Super Bowl Day! The championship of the National Football League! A hundred thousand spectators yelling and cheering in the stadium! The intensity of the competition vibrates over the television in every home! Excitement resonates everywhere! No one remains unaffected by this event!
The excitement all began in the 1860s when courageous players from Princeton and Rutgers played the first football game in New Jersey. The Rutgers players wore scarlet-colored scarves wrapped around their head like turbans. This was long before helmets were mandatory and the Princeton players evidently played bare-headed. The competition was fierce. It was intense.
The rivalry between the schools was played out in two vicious games that resulted in football being banned for a time because it interfered with academic studies. This same accusation has plagued college football teams every since.
The memorable heroes of this sport are still talked about years after theyve passed on. On a dusty dirt field in Ohio in 1915 the infamous Jim Thorpe, a running back, played against the most determined defensive end, Knute Rockne. They didnt have a television camera on them, but their...