These days, you can't go far without running into a fan of the Nittany Lions, or the Eagles, or the Penguins, or NASCAR. PA loves its sports. But it wasn't always that way.
Consider founder William Penn, a Quaker whose first legislature banned so-called riotous sports that might lead to immoral behaviors such as gambling and drinking.
Benjamin Franklin reportedly favored swimming as exercise, and by the early 1800s, crews from Penn began rowing against each other in the Schuylkill River.
The same was happening across the state in Pittsburgh's rivers. Eventually, immigrants from Europe brought cricket a bat and ball game popular at the time with the British.
But it was baseball that quickly spread throughout the Commonwealth, seen as a sport for the masses instead of the elite.
And finally, just before the turn of the century, another English sport, rugby evolved into the contact sport we know today as football.
