Football TalksFootball Talks, Question And Answers

Florida Seminoles Lineman Zebrie Sanders doesnt move at all lmfaooo!!!!!!!

Football is just one of those sports that everyone loves. It doesn’t matter where you are from, what you do as a profession, how old you are or what sex you are. In fact, I’ve met some women that were more hardcore fans of football than men have been! Well college football is no different. Some people even switch over from college to pro when one is over and the next begins. I personally haven’t ever been too hardcore about college football but that doesn’t mean I don’t check out the teams or watch out for cool sites online that involve football! I’m more of a pro football girl myself! Recently, however, I was checking out some college football sites just to see what was going on and I found a few really sweet sites that I think everyone should check out. So, if your looking for something a little different or a little more unique, read below:

College Sports Info – Listing of NCAA message board forums, fan sites, official school sites and various media resources including videos, audios, and interviews.

Connect-Dots – The home of the best college football sites on the net.

Top Football Sites – The 100 most popular football links on the web. Top sites include links to NFL, college, high school, and fantasy football sites.

Football Forum – NFL & College fan discussion site. Topics include news, game reviews and trade rumors.

Against The Line – Against The Line provides college football news and commentary as well as a thorough analysis of each week’s college football bets and propositions.

College Football Resources – College Football Forum. Discuss any and all relevant college football issues—create your own threads or reply to others

Some of those are forums and some of these are just plain old web sites. Personally I like forums a lot better because you can sign up and talk shop with everyone. Most of the forums include extras like newsletters, news, polls, links to sport betting sites aka sport books and much more. Websites are cool too but a lot of the time you just have to sit back and read but not really participate. Of course you can also go to the ever popular NCAA Football website and the likes, but as said above you can’t really participate in these sites! You can also find more forums and websites for college football by going to your favorite search engine and searching for relative words. Have fun!

In the early 19th century, some students at Princeton played a game that was known as “ballown,” where they used their fists and their feet to advance the ball. During that time, there were no hard and fast established rules; the goal was simply to advance the ball past the opposing team. At Harvard, freshmen and sophomores competed in a game that was called “Bloody Monday,” a football-like game that was played on the first Monday of every school year. Around 1860, the game soon caught popularity among the Boston Common and had several variations.

The First Intercollegiate Football Game

Around 1865, colleges began organizing football games, which still did not have clearly instituted rules and gameplay. Princeton established some rudimentary rules some time in 1867 and in that year, American football was patented for the first time. In addition to Princeton’s rules, Rutgers College contributed a set of rules in that same year. In November 6, 1869, Princeton and Rutgers, combining their set of rules, played the first intercollegiate football. Rutgers won six goals to four.

The Intercollegiate Football Association

In 1873, representatives from Princeton, Rutgers, Columbia, and Yale met in New York City and formulated the first intercollegiate football rules and established the Intercollegiate Football Association (IFA), setting the number of players allowed in a team to fifteen.

The Final Evolution of American Football

Walter Camp, a football coach at Yale and member of the IFA, was a big dissenter of the fifteen-player football team and wanted to institute an eleven-player team. Considered as the “Father of American Football,” Walter Camp helped institute the final evolution of the American Football from the rugby-style of playing. Led by Camp, the IFA committee soon cut the number of football players to eleven from the original fifteen and instated the size of the football playing field at 110 yards. It was also Walter Camp who introduced the systems of downs in 1882 and the line of scrimmage rules. He also standardized the scoring system and created the safety, penalties, interference, and neutral zone. In time, further developments were made to the rules of the game, with the help of college football coaches such as Amos Alonzo Stagg, Knute Rockne, Glenn “Pop” Warner, and Eddie Cochems.

Reforms and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)

By the early 20th century, the increasing brutality of the game led some colleges to ban the sport. On record was close to 180 players who suffered serious injuries from playing football and eighteen who died from injuries or from the brutal mass plays that was common practice during that time. In 1905, then President Theodor Roosevelt called on Princeton, Yale, and Harvard to help save American Football from dying. Reforms were made in a meeting between schools, attended by more than 60 schools. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was established to uphold the new reforms.

One of the Most Popular Sports in the U.S.

American Football grew to be one of the most popular sports in the U.S., especially in Universities. Fierce competitions among colleges made it an exciting game that became a national pastime. Because of its popularity, a Professional league was established, and which is today known as the National Football League (NFL). Each state in the U.S. is represented by a football team. Some of the top ranking football teams in recent history include the San Francisco 49ers, New York Giants, Green Bay Packers, Miami Dolphins, and Atlanta Falcons.

College football is just nothing else but American football played by teams fielded by the American colleges. These include teams from American universities, as well as from military academies. College football is very popular among college students, and it is through the American colleges that American Football has gained the stature it has today. College football developed from Rugby, a form of football played in England. Rugby reached North America through the British soldiers stationed in Canada, and became very popular in Canadian colleges.

The first game of ‘football’ played between two American college teams – Rutgers College and the College of New Jersey – was not a form of Rugby but more akin to soccer. This game, which Rutgers won 6-4, was played at College Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on November 6, 1869. Rutgers College is now the Rutgers University; College of New Jersey is now the Princeton University; and College Field is where, today, the College Avenue Gymnasium of the Rutgers University stands.

The first ‘rugby-style’ game of college football in the United States took place in 1875, between teams from Harvard and Yale. The credit of fashioning the game of American Football from rugby, by 1892, goes to the one time captain of the Yale football team – Walter Chauncey Camp. The most significant person in the history of American football, Camp has rightly been called the ‘Father of American Football.’

Camp pioneered the modern elements of scoring – at least most of them, the eleven man team, the traditional seven man line of offensive setup, the four man backfield, and the play from scrimmage. The college football became increasingly popular, and also more violent. After a series of player deaths in the collegiate games, Present Roosevelt, in 1906, threatened to ban the sport.

This caused the formation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which formulated rules to govern the game. It was during these days that college football was the predominant way to American football. College football was where style of play and strategy innovations were made and then passed on gradually to the professional arena.

College football remains very popular, despite the rise and popularity of professional football in America. It is more popular in rural areas, and in the south, due to the lack of professional teams there. College football is very popular in places, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia, among others.

The Tickets

College football teams have as large a fan following as do the professional football teams, and their games draw more number of spectators than do the professional teams.

College football tickets are in great demand, and may not be easy to procure. You can safely forget to procure them from the venues of the games – they would be sold out. Your best alternative option – those ticket brokers. Legitimate and professional ticket brokers, such as have a successful history of helping you arrange college football tickets for the games of your choice.

Football Handicapping

Article Outline: One of the most popular events in the United States of America is the NFL Football League or NCAA College Football. Whether it’s a pro football game or a college football game, sports handicapping has become a common feature and an integral part of these games. This article lists some of the best tips to make loot out of football handicapping.

College and Professional handicapping (NFL):

Football is a popular sport in colleges as well as at the pro level. It’s in college that players learn the sport that assures them a passport to the national football league or the known as the NFL. Football in America came into the limelight, after a match between the Harvard University and McGill University at Montreal in 1874. At that time football handicapping was almost nonexistent. Since then football in America has caused many heartbreaks, but created some legends like Sammy Baugh (QB for Washington Redskins), Johnny Unitas (QB for Baltimore Colts), Bronko Nagurski (RB for Chicago bears), O.J. Simpson (RB for Buffalo Bills) and Gino Marchetti (DE for Dallas Texans).

Football over the years has won many hearts and has been a team game played with an interesting combination of power and strategy. As the game has climbed greater heights, football handicapping too has followed in its footsteps and is considered to be a common occurrence before and after every game. There are many key factors that create an advantage or a disadvantage in terms of sports handicapping in NFL. It all depends upon the picks made by a team, the players form, the defenders and the quarterbacks. Let us look at the key factors that are essential to football handicapping.

Football Handicapping Statistics: The first and the foremost is statistics. A team’s future performance can be judges based on the current statistics. When we say future, it means the next game in the league. Whether it is college football handicapping or pro football, you need to consider the statistics related to offense and defense put up by each team. Some of the details would include the total number of yards in each game, passing yards per game, rushing yards in each game, number of points scored, total number of yards allowed etc. All this needs to be considered in professional football handicapping. Another aspect that plays an important role is the strength of the team as it enters the league or the conference season.

Handicapping advantage:

There is a distinct advantage of playing on home field and this is not just valid for football or NFL but also for NBA, MLB and even the small inter college games. For example, in 2003, LSU destroyed Auburn completely by 31-7 and most of this was due to the home crowd advantage. In this game people had laid only 3 ½ points. A similar incident was where Florida State team traveled to Clemson. It was the hot favorite with 17 points but Florida lost in front of a Clemson home crowd of 86,000 voices. So you need to weight the home field advantage before jumping to a conclusion in football handicapping.

Football handicapping and Trends: Every team has its own story and in sports handicapping, you need to also focus on the trend followed by each team. This will lay open each team’s advantages, disadvantages, weaknesses and strengths. Whether it is a college football team or a pro football championship winner, trends, like some teams following a certain pattern in the dying minutes of the game, can prove useful and lead to effective football handicapping. Then there are trends followed by certain coaches who use a particular strategy with only a particular team like the strategy used by Colorado squad coached by Gary Barnett against Texas Tech Red Raiders.

These are the three key areas that will ensure that you are at an advantageous position during football handicapping.