When I think about Football, I usually think of American Football, the kind of football that involves huge shoulder pads and helmets that make the players look like futuristic robots. I think of football as a uniquely American game, but the truth is that it's just one of many different variations on old football and rugby games from the British Isles. The oldest known game of its type seems to be "Cnapan", which was played in the area that is now Wales during the middle ages. The sport doesn't seem to have been institutionalized at all, and there were no official rules. Rather, peasants would run around punting and throwing slippery, greased up wooden balls in teams based on localities.
Over time, various sets of rules emerged in different regions, and football sports as we know them came into existence. Rugby Football
is the term used to describe football sports other than soccer, sports
which involve the use of athlete's hands, but it wasn't until a man
named Walter Camp introduced the line of scrimmage and the concept of
'downs' to rugby football that American football started to become a
sport unto itself.
For the most part, each different variant of football corresponds to a different geographical piece of the old British Empire. While American football evolved into its strategic, stop and go gameply, types of football emerged in Australia and Ireland which have more to do with the "rugby" part of "rugby football". There's also Canadian Football, which is a lot like American football with a few small tweaks. Although the traditions of established sports are long and held dearly by fans, no game is ever really static. Rules are constantly revised and sports are constantly changing. There's nobody saying that you can't make up a new set of rules for your favorite sport if you like. If other people like the changes, you could create a whole new game. You never know.
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