Patrick Morris, age 8, of Man, NewYork, for his question:

When was football invented?

An eight year old boy knows that just kicking a ball around is a very pleasant thing to do. When a few friends join and kick the ball back and forth, you are in a game    a game that you could call football. Goodness knows when young boys invented this game of football, but it was ages and ages ago. What’s more, hundreds and hundreds of different boys invented this same game at different times    all over the whole world. That is just how the big fancy game of football really began, and nobody knows how long ago it started.

Sometimes a nice little ordinary game grows big and important. Thishappened in England to the game of football. Teen alters at schools and col¬leges chose teams to play against each other and made up rules, lots ofrules, to be sure that everybody played fair. Actually they invented two football games. They played soccer with a round ball and rugby with an oval shaped ball. About 100 years ago, in 1869, American and Canadian colleges began playing these English games. They changed a few rules andin time they had invented a brand new football game of their own. This is the game our teams have been playing for the past 87 years.