American Football (Gridiron)
As name implies, American Football is an American game of football. It is also called Gridiron outside of the US, while it’s commonly called just football in the US. American Football is different from the popular world sport generally known as football or soccer (Association Football). The sport evolved from the sport of rugby football. A game of American football was first played on November 6, 1869 between Princeton and Rutgers.
American football gameAmerican football is a full-contact sport, and is all about running, with either team holding or passing the ball and trying to reach into opponent's goal area to score points.
Two teams with 11 players per side play on a rectangular field. This field is 110 m long and 48.76 m wide with goalposts at each end.
The ball shape is a prolate spheroid ("oval"), unlike the round ball of some other football sports.
The game is played over 60 minutes, which is further divided into two halves of 30 minutes in professional games. For the safety of players, the minimum requirement is to wear a football helmet and shoulder pads.
American Football is played throughout the world, but significantly in North America, Europe and Japan.
Variations
- Arena Football — indoor version played on a smaller field
- Canadian Football — a version with small differences to American football, played in Canada
- Six man Football — modification with just 6 players per team instead of the standard 11.
- Eight-man Football — a variation of American Football, played primarily at high school level in the US, by schools that have smaller student enrollments.
- Nine-Man Football — a modified version of American Football with nine players on each team, played mainly in US high schools that have small enrollments.
- Flag Football — instead of tackling players to the ground in this sport the defensive team have to remove the flag or a flag belt from the ball carrier.
- Sprint Football (formerly lightweight football) - a USA varsity sport by lightweight players which emphasizes speed and agility.
- Touch Football — a version of American Football, where instead of tackling players to the ground, the person carrying the ball only needs to be touched.
- Ultimate Football — played with a disc (frisbee), with points scored by passing the disc to a teammate in the opposing end zone.
- Kayak Football — participants in kayaks attempt to get a small soft football into the end zone.
- Lingerie Football — American Football played by women wearing lingerie as uniforms (unusual sport)
- Unicycle Football — a variation of American football in which players move around the field using a unicycle (unusual sport)
Related Pages
- About football (general)
- More about American Football
- About the Super Bowl.
- Football Decoder — what is called football around the world?
- Flag Football at the Olympics
- American Football was a demonstration sport at Summer Olympics in 1932.
- Sport in the USA
- American Football Events Calendar
- Complete list of sports
- The Encyclopedia of Sports
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