Ted Hughes wrote:DoomMerchant wrote:Ted Hughes wrote:Or alternatively the yanks decided to call a game where you chuck a ball around almost exclusively with your hands; 'football' because they didn't have enough brain cells to think of anything themselves, as in; " Hey Homer what's that new game you've invented where you throw the ball & the other guy catches it? " " I think I'll call it.........football! "
yr better than that, but...regardless.
American football obv grew more out of Rugby. You lot had your fracture/splinter of "football" turning into Rugby and erm Soccer (for the sake of uh clarity) earlier than we did, but we had a similar occurrence in the US -- that is forming an association or group to create a standard set of rules around how to play these games that were largely "football." When trying to form a unified league in the US it leaned towards a set of rules that were more rugby-flavored than soccer-flavored, and as a result we kept honing the rules about the game, in isolation from whatever happened on the European continent for the large part, until the game was both well-baked enough it its provincial flavour and seen as a bit of a badge of honour against whatever the former mother land was doing. Early American Football rules had a lot more Rugby flavor in terms of what you could do (e.g. more kicking of the ball, and no forward passing, etc), but those rules changed to make it the game it is today with a forward-passing focus, and less kicking for points outside of field goals, etc. And it's a fantastically fun game to play and watch btw.
Had this game been invented in a more "modern" time i would bet that there would have been an INTL forum and agreement upon rules across many continents, which would have made all of our lives a lot less interesting, don't you think?
I'm glad at least you lot are finally taking ownership of that filthy, grotty word "Soccer." It's despicable.
cheers
It was a joke. I don't actually care one way or the other apart from the fact that nerds & prawn sandwich eaters tend to be the people who use the word 'soccer' & 'football ' is a daft name to have called the sport they play in the states, whatever the reason. I can imagine it's good fun to play btw but watching it is an aquired taste. I've tried plenty of times & I mostly end up forgetting it's on.
i was joking about your joke. Keep up. Or is that Keepy-uppy?
You should try baseball if American Football is too slow for you. ;)
cheers