The game of American football (hereafter referred to just as “football”) developed out of something like a cross between association football (or soccer) and rugby. Rugby itself grew out of the soccer tradition in England, so soccer is truly at the very core of this sport. However, as both games made their way across the Atlantic, they were both played at colleges and universities, and out of those two games, football was born. The earliest history of the sport tells us that no single variety of the game was played; some schools played essentially soccer, others rugby, while still others played various combinations of the two (and certainly without any formalized rules). It what is commonly billed as the first college football game, Princeton
