In today’s hypercompetitive world, contact sports bring about fierce rivalries between fans, between players, and even between countries. From the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines in grid iron football, to the Australian Wallabies and the New Zealand All Blacks in rugby, to Real Madrid and Barcelona in association football (soccer), contact sports incite a passion few other games can replicate. Though these modern contests of brawn might vary in ways both subtle and significant, they draw on a common history that dates back centuries. Overcoming rulers, conquerors, and religious leaders, the games of ancient times survived and flourished to become the sports we know and love today. In The Shared Origins of Football, Rugby, and Soccer, Christopher Rowley reveals how ball games arose and took shape into seven distinct forms: American football, association football, Australian rules football, Canadian football, Gaelic football, rugby league football, and rugby union football. Rowley traces ball games back to the Mayans in Meso-America and the Han Dynasty in China, through ancient Egypt and Greece, and on through the Cradle of football in England and Scotland. His narrative includes the relatively recent development of rules, codes, and leagues and concludes with the current state of football around the world. The Shared Origins of Football, Rugby, and Soccer takes the reader through this unique odyssey in world history by bringing to life the little-known games of the past. Rowley recreates ancient games from around the world based on surviving documents and illustrations, and relates first-hand accounts of fossil games still played today. Through careful research, the common ancestry of our modern seven codes of football is finally pieced together to create a fascinating history of the world of football that we know today.

It’s America’s most popular sport, played by thousands, watched by millions, and generating billions in revenues every year. It’s also America’s most controversial sport, haunted by the specter of life-threatening injuries and plagued by scandal, even among its most venerable personalities and institutions. At the college level, we often tie football’s tales of corruption and greed to its current popularity and revenue potential, and we have vague notions of a halcyon time--before the new College Football Playoff, power conferences, and huge TV contracts. Perhaps we conjure images of young Ivy Leaguers playing a gentleman’s game, exemplifying the collegial in collegiate. What we don’t imagine is a game described in 1905, not today, as "a social obsession--this boy-killing, man-mutillating, education-prostituting, gladiatorial sport." In The Opening Kickoff, Dave Revsine tells the riveting story of the formative period of American football (1890-1915). It was a time that saw the game’s meteoric rise, fueled by overflow crowds, breathless newspaper coverage and newfound superstars—including one of the most thrilling and mysterious the sport has ever seen. But it was also a period racked by controversy in academics, recruiting, and physical brutality that, in combination, threatened football’s very existence. A vivid storyteller, Revsine brings it all to life in a captivating narrative.

This ambitious and fascinating history considers why, in the space of sixty years between 1850 and 1910, football grew from a marginal and unorganised activity to become the dominant winter entertainment for millions of people around the world. The book explores how the world’s football codes - soccer, rugby league, rugby union, American, Australian, Canadian and Gaelic - developed as part of the commercialised leisure industry in the nineteenth century. Football, however and wherever it was played, was a product of the second industrial revolution, the rise of the mass media, and the spirit of the age of the masses. Important reading for students of sports studies, history, sociology, development and management, this book is also a valuable resource for scholars and academics involved in the study of football in all its forms, as well as an engrossing read for anyone interested in the early history of football.

Mark Bernstein shows that much of the culture that surrounds American football, both good and bad, has its roots in the Ivy League. With their long winning streaks, distinctive traditions, and impressive victories, Ivy teams started a national obsession with football in the first decades of the twentieth century that remains alive today. In so doing they have helped develop our ideals about the role of athletics in college life.

Rugby has always been a sport with as much drama off the field as on it. For every thrilling last-minute Jonny Wilkinson drop-goal to win the world cup or Jonah Lomu rampage down the touchline for a try, there has been a split, a feud or a controversy. The Oval World is the first full-length history of rugby on a world scale – from its origins in the village-based football games of medieval times up to the globalised sport of the twenty-first century,now played in well over 100 countries. It tells the story of how a game played in an obscure English public school became the winter sport of the British Empire, spread to France, Argentina, Japan and the rest of the world and commanded a global television audience of over four billion for the last world cup final. And how American football – and other games such as Australian, Canadian and Gaelic football – emerged from rugby and highlight just how much the modern gridiron game owes to its English cousin. Featuring the great moments in the game's history and its great names – such as Jonah Lomu, David Duckham, Serge Blanco, Billy Boston and David Campese alongside Rupert Brooke, King George V, Boris Karloff, Charles de Gaulle and Nelson Mandela – The Oval World investigates just what it is about rugby that enables it to survive and thrive in countries with very different traditions and cultures. This is the the definitive world history of a truly global rugby.

A monumental exploration of soccer and society in our time—by its preeminent historian. The Age of Football proves that whether you call it football or soccer, you can’t make sense of the modern world without understanding its most popular sport. With breathtaking scope and an unparalleled knowledge of the game, David Goldblatt—author of the best-selling The Ball Is Round—charts soccer’s global cultural ascent, economic transformation, and deep politicization.

ESPN's Sal Paolantonio explores just how crucial football is to understanding the American psyche Using some of the most prominent voices in pro sports and cultural and media criticism, "How Football Explains America" is a fascinating, first-of-its-kind journey through the making of America's most complex, intriguing, and popular game. It tackles varying American themes--from Manifest Destiny to "fourth and one"--as it answers the age-old question Why does America love football so much? An unabashedly celebratory explanation of America's love affair with the game and the men who make it possible, this work sheds light on how the pioneers and cowboys helped create a game that resembled their march across the continent. It explores why rugby and soccer don't excite the American male like football does and how the game's rules are continually changing to enhance the dramatic action and create a better narrative. It also investigates the eternal appeal of the heroic quarterback position, the sport's rich military lineage, and how the burgeoning medium of television identified and exploited the NFL's great characters. It is a must read for anyone interested in more fully understanding not only the game but also the nation in which it thrives. Updated throughout and with a new introduction, this edition brings "How Football Explains America" to paperback for the first time.