Portal:American football/Selected article/November, 2007

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Indoor football is a variation of American football with rules modified to make it suitable for play within ice hockey arenas.

The first major indoor football game was the 1932 NFL Playoff Game, which was played indoors in the Chicago Stadium due to a severe blizzard that prevented playing the game outside. A dirt floor was brought in, and to compensate for the 80-yard length of the field, teams were penalized twenty yards upon crossing midfield.

In the 1960s the Boardwalk Bowl, a post-season game involving small college teams, was contested at the Atlantic City Convention Center, probably known better as the home of the Miss America Pageant, in another attempt to make Atlantic City more of a year-round resort in the pre-gambling era as opposed to a single-season one (the Miss America pageant likewise began as an attempt to extend the season beyond Labor Day). The Philadelphia-based Liberty Bowl game, which had been played at Municipal Stadium from 1959-1963, was moved into the Convention Center in 1964 for the contest between Utah and West Virginia. The game drew just over 6,000 fans, though, and the Liberty Bowl moved to Memphis, where it is still held as of 2006.

This, however, was not technically "indoor football" as discussed here, as the size of the playing surface and hence the rules were essentially the same as in the standard outdoor game, with only the necessity of contingencies for what were to happen should, say, a punt strike the ceiling. Some would say that the relative success of this game, which was staged for several years, helped lead to the domed stadium era which began with the opening of the Houston Astrodome in 1965. The Astrodome in turn led to the development of the artificial turf playing surface required to make the indoor game truly practicable. (The Houston Oilers did not move their games inside the Astrodome as soon it was completed; they continued to play outdoors until 1968.) Football played in domed stadiums such as the Astrodome, however, is not truly "indoor football", as the game as played in domed stadiums is essentially identical to that played outdoors.

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