American football is the number-one spectator team sport in the U.S.A. Outside of the U.S. and Canada it is called American football, to distinguish it from other football games like soccer or rugby football. American football evolved from rugby football in the late nineteenth century.
The game is a team sport. The object of the game is to manipulate the football into the opponent’s end zone and score points. The ball can be advanced by carrying it or passing it to a teammate. Points are scored by carrying the ball into the end zone, passing it to a teammate past the goal line or kicking it between the goal posts. The team that has scored the highest points when the time expires is declared the winner.
English Colonial settlers brought the game of football to the Americas at the turn of the seventeenth century. Some 200 years later, football was introduced to American colleges, and in 1867 the first set of rules of American football were drawn up in Princeton College. They were very similar to the rules of soccer. The game was picked up by other colleges, such as Rutgers, Columbia, Yale and Harvard. In 1876, the Intercollegiate Football Association was formed to draw up rules that were similar to the rugby union.
Some changes were introduced to the game after it wa