24.10.2020 - College Football in North America is one of the most fascinating things for european sport fans. In europe there is nothing like that. High quality football teams representing their universities battling against each other with an audience most of the professional soccer clubs would get jealous of.
There are few key moments in history that led to forming a league between schools. At first each school played its own game similar to football. For example Princeton University students played game called Ballown already in 1820. In th emeantime Harvard students had their own tradition known as Bloody Monday which was basically a mass game between freshman and sophomore students. These games were played without any rules and violence and injuries were very often therefore local authorities tired to ban such games.
Obviously some rules must have been applied. The first intercollegiate game was played between Princeton and Rutgers universities on november 6, 1869. That game played with round ball looked more similar to soccer than to current american football but that was the beginning. Columbia University created the third team and played Rutgers the next year. And Rutgers repeated game with Princeton few weeks later. Those games were so violent that no games were played in 1871. In 1872 games were back as well as more schools joining the league including Yale. And there have been significant attempts to standardize more game rules.
Fun fact is that at the beginning field goal (5 points) was more valuable than touchdown (2 points). Only later it was slowly changed towards the current points system.
There have been huge expansion of the league after 1890, for example Oregon University joined in 1894. Oh by the way talking about oregon, Online gambling Oregon is not just about betting on Oregon Football but also about Horse betting. Online casino is illegal in Oregon. But back to the topic, playing real football was a big deal at that times.
The first bowl game called Rose Bowl was played in 1902 and it had a huge success. Number of bowl games grew slowly since then to current 35 games. And a national championship game has been found.
Bowl Games Today
Teams must earn right to be eligible for playing bowl game by not having a loosing record and winning at least 6 games. They can be invited by bowl game organizers.
National Championship
With more than 100 schools participating in college football highest division it is really difficult to find best team of the season. After years of attempts to find system to find national champion College Football Playoffs have been proposed. Best 4 teams by the national rank advances to the semifinals after regular season and winners of these semifinals advances to the College Football Playoff National Championship. On the other hand it is interesting that the winner of this game is not officially recognized as NCAA champion.
