The first American football match was played in November 1869, when the teams of the universities of Princeton and Rutgers met in New Brunswick. It was not possible to agree on the rules for the duel. As a result, during the meeting, the audience saw incomprehensible situations and tricks borrowed from classic football and rugby that were popular at that time.
In the early days of American football, there was a lot of violence. Newspapers regularly cited the statistics of dead and injured players for a certain period or even a single match. This caused the public to worry. At the beginning of the 20th century, the rules began to tighten in order to increase safety. Since 1939, protective shields in the chest area and helmets have become mandatory attributes. The number of rough power moves has been greatly reduced. And the emphasis was increasingly placed on the speed of decision-making and tactical developments.

American football rules

To make successful bets on American football, you need to know the rules of the game. For most of the last century, they were regularly adjusted. This concerned the number of team players, the size of the field and the time of the matches, the concept of a 6-point touchdown appeared. In different states, specialized private sections began to open. And in 1920, a trade union appeared, created by several teams. Only after that the National Football League (NFL) was officially registered. It is today not only the most popular in the world of American football. But, as many polls show, it is pushing the NBA and NHL into the background in the United States.

Regulations

As in other team sports, in American football, the team that scores more points than the opponent wins the game. They play 11×11, and points are awarded for such actions:
– transfer to the end zone;
– bringing the ball into the opponent’s end zone;
– an accurate shot on target of the opponent’s goal.
When advancing with the ball into the opponents’ half of the field, it is allowed to use a number of tricks, if they do not contradict the rules. There are two options here – either the player runs with the ball in his hands, or makes a pass in a throw to a partner, or delivers an accented shot at the goal from any distance.
The match lasts three hours, and is divided into twelve 15-minute segments. The rectangular field has dimensions of 110×49 meters, at a distance of 91 meters from each other there are lines of scoring zones. Every 4.5 m there is a transverse marking for the entire width of the field. Every 9 meters there is a numbering from 10 to 50, which starts from the borders of the points zones to the center of the field. These blueprints are a hint to the players how far they need to go in order to score a touchdown.
Gates are installed opposite each other on opposite parts of the site. Their height is 3 m, width – 5.7 meters. In the US, many American football teams have their own stadiums. On them, the gates for the game are tightly fixed by a single design, which does not allow them to be removed for competitions in other sports. This is another difference from classic soccer.

Reasons for stopping the game

In American football, the game often stops.The reason for this is when:
– player in possession of the ball is littered on the lawn;
– attacker ran out of bounds with the ball in his hands;
– ball touches the ground outside the court;
– player releases the ball from his hands on the field;
– team has already earned a certain number of points;
– violation of the rules has been recorded.