History of Sports

Sports are timeless activities; ones that humans have enjoyed since at least ancient times, as exemplified by the Greek Olympic Games. Indeed, ethnographic and archaeological evidence such as cave paintings and the accounts of early European explorers indicate sports may well go back to the very beginning of humankind. Many of the sports played and celebrated today, such as football, even have their roots in various kicking and running ball games played throughout medieval Europe. Sports such as golf and horse racing were also played among the European aristocratic classes, especially those of Britain.

Of course ancient Olympics, medieval aristocrats, cave people, and hordes of peasants kicking a ball from one village to the next is, despite the genealogy, rather far removed from sports as we know them today. The development of modern sports is tied very much to the history of the industrial revolution and the creation of the first public schools, the latter of which sought to incorporate physical activity in the curriculum. The net result of this process was to cleanse (as in reduce violent elements) and codify various games such as soccer or rugby and of course later on, basketball and football, both of which were very much shaped on college campuses in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, at least in the United States.

It is clear that the history of sports as series of incredibly popular spectator events would not exist in its current shape without the likes of magazines like Sports Illustrated. Initially there was much resistance to the idea of a sports magazine. The prevailing views were that sports are beneath journalism and that there would be no audience, and therefore money, in such an undertaking. Of course, the history of Sports Illustrated demonstrates that such views were mistaken. These days Sports Illustrated is credited as one of three main factors for the explosion of popular sports, the other two being economic prosperity and sports broadcasting.

Basketball is the only popular spectator sport that bears the distinction of being invented by a single person, as opposed to being the adaptation or evolution from or of another sport. Dr. James Naismith is a name inseparable from the history of basketball, a game he conceived as an indoor activity for energetic New England youth to wile away the winter months. January 20, 1892 was the date of the first official basketball game ever played. Naismith went on to coach his invention in Kansas for six years, and thus successfully helped spread the game, with the help of the YMCA, throughout college campuses. In 1946, the National Basketball Association was founded, organizing professional basketball teams for the first time in history.

The history of sports broadcasting, namely television and radio, is a curious phenomenon in that each was, in part, the cause of the other’s success. Some of the first (and most popular) radio and television broadcasts were sports events. While broadcasting mediums helped popularize spectator sports, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, “with only 190,000 television sets in use in 1948, the attraction of sports to the networks in its early period was not advertising dollars…but as a means of boosting demand for television as a medium.” In time, of course, the number of televisions and television stations grew at an exponential rate, so that in 1979 ESPN was launched, reaching over 4 million homes by 1980. 

The earliest reference to baseball in the United States is from the bylaws of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1791, which forbid the game to be played within 80 yards of the town hall (for reasons not too difficult to imagine). It was not until 1845 that the New York Knickerbockers were founded. Although the amateur club was eventually disbanded, it does bear the honor of being the first team to play baseball under modern rules. In 1870 the game began a move toward professionalism, and in 1875 the National League (the same one that exists today) was established. The American League (originally called the Eastern League) was founded in 1893 to compete against the National League, which it did aggressively.

Golf is a sport with a history so rich it defies summation. What most assume to be golf’s antecedent, “chole”, was first recorded in 1354. The game was actually a hockey derivative played in Flanders. Eventually, in 1421, some Scotsmen fighting with the French in Flanders were introduced to the game, and then took it home to Scotland. Over the next two centuries the game spread throughout Great Britain. There are numerous records of kings, queens, and other royalty playing the game, as well as a number of decrees that granted the commoners the right to play in specific public spaces. In fact, Mary Queen of Scotts is the first female golfer on record.

The name “football” is associated with a number of different games, such as soccer, rugby, and American football. There is also Gaelic football, Canadian football, and Australian football. Much of the history of football in the United States has to do with the transition from a kicking game to a running game, and the slow changes and codifications of rules systems and safety guidelines. American football really received its start in the 1820s as an inter-mural sport played by prestigious New England universities. Each university tended to adopt its own rule book, and it was in the course of playing other schools that the rules for American football as we know it were first written. In the early 1900s the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was established to codify rules and reform safety protocols. In 1920, football was officially made a professional sport with the founding of the National Football League (NFL).

The history of sports is rich in depth and detail. Sports that seem recent are, in many cases, not so different from sports activity from hundreds of years ago, only with more spectacle and glamour.