Browse a 'time machine' that allows you to see the helmet designs for every professional football team dating back to 1960.

John Riddell’s first helmet was adopted by college football teams in 1939

The early days of football were violent and there was little protection for players, especially their heads. When deaths became commonplace, John Riddell set out to invent a better way to protect football players. Eventually, the technology from Riddell’s helmets ended up on WWII battlefields.

1440: The National Football League

Explore the best resources we found on the NFL

Experience over 100 years of basketball history with a visual, interactive timeline.

See the evolution of Super Bowl logos and how the NFL refined its visual identity over time

Tracing Super Bowl logos from early, varied designs to today’s standardized look shows how the NFL adapted to shifting design trends, television demands, and brand strategy.

A WWI war helmet outperformed modern gear in this study

Your great-grandparent's World War I helmet stuffed in the back of a closet may be just as effective at preventing brain injury from some blasts as a modern-day military helmet. This article further explains a study that pitted WWI and modern helmets against each other.

Rams player Fred Gehrke painted the NFL's first logo helmet

When the Rams took the field for their first preseason game of the 1948 season, they exited the tunnel with hand-painted ram horns on their helmets. It was the first logo painted on an NFL helmet and fans gave a 5-minute standing ovation.

See the original websites for companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple

Explore archived images of homepages on websites dating all the way back to 1991.

The greatest games in NFL history

Do you remember “The Catch”? What about the “Immaculate Reception”? Did you watch when Elway finally got his ring? Take a trip down memory lane with this Bleacher Report list of the 50 greatest games in NFL history. Explore classic NFL moments dating back to the NFL’s early days in the 1930s and '40s to the present day.

Hear the story behind 11 iconic Super Bowl photos, told by the photographer who shot them

Sports Illustrated legend Walter Iooss Jr. revisits 11 unforgettable Super Bowl images—including Namath, Montana, and Taylor—explaining how light, access, and timing captured moments that defined the game’s visual history.

Every NFL team's top 10 plays of all time

In more than a century of football, there have been a tremendous number of awe-inspiring, defy-the-odds, and borderline miracle plays. This 90-minute compilation from the NFL pulls together the top 10 plays for each time from their franchise history.

100 years of NFL history in under four minutes

Founded in 1920 in Canton, Ohio, professional football has grown into the premiere sport in the US. Generating more than $20B annually, the NFL gained significant popularity after merging with the American Football League in 1970, a move which among other things established the Super Bowl.

There are 32 teams in the NFL

Click a team's name to see their current record and opponent for the day; read the latest news, including injuries; view the remaining schedule; find out where the team is in the standings; discover the current roster; explore all player and team stats; and watch the latest video highlights.

See how faces on magazine covers have changed over time

This piece examined an archive of Time magazine containing 3,389 issues ranging from 1923 to 2014, focusing on 327,322 faces from the archive. Read what the researchers learned.

The NFL held its first draft of college players in 1936

The NFL draft is a three-day spectacle with wall-to-wall media coverage and months of speculation about who will go to number one. But it wasn't always like that. The early days of the draft were done on a chalkboard and created a need for professional scouting departments.

Watch the evolution of the NFL Draft

The NFL Draft evolved from a small group of team representatives huddled in a Philadelphia hotel ballroom in 1936 into a three-day primetime spectacle that regularly draws over 500,000 fans and 13 million TV viewers. Explore how it became the event it is today.

'Scorigami' attempts to chart every NFL game score

The rules of the sport set bounds on possible final outcomes, so this adept statistician mined some fascinating takeaways. Some scores are impossible (like 5 to 1) and some are more common (like 20-17, occurring over 300 times since 1944). Watch for a deluge of numbers.

Watch a comprehensive history of the Super Bowl

This video traces the Super Bowl's history from its origins through major games, ads, and cultural moments, offering a comprehensive overview of how the event evolved. Note that the video covers through the 2020 season.

The 100 most significant sports moments between 2000 and 2025

This list ranks the 100 most significant sports moments of the first 25 years of the 21st century. The editors compiled the collection based on a list of factors, including the "collective joy" factor, whether it made you curse in disbelief, and how much it transcended the sport and entered the broader culture. The top moment: The improbable "helmet catch" during the Super Bowl in 2008.

Explore an interactive timeline of technological inventions and social structures since 1500.

The inventor of fantasy football first experimented with two other sports

In the mid-1950s, Wilfred “Bill” Winkenbach, a part-owner of the Oakland Raiders, concocted two fantasy sports games: one for Major League Baseball and one for the Professional Golfers’ Association. In 1962, he invented fantasy football alongside two writers from the Oakland Tribune.

The weather time machine

A fun interactive on how old ships’ logs are giving scientists new insights into the past and future of the Earth’s changing climate (w/maps and pictures).

Watch ESPN's compilation of iconic moments in sports from 2000 to 2009 in their 'Images of the Decade' special.

The 'Original Six' era between 1942 and 1967 is known as NHL's golden age

Shortly after the National Hockey League formed in 1917, the league expanded rapidly for a decade. But as the effects of World War II took their toll on the country, NHL teams were unable to stay afloat. By 1946, only six teams remained. Using historical photos, this video recounts the teams that survived and shows what hockey looked like during the "Original Six" era until it ended in the 1960s.

NHL players used to not wear helmets or masks

Until the 1970s, hockey goalies didn't wear masks to protect their faces with any regularity. Instead, they took pucks off their cheeks, foreheads, and mouths, resulting in serious scars. Any player who entered the league after June 1, 1979, was required to wear a helmet, but several players who'd started before then chose to continue playing without one.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

A part-owner of the Oakland Raiders spearheaded the first fantasy football league.

Watch a clip from the 1980 NFL Draft, the first to be broadcast on ESPN

ESPN broadcast the 1980 NFL Draft from the New York Sheraton Hotel's grand ballroom. This decision transformed the Draft from a closed, industry-only event into the nationally televised spectacle it is today, drawing over 13 million viewers annually.

See nine airplane models that transformed aviation

This visual guide jumps over the dawn of modern air travel and begins with the open-cockpit biplane flown by the first scheduled airline, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

Visualize the path of every solar eclipse from 1900 to 2099 and see what each looks like when observed from different locations on Earth.

View a detailed list of Napa Valley wines, dating all the way back to the 1991 vintage.

A rich archive of the visual imagination of the Cold War era

The blog aggregates art, design, fashion, and technology from the atomic and space age, spanning mid-century American futurism and its Soviet counterpart. The content has a broad range: escape pods from a B-58 bomber sit alongside Tour de France caravan vehicles and unidentified industrial designs.

Experience 14 billion years of important moments in world history with this scrollable interactive timeline.

By the 1980s, fantasy football was a national activity

The Greater Oakland Professional Pigskin Prognosticators League was a private league, but by the end of the ‘60s, a bar in Oakland opened the first public fantasy football league. Over the next few decades, the game grew more popular, as evidenced by this how-to article from a 1980 issue of “Inside Sports.”

Explore an interactive timeline of rock 'n' roll's origins in blues, swing, country, and other genres.

100 years of passenger air travel: a visual guide

This interactive timeline covers the first 100 years of passenger air travel, which was created in 1925 when the U.S. Post Office allowed private airlines to start delivering mail.

The cars were originally produced by European manufacturers like Alfa Romeo, Ferrari, and Maserati

Other than the four wheels and open top, the early Formula 1 cars have little in common with today’s machines. But the era has a rich history. Using historic video and photos, this hour-long documentary details the iconic drivers of the 1950s, the evolution of the premier teams, and how the era left its mark on the sport that’s still being felt today.

See unused gladiator helmets discovered in Pompeii.

One fantasy football league has been running for over four decades

The Fantasy Football League began in 1980, before fantasy football was available online. The group, which began in Northern California, originally used a touchdown-only format because it was easier to score in the preinternet era.

Explore the history of American restaurants through an archive of menus dating back to the early 1800s.

Test your historical knowledge with this daily game that shows you 10 historical artifacts and asks you to guess their time period and place of origin.

'Saturday Night Live' uses a tool to recreate politicians' clothes

The show's costume designer, Tom Broecker, said that the team uses a "cricket," which allows them to scan patterns from images and recreate them for cast members' costumes.

View an interactive collection of historical documents from the Viking project

This collection includes original mission bulletins, engineering and planning documents, and interview segments from more than 80 Viking team members who made the historic exploration of Mars’ surface by a lander possible.

A children's toy inspired the name ‘Super Bowl’

The name “Super Bowl” was coined by AFL founder Lamar Hunt, who casually suggested it in 1966—riffing on his child’s Super Ball toy—after alternatives such as “The Big One” and “AFL-NFL World Championship Game” proved clunky and forgettable. The name was officially adopted for the third championship.

The Harlem Globetrotters played their first game in 1927

Black players were not permitted on the existing professional basketball teams, but Abe Saperstein—the team's original coach, owner, manager, and sometimes player—leaned into the team's all-Black roster, nodding to New York's historically Black neighborhood even though the team didn't play there until the late 1960s.

The NASCAR championship trophy has evolved for decades

From the Winston Cup’s reign from 1971 to 2003, to the Nextel/Sprint Cup awarded from 2004 to 2016, this NASCAR video shows the evolution to the new Bill France Trophy with every track outlined.

A smooth, scrollable timeline of every 'SNL' cast member

Starting from season 1 in 1975, scroll through the years of the show's comic actors in this well-designed visual record and get a sense of their relative endurance on the show. Stop to click and read more on that season's highlights or the specific career arc of the actor.

Experience a century of America's healthcare advances with this medical visualization, tracing a sampling of healthcare innovations from head to toe.

Hear the stories behind each Super Bowl ring from the past 59 champions

Super Bowl rings are championship jewelry given to players, coaches, and staff to commemorate a title. Over time, they’ve grown dramatically—from the Packers’ 1966 ring with a single half-carat diamond to modern designs featuring nearly 10 carats.

100 moments that shaped baseball history

Published in 2018 by baseball historian Jacob Kornhauser, this list examines the defining moments throughout more than a century of play on the field, from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis purportedly throwing a no-hitter while on acid to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.

Fantasy football is now a $10B industry

Curious about how fantasy football grew into a global empire? This video breaks down how a losing Oakland Raiders team led to the first form of fantasy football, long before the internet and smartphones made it a worldwide phenomenon.