1.
American football
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The offense must advance at least ten yards in four downs, or plays, or else they turn over the football to the opposing team, if they succeed, they are given a new set of four downs. Points are primarily scored by advancing the ball into the teams end zone for a touchdown or kicking the ball through the opponents goalposts for a field goal. The team with the most points at the end of a game wins, American football evolved in the United States, originating from the sports of association football and rugby football. The first game of American football was played on November 6,1869, during the latter half of the 1870s, colleges playing association football switched to the Rugby Union code, which allowed carrying the ball. American football as a whole is the most popular sport in the United States, Professional football and college football are the most popular forms of the game, with the other major levels being high school and youth football. As of 2012, nearly 1.1 million high school athletes and 70,000 college athletes play the sport in the United States annually, almost all of them men, in the United States, American football is referred to as football. The term football was established in the rulebook for the 1876 college football season. The terms gridiron or American football are favored in English-speaking countries where other codes of football are popular, such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, American football evolved from the sports of association football and rugby football. What is considered to be the first American football game was played on November 6,1869 between Rutgers and Princeton, two college teams, the game was played between two teams of 25 players each and used a round ball that could not be picked up or carried. It could, however, be kicked or batted with the feet, hands, head or sides, Rutgers won the game 6 goals to 4. Collegiate play continued for years in which matches were played using the rules of the host school. Representatives of Yale, Columbia, Princeton and Rutgers met on October 19,1873 to create a set of rules for all schools to adhere to. Teams were set at 20 players each, and fields of 400 by 250 feet were specified, Harvard abstained from the conference, as they favored a rugby-style game that allowed running with the ball. An 1875 Harvard-Yale game played under rugby-style rules was observed by two impressed Princeton athletes and these players introduced the sport to Princeton, a feat the Professional Football Researchers Association compared to selling refrigerators to Eskimos. Princeton, Harvard, Yale and Columbia then agreed to play using a form of rugby union rules with a modified scoring system. These schools formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, although Yale did not join until 1879, the introduction of the snap resulted in unexpected consequences. Prior to the snap, the strategy had been to punt if a scrum resulted in bad field position, however, a group of Princeton players realized that, as the snap was uncontested, they now could hold the ball indefinitely to prevent their opponent from scoring. In 1881, both teams in a game between Yale-Princeton used this strategy to maintain their undefeated records, each team held the ball, gaining no ground, for an entire half, resulting in a 0-0 tie
2.
Basketball
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Basketball is a non-contact team sport played on a rectangular court by two teams of five players each. The objective is to shoot a ball through a hoop 18 inches in diameter and 10 feet high that is mounted to a backboard at each end of the court. The game was invented in 1891 by Dr. James Naismith, a team can score a field goal by shooting the ball through the basket being defended by the opposition team during regular play. A field goal scores three points for the team if the player shoots from behind the three-point line. A team can also score via free throws, which are worth one point, the team with the most points at the end of the game wins, but additional time is mandated when the score is tied at the end of regulation. The ball can be advanced on the court by passing it to a teammate and it is a violation to lift, or drag, ones pivot foot without dribbling the ball, to carry it, or to hold the ball with both hands then resume dribbling. The game has many techniques for displaying skill—ball-handling, shooting, passing, dribbling, dunking, shot-blocking. The point guard directs the on court action of the team, implementing the coachs game plan, Basketball is one of the worlds most popular and widely viewed sports. Outside North America, the top clubs from national leagues qualify to continental championships such as the Euroleague, the FIBA Basketball World Cup attracts the top national teams from around the world. Each continent hosts regional competitions for teams, like EuroBasket. The FIBA Womens Basketball World Cup features the top womens basketball teams from continental championships. The main North American league is the WNBA, whereas the EuroLeague Women has been dominated by teams from the Russian Womens Basketball Premier League, in early December 1891, Canadian Dr. He sought a vigorous indoor game to keep his students occupied, after rejecting other ideas as either too rough or poorly suited to walled-in gymnasiums, he wrote the basic rules and nailed a peach basket onto a 10-foot elevated track. Basketball was originally played with a soccer ball and these laces could cause bounce passes and dribbling to be unpredictable. Eventually a lace-free ball construction method was invented, and this change to the game was endorsed by Naismith, dribbling was not part of the original game except for the bounce pass to teammates. Passing the ball was the means of ball movement. Dribbling was eventually introduced but limited by the shape of early balls. Dribbling only became a part of the game around the 1950s
3.
Baseball
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Baseball is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of nine players each, who take turns batting and fielding. A run is scored when a player advances around the bases, Players on the batting team take turns hitting against the pitcher of the fielding team, which tries to prevent runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the team who reaches a base safely can later attempt to advance to subsequent bases during teammates turns batting. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the team records three outs. One turn batting for both teams, beginning with the team, constitutes an inning. A game is composed of nine innings, and the team with the number of runs at the end of the game wins. Baseball has no clock, although almost all games end in the ninth inning. Baseball evolved from older bat-and-ball games already being played in England by the mid-18th century and this game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. By the late 19th century, baseball was widely recognized as the sport of the United States. Baseball is now popular in North America and parts of Central and South America, the Caribbean, in the United States and Canada, professional Major League Baseball teams are divided into the National League and American League, each with three divisions, East, West, and Central. The major league champion is determined by playoffs that culminate in the World Series, the top level of play is similarly split in Japan between the Central and Pacific Leagues and in Cuba between the West League and East League. The evolution of baseball from older bat-and-ball games is difficult to trace with precision, a French manuscript from 1344 contains an illustration of clerics playing a game, possibly la soule, with similarities to baseball. Other old French games such as thèque, la balle au bâton, consensus once held that todays baseball is a North American development from the older game rounders, popular in Great Britain and Ireland. Baseball Before We Knew It, A Search for the Roots of the Game, by David Block, suggests that the game originated in England, recently uncovered historical evidence supports this position. Block argues that rounders and early baseball were actually regional variants of other. It has long believed that cricket also descended from such games. The earliest known reference to baseball is in a 1744 British publication, A Little Pretty Pocket-Book, David Block discovered that the first recorded game of Bass-Ball took place in 1749 in Surrey, and featured the Prince of Wales as a player. William Bray, an English lawyer, recorded a game of baseball on Easter Monday 1755 in Guildford and this early form of the game was apparently brought to Canada by English immigrants
4.
Oberlin, Ohio
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Oberlin is a city in Lorain County, Ohio, United States, southwest of Cleveland. Oberlin is the home of Oberlin College, an arts college. The population was 8,286 at the 2010 census, Oberlin was founded in 1833 by two Presbyterian ministers, John Jay Shipherd and Philo P. Stewart. The two decided to name their community after Jean-Frédéric Oberlin, an Alsatian minister whose pedagogical achievements in a poor, Shipherd and Stewart rode south from Elyria into the forests that covered the northern part of Ohio in search of a suitable location for their community. After a journey of eight miles, they stopped to rest and pray in the shade of an elm tree along the forest. Legend has it that while they prayed, a saw a family of bears climb down from a nearby tree. The bears saw the two men, but turned away without harming them, on hearing this story from the hunter, the two ministers took it to be a sign from God that they had selected the right place for their community and school. Shipherd traveled back east and convinced the owner of the land to donate 500 acres of land for the school, and he purchased an additional 5,000 acres for the town, at the cost of $1.50 per acre. While in that part of the country, he visited many of his friends and persuaded some to join in his adventure, the motto of the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute was Learning and Labor. In those days the words were taken literally, tuition at Oberlin was free. This attracted a number of young people who would otherwise not have been able to afford tuition. Eventually this approach was deemed inefficient, the motto, however, during the mid 1800s African Americans, predominantly free people of color and runaway slaves, settled in the area. On June 28,1924, the worst flood in Oberlin history occurred on the day that a tornado killed 62 people in Lorain. Afterward, the water was so deep that children swam in Tappan Square, damage was caused to all of downtown Oberlin. The second largest employer in Oberlin is the Federal Aviation Administration, Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center is one of the most transitioned air traffic control centers in the country, and oversees the airspace over six states and a small part of Canada. Towards the middle of the 19th century, Oberlin became a focus of the abolitionist movement in the United States. The town was conceived as a community and blacks attended Oberlin College from 1835. Their younger brother John Mercer Langston, who became the first black elected to the United States Congress from Virginia in 1888, many Oberlin College graduates were dedicated abolitionists, who traveled throughout the South working to help slaves escape to the north
5.
Desert Hot Springs, California
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Desert Hot Springs, also known as DHS, is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. The city is located within the Coachella Valley geographic region, sometimes referred to as the Desert Empire, the population was 25,938 at the 2010 census, up from 16,582 at the 2000 census. The city has undergone development and high population growth since the 1970s. Cabot Yerxa arrived in 1913 and soon discovered the hot water aquifer on Miracle Hill, due to the Mission Creek Branch of the San Andreas Fault bisecting the area, one side is a cold water aquifer, the other has a hot water aquifer. Cabots Trading Post & Gallery opened there in February 2008, the town was founded by L. W. Coffee on July 12,1941. The original town site was centered at the intersection of Palm Drive, Coffee chose the name Desert Hot Springs because of the areas natural hot springs. Desert Hot Springs became a tourist destination in the 1950s because of its spa hotels. The city is popular with snowbirds, realtors arrived to speculate, and thousands of lots and streets were laid out over a six square mile area. Some homes were bought by retirees and the area incorporated as a city in 1963, Desert Hot Springs experienced periods of significant growth in the 1980s and 1990s, when most of the vacant lots were filled with new houses and duplex apartments. The citys population doubled in the 1980s and increased by 5,000 in the 2000 census, in 1993, a 3-star hotel, Mirage Springs Hotel Resort opened in DHS. Despite good reviews and providing much needed revenue to DHS. The business reopened as the Miracle Springs Resort and Spa, Desert Hot Springs High School opened in 1999. Desert Local News, is a news source. The Desert Star Weekly newspaper is published in the city, according to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 23.6 square miles, of which 99. 89% is land and 0. 11% is water. Desert Hot Springs has a climate similar to the rest of the Coachella Valley. Summers are very hot with days frequently exceeding 107 °F in July, the winters are mild with days typically seeing temperatures between 68–82 °F and corresponding night-time lows between 50–65 °F. Heat waves during the summer months involving temperatures higher than 110 °F are not unusual, the Mission Creek Fault, a branch of the San Andreas, separates two aquifers. On one side, the Desert Hot Springs Sub-Basin contains an aquifer with hot water and this aquifer supports the areas spas and resorts
6.
USC Trojans football
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The USC Trojans football program, established in 1888, represents the University of Southern California in college football. USC is a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I FBS, the Trojans throughout NCAA history have claimed 11 national championships. USC has the most Pro Football Hall of Famers, USC has the highest all-time post-season winning percentage of schools with 25 or more bowl appearances. The team is coached by Clay Helton, USC first fielded a football team in 1888. Playing its first game on November 14 of that year against the Alliance Athletic Club, USC faced its first collegiate opponent the following year in fall 1889, playing St. Vincents College to a 40–0 victory. In 1893, USC joined the Intercollegiate Football Association of Southern California, which was composed of USC, Occidental College, Throop Polytechnic Institute, Pomona College was invited to enter, but declined to do so. An invitation was extended to Los Angeles High School. Before they were named Trojans in 1912, USC athletic teams were called the Methodists, during the early years, limitations in travel and the scarcity of major football-playing colleges on the West Coast limited its rivalries to local Southern Californian colleges and universities. During this period USC played regular series against Occidental, Caltech, Whittier, Pomona, the first USC team to play outside of Southern California went to Stanford University on November 4,1905, where they were trampled 16–0 by the traditional West Coast powerhouse. While the teams would not meet again until 1918, this was also USCs first game against a future Pac-12 conference opponent, during this period USC also played its first games against other future Pac-12 rivals, including Oregon State, California, Oregon and Arizona. Between 1911–1913, USC followed the example of California and Stanford, the results were disastrous, as USC was soundly defeated by more experienced programs while the school itself experienced financial reverses, it was during this period that Owen R. After several decades of competition, USC first achieved prominence under head coach Gloomy Gus Henderson in the early 1920s. Another milestone came under Henderson in 1922, when USC joined the Pacific Coast Conference, success continued under coach Howard Jones from 1925 to 1940, when the Trojans were just one of a few nationally dominant teams. It was during this era that the achieved renown as the Thundering Herd. USC achieved intermittent success in the years following Jones tenure, jeff Cravath, who coached from 1942–1950, won the Rose Bowl in 1943 and 1945. Jess Hill, who coached from 1951 to 1956, won the Rose Bowl in 1953, from 1957 to 1959, the Trojans were coached by Don Clark. The Pacific Coast Conference dissolved in 1959, USC joined the conferences other three California schools and Washington to form a new conference, the Athletic Association of Western Universities, under a new charter. The program entered a new golden age upon the arrival of head coach John McKay, during this period the Trojans produced two Heisman Trophy winners and won four national championships
7.
Tulsa Golden Hurricane football
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The Tulsa Golden Hurricane football program represents the University of Tulsa in college football at the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision level. Tulsa has competed in the American Athletic Conference since the 2014 season and was previously a member of Conference USA, the team is currently led by head coach Philip Montgomery. Tulsa plays its games at Skelly Field at H. A. Chapman Stadium in Tulsa. The University of Tulsa has the smallest undergraduate enrollment of all schools that participate at the FBS level, Tulsa was known as Henry Kendall College until the move from Muskogee to Tulsa was completed in 1907. It was during this time that the first football team would represent the University, the team would go 1–0, defeating the Bacone Indians. Both the exact date and score of the game were not recorded, over the next twelve years, Kendall would play 17 games, going 8–8–1, but not fielding a team for four years. The most common opponent was Arkansas, who met with Tulsa four times, now established in Tulsa, the football team began to grow. In 1913, Kendall went 5–2 under George Evans, sam P. McBirney, who coached the 2–31908 squad, would then return to coach the team in 1914. His first two years back would both be successful, a 6–2 record in 1914 and 6–1–1 the following year, but the undefeated 1916 squad would bring national recognition to Tulsa. The 1916 Hurricane outscored its opponents 566–40, including an 81–0 defeat of Cumberland, there were rumors of playing Notre Dame for the Mid-America Championship, but the two teams never met. Kendall College would return to form after World War I, to go 8–0–1 under Francis Schmidt, the new coach was known as Close the Gates of Mercy Schmidt because of his efforts to run up the score on inferior teams. The 1919 season gave Kendall their first defeat of the Oklahoma Sooners, ultimately, Schmidts style would cost Tulsa their coach, as he attracted the attention of University of Arkansas boosters with a 63–7 defeat of the Razorbacks in 1919. Schmidt would sign with and coach the Hogs from 1922–1928, howard Archer would leave his mark on the program in two ways. Tulsa did not miss a beat after Schmidts departure, and went 8–0 in 1922 and this included a 13–6 defeat of Schmidt-coached Arkansas in Fayetteville. Archer also gave the newly named University of Tulsa an athletic identity, previously, the team had been referred to as Orange and Black, Kendallites, Presbyterians, Tigers, and Tulsans. Archer put a vote to the team to replace Golden Tornadoes, the vote resulted in Golden Hurricane, which it has remained ever since. The coach would not have the power of his nickname, however. TU gave Henderson a large contract to leave the mighty Trojans of USC, the Hurricane had great success on and off the field under Henderson, going 62–17–3 in his first nine years, winning four Oklahoma Intercollegiate Conference championships
8.
Los Angeles Bulldogs
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The Los Angeles Bulldogs were a professional American football team that competed from 1936 to 1948. Formed with the intention of joining the National Football League in 1937, the 1937 Bulldogs are one of four pro football teams that have gone undefeated and untied during a season, joining the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the 1948 Calgary Stampeders, and the 1948 Cleveland Browns. The Bulldogs hold the distinction of being the first, after the dissolution of the second AFL after the 1937 season, they returned to independent football for 1938, having a 2-1-2 record against NFL teams that season. The two newcomers dominated their new league, finishing with the two greatest winning percentages, but at the meetings, the Columbus Bullies were announced as the league champions. Shortly afterward, the Bulldogs announced their intention to leave the AFL to become a member of a new Pacific Coast Professional Football League. Winning PCPFL championships in 1940 and 1946, the Bulldogs were the team to compete in the league in every year of its existence. The L. A. Bulldogs were formed in 1936 with the intention of joining the National Football League. In the premier season of 1936, superlatives came early for the new team, gil Lefebvre had already established himself as a punt return threat, and both Berry and Ed Stark electrified crowds with their long runs. While professional football leagues often had traveling teams, the Bulldogs played all their games of the 1936 in 18, the team had averaged 9,400 fans in the stands for the season, and over 12,000 per game in the second half. At the 1936 NFL owners meeting, Myers joined representatives from Houston, soon afterward, the Bulldogs opted to take the Rams’ place in the AFL. Despite the new league, the Los Angeles Bulldogs roster stayed relatively constant, former Chicago Cardinals back Al Nichelini joined the team. The Shamrocks and Yankees, both of which averaging over 10,000 attendance in home games in the 1936 season, totaled 4500 people in their home games against the Bulldogs in 1937. On the other hand, the Bulldogs drew 15,000 in each of their AFL home games, with the collapse of the second American Football League, playing games against NFL teams became an option for the Bulldogs again for 1938 as they returned to independent status. The season featured games against the Pittsburgh Pirates, both Chicago NFL teams, and the Cleveland Rams, plus two games against former AFL franchise Cincinnati. The Bulldogs were asked by Hollywood Stars owner Paul Schissler to join his new California League as a rival to his team, the Bulldogs followed their perfect season with a 10-2-2 campaign, including a 2-1-2 record in games against NFL teams. LA’s other loss was to the Bengals, which also had success against the NFL teams after the dissolution of the second AFL, the following year featured several changes for the Bulldogs, most notably a new owner, a new league, and a new head coach. Kicker George Karamatic was signed from the Washington Redskins, and they lost their star of their backfield Bill Howard, as the season progressed, their offense strengthened as they beat the Dayton Bombers 65-0 on Thanksgiving weekend and the St. Louis Gunners 56-14 in mid-December. As the season ended, the Bulldogs’ 7-1 record had them placed atop the standings, ahead of Cincinnati’s 6-2
