From humble beginnings to a multi-billion dollar industry; let’s take a quick glimpse back in the past to the league’s modest beginnings and how the NFL gained its name.

  • 1869: Rutgers and Princeton play a college soccer football game, the first-ever, November 6, the game used modified London Football Association rules.
  • 1876: Massasoit convention, the first rules for American football were written; Walter Camp who would become known as the father of American football, first became involved with the game.
  • 1892: Intense competition between two Pittsburgh area clubs, the Allegheny Athletic Association and the Pittsburgh Athletic Club, led to the making of the first professional football player: former Yale All American Guard William Heffelfinger. The AAA paid Heffelfinger $500 to play in the game against PAC, becoming the first paid person to play football.
  • 1893: The Pittsburg Athletic Club signed one of its players to the first known pro-football contract which covered all of the PAC’s games for the year.
  • 1896: The Allegheny Athletic Association team fielded the first completely professional team for its abbreviated two-game season.
  • 1897: The Latrobe Athletic Association football team went entirely professional, becoming the first team to play a full season with only professionals.
  • 1898: Touchdown was changed from four points to five points.
  • 1900: William C. Temple took over the Duquesne Country and Athletic Club’s team payments, becoming the first known individual club owner.
  • 1902: Baseball’s Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack, and the Philadelphia Phillies formed professional football teams, joining the Pittsburgh Stars in the first attempt at a pro football league, named the National Football League. The first World Series of pro football, actually a five-team tournament, was played among a team made up of players from both the Athletics and the Phillies, but simply named New York; the New York Knicker bockers; the Syracuse AC; the Warlow AC; and the Orange (New Jersey) AC at New York’s original Madison Square Garden.
  • 1904: A field goal was changed from five points to four points. Talk surfaced about forming a state-wide league to end spiraling salaries brought about by constant bidding for players and to write universal rules for the game. The feeble attempt to start the league failed.
  • 1906: The forward pass was legalized.
  • 1909: Field goal dropped from four points to three.
  • 1912: A touchdown was increased from five to six points.
  • 1920: Pro football was in a state of confusion due to three major problems: dramatically rising salaries; players continually jumping from one team to another following the highest offer; and the use of college players still enrolled in school. A league in which all the members would follow the same rules seemed the answer. An organizational meeting, at which the Akron Pros, Canton Bulldogs, Cleveland Indians, and Dayton Triangles were represented, was held at the Jordan and Hupmobile auto showroom in Canton, Ohio, August 20. This meeting resulted in the formation of the American Professional Football Conference.
  • 1921: The American Professional Football Association changed its name to the National Football League, June 24.