When Did the NFL Become the NFL?

The National Football League has come a long way since it was founded in 1920. Today, it is one of the most popular sports leagues in the world, with millions of fans tuning in to watch every week. But when did the NFL become the NFL?

Early History of Football

Football has been around for centuries, with ancient versions of the game being played in Greece, Rome, and England. In the United States, the game began to take on a different form. In the early 1800s, students at Yale, Princeton, and Rutgers began playing a game called “ballown.” This game was similar to England’s game of “rugby.” In 1876, representatives from these schools met to form the Intercollegiate Football Association, which laid out the rules of the game.

Early football games in the United States

The first football game played in the United States was in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton, two colleges in New Jersey. Football then spread to other college campuses by students who had seen the English game.

In the 1870s and 1880s, there were several attempts to professionalize the game of football, but all of these failed. In 1892, however, a group of owners from four Midwest cities came together to form the first professional football league, which they called the National Football League (NFL).

The NFL quickly became the most popular professional sports league in the country, and today it is one of the most popular leagues in the world.

The rise of college football

The game of football has its origins in England, but it truly rose to popularity in the United States. In the late 1800s, colleges began to form their own teams and compete against one another. At first, there were no rules or governing body for these games—they were essentially free-for-alls, with as many as 500 players on each team!

In 1869, Rutgers and Princeton played what is considered the first ever college football game. Rutgers won handily (or, more accurately, Rutgers scored 6 goals to Princeton’s 0), but the game was so brutal that both teams agreed to adopt rules in order to make future games more fair. These rules heavily favored the offense and led to high-scoring games—in one 1884 game between Yale and Harvard, Yale won by a score of 64-0!

While college football grew more popular throughout the late 1800s, there was still no professional league. That all changed in 1902 when a group of Midwestern businessmen founded the National Football League (NFL). The league consisted of just 10 teams at first, all located in cities with populations of 30,000 or more. The NFL’s first president was Jim Thorpe, a legendary athlete who had played both college football and baseball.

The NFL remained a relatively small operation until after World War II. In the 1950s, television broadcasts made professional football more popular than ever before. In 1960, the NFL expanded by adding two more teams (the Dallas Cowboys and the Pittsburgh Steelers) and creating two new conferences (the American Football League and the National Football Conference). This increased competition led to even higher television ratings and eventually resulted in a merger between the AFL and NFL in 1970. Today, the 32 teams that make up the NFL are divided equally between these two conferences.

The Birth of the NFL

In the early 1900s, there was a growing interest in professional football. Several football clubs were formed, and the first professional football league was founded in 1920. This league was called the American Professional Football Association (APFA).

The first NFL game

On November 22, 1920, the first American Professional Football Association game was played, between the Dayton Triangles and the Columbus Panhandles in Columbus, Ohio. The Triplets won 14-0. The league began with 14 teams and remained at that number for two years.

The first NFL season

In September 1920, representatives of four Midwest professional football franchises—the Canton Bulldogs, the Cleveland Indians, the Dayton Triangles, and the Decatur Staleys— convened in Canton, Ohio, to form a new professional football league. At that meeting they named George Halas of the Decatur club as their first president and decided on a salary limit of $5000 per player with a $500 yearly exception for each club. A playoff system was designed to determine the league champion. The first NFL season began in October 1920.

The NFL Today

The NFL today

The National Football League (NFL) is the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association (APFA) before renaming itself the National Football League for the 1922 season. The NFL today consists of 32 teams from across the United States, divided equally into two conferences: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC).

The league’s championship game is called the Super Bowl, and is among the biggest annual sporting events in the world. The most recent Super Bowl, Super Bowl LIII, was watched by over 100 million people in America alone. Outside of the US, Super Bowl Sunday is now considered a national holiday in some countries, such as Canada.

The NFL is by far the most popular professional sports league in America, with much higher television ratings than any other sport. It is also one of the richest sports leagues in the world, with a total revenue of $13 billion for the 2018 season. This popularity and wealth has led to a salaries for NFL players that are significantly higher than those in other professional sports leagues. The average salary for an NFL player was $2.7 million in 2018, compared to $4.5 million for NBA players and $2.2 million for MLB players.

The future of the NFL

In the 1920s, professional football was a struggling sport. There were several rival leagues, and none of them were very popular. That all changed in 1922, when the owners of several of the biggest teams got together and decided to form a new league, the National Football League.

The NFL quickly became the most popular professional football league in the country. By the early 1960s, it was earning more television revenue than any other sport. Today, the NFL is one of the most powerful sports leagues in the world. It is also one of the most popular, with an estimated TV audience of more than 100 million people in the United States alone.