Football & Flag Football History:
Football (as well as rugby and soccer) are believed to have descended from the ancient Greek game of harpaston. Harpaston is mentioned frequently in classical literature, where it is often referred to as a “very rough and brutal game“. The rules of this ancient sport were quite simple: Points were awarded when a player would cross a goal line by either kicking the ball, running with it across the goal line, or throwing it across the line to another player. The other team’s objective was simply to stop them by any means possible. There was no specific field length, no side line boundaries, no specified number of players per team, only a glaring lack of rules.
The birth date of football in the United States is generally regarded by football historians as November 6, 1869, when teams from Rutgers and Princeton Universities met for the first intercollegiate football game. In those early games, there were 20 players to a team and football still more closely resembled rugby than modern football.
Walter Camp, the coach at Yale and a dissenter from the IFA over his desire for an eleven man team, helped begin the final step in the evolution from rugby-style play to the modern game of American football.
In 1882 Camp also introduced the system of downs. After first allowing three attempts to advance the ball five yards, in 1906 the distance was changed to ten yards. The fourth down was added in 1912.
-The game of Touch and Flag Football has been around nearly as long as
tackle football.
-The first remembrance of organized Touch and Tail Football being
played was in the 1930's. Flag football was developed on military bases
in the early 1940's as a recreational sport for military personal.
Recreational leagues soon developed in the late 40's early 50's. They were
patterned around the softball league format and the game we know and love
today was born.
-St. Louis is the birthplace of the first national flag football
organization - the National Touch Football League. It was formed in
the 1960's and has played a national championship game since 1971. It also
produced the first standardize rulebook and it's Hall of Fame for
flag football players has been adopted buy other national organizations.
-The first major competition to the NTFL was formed in 1988 as an outgrowth of the NTFL when it's regional director Mike Cihon broke free to create the United States Flag Touch Football League. The USFTL National Flag Football Tournament in Orlando is the largest non college tournament in the nation. It drew 175 teams in January 2002 and crowned 11 National Champions.
Flag Football is a version of American football that is popular worldwide.
The basic rules of the game are similar to those of the mainstream game (often called "tackle football" for contrast), but instead of tackling players to the ground, the defensive team must remove a flag or flag belt from the ball carrier ("deflagging") to end a down. In most organized play, players wear a belt.