Hey, Sports Fans!
For today’s blog post I’m talking about football. Not about tips for throwing a great football party or going to your kid’s high school game. No, today I’m talking about the history of a league that we’re all pretty familiar with: the National Football League, or NFL.
The birth of this now super-famous organization has quite a long history to it; after all it got started nearly a hundred years ago! Back in 1920, representatives of four existing football teams got together to hold a meeting that resulted in forming the NFL, though it wouldn’t be called the NFL until two years later.
In 1933 things started looking a little more like the NFL we know so well today.All the teams that existed at the time split up into two separate divisions in which the last two teams standing from each division would compete in a championship game—much like today’s Super Bowl (but without any playoffs). The NFL stayed this way for a very long time.
It wasn’t until 1960 when the American Football League, or AFL, started to steal some popularity from the NFL. Six years later the two leagues began a merger that finally went into effect in 1970. In the four years it took to complete the merger, the leagues still held four “Super Bowls” as they came to be known after the first two.
As the Super Bowl continues to break viewing records for the last three years, over 111 million people watched the New York Giants defeat the New England Patriots last year in Super Bowl XLVI (46). Just to give you a little context of that viewing audience, 20.6 million viewers watched President Obama’s Second Inauguration.
So, enjoy America’s most popular sport, and join in the fandom that seems to grow a little more every year. Thanks for reading, Camp Fans!
- John