NFL Football History Timeline

NFL football history began with eleven professional teams in 1920. First known as the American Professional Football Association, the league changed its name in 1922.

The NFL was the brainchild of Jim Thorpe, a football player and coach of the Canton Bulldogs. Only two teams of the original league are still in existence--the Decatur Staleys (now the Chicago Bears) and the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals).

The Green Bay Packers are the oldest team in the league that never switched locations. By 1933, the fledgling NFL had officially begun an annual championship game.

Between 1933-1945, the NFL was a segregated league, prohibiting African-Americans from playing. In 1936, the NFL had its first official college draft.

NFL football history

Following the history of anything is a career in itself. That's why so many famous archaeologists and historians have dedicated their lives to what they study, or to better put it, they had to dedicate their lives to what they study or else they wouldn't be famous today. Howard Carter, Heinrich Schliemann, and Austen Henry Layard were all famous archaeologists whom dedicated a good large portion of their lives to finding and writing about their discoveries. Something less than discovering a lost civilization, let's say NFL football, might not take quite as long, but it is just as tedious.

NFL football history is definitely something that would take a lot of digging, reading, and watching to master. To find where all the teams originated, who changed to which city, what the records are, which players traded to which teams, is all very complex in itself. It's kind of like a DC Comics universe except in the form of football. Becoming an NFL football history expert would be a commendable feat indeed.