The 20 Awesomest Football Facts You Didn’t Know (Just in Time for Kickoff)

The 2014 NFL season officially <a href="http://www.nfl.com/kickoff" target="_blank">kicks off next week on Thursday, September 5</a>, with 2013 Super Bowl champs Baltimore Ravens playing the Denver Broncos at Sports Authority Field at Mile High Stadium in Colorado. To help you get your head back on the field, here are the 20 awesomest football facts you might not know. From the minimum rookie salary to what Teddy Roosevelt did to change football history — it's all here. <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/" target="_blank">Thanks to "Today I Learned" on Reddit for a majority of these questions and answers.</a>

Despite a four-game playoff marathon easily taking up twelve hours of broadcast time, there's actually very little football in football. <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406.html" target="_blank">According to the Wall Street Journal</a>, "a study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes." The rest is just replay and commercials.

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_Texas_sports_teams#Football" target="_blank">Citing Wikipedia, there was also</a>: the Arena Football League Dallas Texans (1990-1993), the World Football League Houston Texans (1974-1975), American Football League-National Football League Dallas Texans (1952). The hockey teams include: the Fort Worth Texans (1974-1982), the Dallas Texans (1945-46) (1948-49), and the Dallas Texans (1941-1945).

Mob football is also believed to have caused the first royal decree on April 13, 1314. Worrying that the game would lead to riots, Edward II of England decreed: "For as much as there is a great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arrice, what God forbid, we can command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such games to be used in the city in future." For good measure, he also claimed it was un-Christian. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mob_football" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>)

However, they are not the oldest team in modern football history. That honor belongs to the Arizona Cardinals, who were once the Chicago Cardinals (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Cardinals" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>).

Thomas E. Wilson, founder of Wilson Sporting Goods, opened the Wilson Football factory in in 1955 "in Ada, Ohio to ensure that Wilson footballs would not only be American made, but the highest quality footballs ever produced. To this day, the world leader in football continues to produce all of its footballs right here in America in the world's only dedicated football factory." (<a href="http://www.wilson.com/en-us/football/nfl/wilson-and-the-nfl/factory/" target="_blank">Wilson.com</a>)

Needless to say, Cumberland College isn't around anymore. Y<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Cumberland_vs._Georgia_Tech_football_game" target="_blank">ou can read more about it here.</a>

Poe spent the last part of his life in Baltimore and was buried there, too. The three raven mascots bear his namesake: Edgar, Allan, and Poe. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_Ravens" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>)

All of these footballs are made in Ada, Ohio. And <a href="http://www.seriouslyfacts.me/you-need-about-600-cows-just-to-make-the-necessary-number-of-a-one-season%E2%80%99s-nfl-footballs/" target="_blank">according to Seriously Facts</a>, "If you were a cow, chances are only 1 in 17,420,000 that you would become a football that would be used in the Super Bowl. Chances of catching the black plague [for a human] are nearly the same."

Don't believe it? Check out Google Maps.

<a href="http://www.stlouisrams.com/assets/swf/funfacts.swf" target="_blank">Some other interesting facts about the St. Louis Rams:</a> they were the first professional sports team to move West of the Mississippi, and they were first NFL team post-WWII to employ African Americans.

"The Packers have been a publicly owned, non-profit corporation since August 18, 1923. The corporation currently has 363,491 stockholders, who collectively own 5,017,925 shares of stock after the last stock sale of 2011-2012. There have been five stock sales, in 1923, 1935, 1950, 1997, and 2011. Shares in 1923 sold for $5 apiece, while in 1997 they were sold at $200 each and in 2011, $250 each. The National Football League, of which the Packers are a member, does not allow corporate membership, and instead requires clubs to be wholly owned either by a single owner, or small group of owners, and requires that at least one owner owns a 1/3 stake in the team. The Packers are granted an exemption to this rule, as they have been a publicly owned corporation since before the rule was in place." (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bay_Packers_Board_of_Directors" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a>)

"By 1905, college football was all the rage...But it was also an increasingly violent and deadly passion. There were 18 fatalities nationwide that year, including three college players (the rest were high-school athletes), and President Theodore Roosevelt, whose son was on the freshmen team at Harvard University, made it clear he wanted reforms amid calls by some to abolish the college game. So in December representatives of 62 schools met in New York to change the rules and make the game safer. Their biggest change was to make the forward pass legal, beginning the transformation of football into the modern game," <a href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Early-History-of-Footballs-Forward-Pass.html" target="_blank">from Smithsonian Magazine.</a>

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Naismith" target="_blank">Other bad ass stuff this Canadian did?</a> He also founded the University of Kansas' basketball team (Jayhawks) and lived long enough to see basketball adopted as an Olympic sport.

Fred Cox was quoted in 2011 <a href="http://www.vikings.com/news/article-1/Where-Are-They-Now-Fred-Cox/28a2116f-76f0-4e7f-b1ee-5cf12634e915" target="_blank">in an interview with Viking Update</a> as saying, "Basically, my time is consumed by hunting, doing a little fishing, working on airplanes and playing golf. It’s not too shabby ... I retired when I was 50. Retired from everything. The Nerf football had a lot to do with that."

"The exemption for football stems from lobbying efforts by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Rozelle" target="_blank">Pete Rozelle</a> in the 1960s to earn an antitrust exemption for the merger of the NFL and AFL [American Football League]. The antitrust and tax exemptions were cleverly attached to an uncontroversial 1966 bill to "suspend the investment credit and the allowance of accelerated depreciation in the case of certain real property." The NFL-AFL merger language was included at the end of the bill that had nothing else to do with football." (<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-frederick/nfl-tax-exempt_b_1321635.html" target="_blank">Huffington Post</a>)

<a href="http://www.omg-facts.com/Sports/NFL-Stadiums-Have-To-Be-Built-North-To-S/55425" target="_blank">According to OMG Facts</a>, "The NFL rules dictate that stadiums should be built on the North South direction. This is so that sunlight doesn't play any factor in the game. That way, a quarterback can't complain that they weren't able to play well because they had the Sun on their eyes. There are 7 stadiums not built East-West, but they either took measures to make sure that the sunlight doesn't hit players, or they're indoor stadiums, in which case, direction doesn't matter."

<a href="http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/New-NFL-goal-A-longer-life-1272886.php#page-2" target="_blank">According to Seatle Pi, who reported on retired football players' health dilemmas:</a> "Football is a hazardous occupation for several reasons: The game demands oversized players, who are naturally susceptible to cardiac concerns; is heavily reliant on African-American players, whose genetic tendencies lead to higher rates of hypertension and diabetes; and, as a contact sport, creates a combination of physical and emotional stresses not seen in other sports."

For a further breakdown of signing bonuses, etc., <a href="http://overthecap.com/nfl-rookie-salary-cap.php" target="_blank">click here</a>.

The population of the U.K. is 62.74 million. 62.74 million multiplied by 4 is only 250.96. Americans love football.