Sports : Football trivia

Sports : Football

» ABC-TV's Monday Night Football premiered in September 1970. Its three original commentators were Keith Jackson, Don Meredith, and Howard Cosell.

» According to the rules of Gaelic football, players may punch the ball, but the punching motion must be clearly visible to the referee. Players may not pick up the ball off the ground unless they first get their toe under the ball.

» At greatest risk of injury to a professional football player's anatomy is the knee, which is involved in 58 percent of all major football injuries.

» Because of a football's resemblance to an olive, albeit a very large one, the Chinese often call the American game of football "olive ball."

» Because of fears that the Japanese, who had attacked Pearl Harbor less than a month earlier, might attach California, the Rose Bowl game of 1942 between Oregon State and Duke University was moved east to Duke's hometown in Durham, North Carolina. It didn't, however, help the home team. Oregon won, 20-16.

» During the football season of 1905, at least 19 players died in college and high school contests.

» For the 2000 Super Bowl, about a third of the TV commercial spots were purchased by dot-com companies. The following year, the numbers dropped to just 10 percent bought by 'Net companies.

» For the first time, the play-by-play of Super Bowl XXX in 1996 was broadcast in the Navajo language and NBC-TV offered a secondary, foreign-language audio feed to its affiliates.