accusation has plagued college football teams ever since.
The remarkable heroes of this sport are still talked about years after they've died. On a dusty dirt field in Ohio in 1915 the infamous Jim Thorpe, a running back, played against the most determined defensive end, Knute Rockne. They didn't have a television camera on them, but their names went down in history. Rockne was a Norwegian immigrant who grew up in Chicago and went on to Notre Dame. He became the college's most popular football coach. He passed away in a plane crash in 1931. Jim Thorpe, a twin, was an American Indian of the Sac and Fox Tribe in Oklahoma and was studying at a federal government vocational school for Indian students. Not just a football player, he went to the Olympics in Stockholm in 1912 and earned gold medals in both the pentathlon as well as the decathlon.
When King Gustaf V of Sweden introduced Thorpe with his two gold medals, he said, "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world!" Bruised members of other football teams playing against Thorpe agreed that he was the theoretical super player in flesh and blood.
The National Football League formed in 1920, and George Halas was one of the twelve founders. In 1921 his Decatur, Illinois, team moved to Chicago and was nicknamed the 'Bears.' Halas created his own fast-moving history as the owner, coach and captain of the group he helped make famous.
When introduced to President Calvin Coolidge, along with team member Red Grange, as being with the Chicago Bears, the President replied, "How interesting. I've always enjoyed animal acts." Football was not yet the favored American sport.
Television both schooled and inspired the public regarding football. Specifically with the instant play-back functions that modern electronics provides, football has taken the hearts of Americans. Now fans can see a unique play not only once, but from a number of angles, over and over again. They can study every move of their heroes.
