Gridiron!

Bethesda releases its first game, Gridiron!, for the Amiga and Atari systems. Christopher Weaver touts this title as being the first physics-based sports game:

Our Gridiron! football program (for Amiga and Atari) was not statistically based but built to incorporate a bounded system of man-made rules operating within a physics-based world engine. So impressive was this novel system that Trip Hawkins, then President of Electronic Arts, asked Bethesda to become an affiliate and help design their “new” football game, John Madden Football.