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For a free-kick down, the neutral zone is 10 yards wide and for a scrimmage down it is as wide as the length of the football. It is established when the ball is marked ready for play. No player may legally be in the neutral zone except for the snapper on scrimmage downs, and no one except the kicker and the holder for free kick downs.
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 ...
The various codes of football share certain common elements and can be grouped into two main classes of football: carrying codes like American football, Canadian football, Australian football, rugby union and rugby league, where the ball is moved about the field while being held in the hands or thrown, and kicking codes such as association football and Gaelic football, where the ball is moved ...
Similarly to association football, the game begins with a coin toss to determine which team will kick off to begin the game and which goal each team will defend. [2] The options are presented again to start the second half; the choices for the first half do not automatically determine the start of the second half (i.e. it is possible for the same team to kick off both halves). [3]
In American football, the specific role that a player takes on the field is referred to as their position. Under the modern rules of American football, both teams are allowed 11 players [1] on the field at one time and have "unlimited free substitutions", meaning that they may change any number of players during any dead ball situation.
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 ...
The offense is required to set up a formation before a play, subject to several rules: The formation must have at least 7 players on the line of scrimmage. [1] The 7 players are not required to be next to each other and may spread out across the width of the field, but this is rare; most offenses place at least 5 players together in a continuous line.
[9] John Heisman was instrumental in the rules' acceptance. In Canadian football, the first exhibition game using a forward pass was held on November 5, 1921, at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, between the McGill Redmen football team and visiting American college football team the Syracuse Orangemen from Syracuse University.