Other American Football

American football, known in the United States and Canada simply as football, is a competitive team sport. The object of the game is to score points by advancing the football into the opposing team's end zone. more...

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The ball can be advanced by carrying the ball, or by throwing or handing it from one teammate to the other. Points can be scored in a variety of ways, including carrying the ball over the goal line, throwing the ball to another player past the goal line or kicking it through the goal posts on the opposing side. The winner is the team with the most points when the time expires and the last play ends. However, tied games can occur.

Outside of the United States and Canada, the sport is usually referred to as American football (or sometimes as gridiron or gridiron football) to differentiate it from other football games.

Popularity

American football is the most popular spectator sport in the United States. In surveys of Americans, pluralities of respondents consider it to be their favorite sport. Football's American TV viewership ratings far surpass those of other sports.

The 32-team National Football League (NFL) is the only major professional American football league. Its championship game, the Super Bowl, is watched by nearly half of U.S. television households and is also televised in over 150 other countries. The day of the game, Super Bowl Sunday is a day when many fans host game watching parties and invite friends and family over to eat and watch the game. It is considered by many to be the year's biggest day for \"stay at home parties.\"

College football is also popular throughout North America. Four college football stadiums (Michigan Stadium, Beaver Stadium, Neyland Stadium, Ohio Stadium), seat more than 100,000 fans and regularly sell out. Even high school football games can attract more than 10,000 people in some areas. The weekly autumn ritual of college and high-school football—which includes marching bands, cheerleaders and parties (including the ubiquitous tailgate party)—is an important part of the culture in much of smalltown America. It is a long-standing tradition in the United States (though not universally observed) that high school football games are played on Friday, college games on Saturday, and professional games on Sunday (with an additional professional game on Monday nights).

Certain fall and winter holidays—most notably Thanksgiving and New Years' Day—have traditional football games associated with them.

Football is played recreationally by amateur club and youth teams (e.g., the Pop Warner little-league programs). There are also many \"semi-pro\" teams in leagues where the players are paid to play but at a small enough salary that they generally must also hold a full-time job.

Read more at Wikipedia.org