Hendon Hooker's perseverance leading revival of Tennessee football as family proudly watches on
The International Rugby Football Board was founded in 1886, but rifts were beginning to emerge in the code. Professionalism had already begun to creep into the various codes of football. In 1855, the U.S. inventor Charles Goodyear – who had patented vulcanised rubber – exhibited a spherical football, with an exterior of vulcanised rubber panels, at the Paris Exhibition Universelle. There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or prehistoric ball games, played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of the world. For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded by an English explorer named John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football with Inuit in Greenland. There are later accounts of an Inuit game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each other team's line and then at a goal. Football Stats and History The complete source for current and historical...