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In a regular season, if the first possession results in a touchdown by the receiving team or by the defensive team on a turnover or the defensive team scores a safety, the scoring team wins. If the receiving team fails to score and loses possession, the game goes into sudden death, and the first to score wins.
The first American football game was played on November 6, 1869, between two college teams, Rutgers and Princeton, using rules based on the rules of soccer at the time. A set of rule changes drawn up from 1880 onward by Walter Camp , the "Father of American Football", established the snap , the line of scrimmage , eleven-player teams, and the ...
A play, originating in the Alliance of American Football and since adopted by other minor professional leagues, in which the scoring team opts to attempt to gain a set amount of yardage (10 to 15 yards in most leagues) on one play from scrimmage; if successful, the team retains possession, but if unsuccessful, the opposing team regains ...
Possession at the start of a game (and, in some sports, in a neutral restart) may be determined by several methods, including a coin flip (American football and cricket), home team status (baseball), or by giving the teams an equal opportunity to physically take possession, in what is variously called a dropped-ball (association football), a ball-up (Australian rules football), a jump ball ...
The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. The upstart AFL operated in direct competition with the more established NFL throughout its existence.
The history of American football can be traced to early versions of rugby football and association football.Both games have their origin in multiple varieties of football played in the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century, in which a football is kicked at a goal or kicked over a line, which in turn were based on the varieties of English public school football games descending from medieval ...
A standard football game consists of four 15-minute quarters (12-minute quarters in high-school football and often shorter at lower levels, usually one minute per grade [e.g. 9-minute quarters for freshman games]), [6] with a 12-minute half-time intermission (30 minutes in the Super Bowl) after the second quarter in the NFL (college halftimes are 20 minutes; in high school the interval is 15 ...
The NFL rule is the same as in the college game for the first half of games, but the clock restarts upon the snap when there is under 5:00 left in the 4th quarter/overtime. In high school football, the clock starts on the snap the entire game. A loose ball is out of bounds. The clock is restarted when a ball is returned to the field in the NFL.