Real Football

Posted byChaplainmikePosted inIM Recommended Viewing, Laugh or else

By Chaplain Mike

Don’t want to leave out our international readers with all this talk of football. Of course, in most parts of the world, what we play is called “American” football, to distinguish it from real football, known here in the U.S. as “soccer.”

Genuine football’s long and glorious history was well-represented in this famous match from the 1970’s.

30 thoughts on “Real Football”

  1. At the risk of getting serious, American and Canadian football derive from Rugby. They split off from Rugby around 1880 with the some changes to how the Rugby scrum worked, converting it into the American football scrimmage. A scrimmage took place after the ball carrier was tackled, with his team retaining possession of the ball. This set off a rapid series of changes, the most important being requiring the team possessing the ball to move it a certain number of yards in a certain number of plays (i.e. downs), with the details changing over the years. They also started allowing players on offense to block in front of the ball carrier. With that you have changed the character of Rugby into something else, but into the early 20th century the game was often called “American Rugby”. Add the forward pass–an early 20th century development–and you have essentially the modern game.

    Going backwards, Rugby and Association football evolved out of an earlier, uncodified mass of local variants. They generally included both kicking and carrying the ball, to different degrees. The split took place around 1860 or so, with formalized rules which strongly emphasized the carrying and the kicking respectively. The common origin can still be seen today: all versions include both kicking and carrying. Association football still have carrying, but restricts it to one player on a side, and only under restricted circumstances. American football still has kicking, but only under special, strictly defined circumstances.

    So in all seriousness, all modern football codes have equal right to the name “football”. They came by it honestly, by evolving from pre-modern football.

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  3. One of my favorite clips of all time–when I first watched it I thought I’d die laughing–after all, I’m a philo major!

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  6. Thank you Mike for thinking of us ‘real’ football supporters. Ironically I’m a native USAer but have over the years steadily fallen away from the american – made-for-TV-ads version of football. Hardly ever watch anymore and don’t know how I’ll make it through our friends super bowl party (food will be great) but the stop-start gameplay and the commercials almost drive me crazy now – I can’t think of any good analogy to describe the feeling but it’s so very…foreign and disconcerting.

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  10. Daniel, does it happen when you’re logged in to your blog account? I used to have a cartoon version of myself for another email address, and even when I wasn’t posting a comment with that address the cartoon would sometimes show up. Couldn’t figure out why, but the blog was still pegged to the old email address, so when I was logged in the cartoon showed up. These things are funny. When I corrected it, all of them, even on previous comments, changed to the one I normally use.

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  11. There are several types of football in the world, Chaplain Mike. I’m glad you differentiate between your local variant and the real thing 🙂

    Although, even in England, there are two: Association Football (soccer) and Rugby Football (rugby, which has divided into rugby league and rugby union). As well as the aforementioned local variants, which in my country is Gaelic football or, for the Australians, Australian Rules football. Just to make it even more confusing, we have an International Rules Series/Compromise rules game played as a merger of Gaelic and Australian Rules football between a representative Irish and representative Australian team:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_rules_football

    So that means that (over here in the Emerald Isle) you have a choice of three versions of football: soccer, rugby or Gaelic.

    🙂

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  16. Now if only you guys would learn to play the vastly superior 3 down version! Canada may not have the talent of the NFL, but it is a much more exciting game to watch.

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  24. Augustine and Aquinas as line judges. That’s awesome.

    Too bad Schleiermacher didn’t make the German team.

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