International Opinion of American Football

[ygetoff]

It seems fine enough, as sports go. It does seem a bit wimpy compared to rugby though, as rugby players don't wear any protective gear beyond a mouthguard. Still, doesn't really matter, they're different games.

See, now I always thought that was because Rugby players did less in the way of actively smashing into each other every 10 seconds the way American football players do. Is that true?

Actually they do. But apparently ESPN did a test showing that American football players deal more damage in a tackle to compensate for the pads. Of course that could also be because Rugby players need to be more careful so they don't break something important.

That makes sense, although I was talking more about how the vast majority of the total players on a football field (about 20 out of 22) would be hitting each other every play.

 

[flipsalty]

how dose a debate between football in soccer always end up saying footballs for pussy's go play rugby?

Well firstly, it's 'does'. Not to be an asshole but come on this is basic stuff. Also the thread is called "International Opinion of American Football. I was being on topic.

Americans invented the internet

Or the internet

Funny thing. Google "invented the internet" top result is Tim Burners-Lee. A British bloke. After that it was developed at CERN so, sorry america.

There is no badass in the NFL who would even rank in the top 100 ruggers on the Chuck Norris Scale of Badass.

Obviously youve never heard of Brett Favre, who played through a game with this injury to his thigh and ankle.

Unless you're brett favre yourself you don't have a leg to stand on (lol) in this argument.

Nice try, The Internet was originally developed by DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - as a means to share information on defense research between involved universities and defense research facilities.

Originally it was just email and FTP sites as well as the Usenet, where scientists could question and answer each other. It was originally called ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency NETwork). The concept was developed starting in 1964, and the first messages passed were between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute in 1969

 

[dolfan1304]

I can't tell if that's sarcasm or not...I hope it was because I've played with worse injuries than that...seriously. The separated shoulder that's not too nice but I've been in two games where it's happened to another player and they just got it popped in and carried on (after a lot of swearing)...again hardly a show of badassery.

Ill give you that playing through a separated shoulder can be done, But i very highly doubt you have had any injury as bad as Brett Favres which could have easily ended a career

 

[dolfan1304]

It's the stoppages, the changing of offensive teams and defense, there is sooo little activity. I much prefer Soccer or Aussie Rules because they run and run and run. And hit a bit too...

I see that and raise you this

 

[Funkysandwich]

I never got why American high schools are so focused on their football teams. Is it really like that? It's not like that in Australia. Having said that, football team or not, high school was still a living hell.

Mine sure was. It was living hell for anyone not on the team regardless of whether or not the bullies on said team were dicks to ya. The school diverted 90% of it's funds to the football team. I was in a lot of the auto classes and we weren't able to learn how to turn brakes or grind valves because the teachers couldn't afford to replace the machines if Dipshit over there broke them. That was because the school couldn't afford it because all the school's funding was buying the jocks a new training aid because they broke the last one. The computer labs were left floundering on Pentium 4 Dells with Intel IGPs that struggled to run Windows XP because, again, the football team got all the money. Oh, and all the textbooks were incredibly ratty 5+ year old affairs which were out of date. Our history books were so out of date they didn't even have 9/11 in them!

But hey, lt was all cool, because the football team had the latest gear, right?

As for the whole irrelevant thing about injuries, it's an unwanted part of any game, so why should it have any bearing on the sport whatsoever? (Answer: it doesn't). Any sport has it's injuries (although, yes, Rugby does get off worse). However, this: http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00443/cisse_666x450_443490a.jpg
.

While I think football of any form sucks, I do agree. It's not dangerous at all. You want dangerous? Reno Air Races. World Rally Championship. British Touring Car Championship. Formula 1. Hell, even Nascar.

There's a big theme there. Small, soft, fragile humans moving at ungodly speeds in large, heavy machines that can hit very stiff objects at those very high speeds. If I were choosing a sport to play based solely on safety I would choose Football over any form of auto racing. Sure I might get a broken limb or two in football but that beats going through the Pearly Gates backwards on fire because the right rear tire fell off the car at 200MPH and I found a wall.

Man, it sucks that your school was wasting funding on the football team. It shouldn't be legal to do that. I thought the main point of school was to educate people? Not that the system works much better over here. Still, Australia's version of "jocks" are so pathetic that beating one in a fight is easy, and they tend to leave you alone after you that.

And about the motor racing thing, you'd be amazed at the crashes that people walk away from. With the level of safety currently required by regulations, people have come out completely unharmed from some fairly major crashes. These days you have to have a full rollcage and harness to race in most events, so you have to be pretty unlucky to get yourself killed.

 

[Duskwaith]

For a start an American tackle is just smashing the guy down, in rugby you need technique and power in order not to kill yourself in the process

To do all that AND THEN do it in a way that also leaves the opposition at a disadvantage if a ruck forms... and accepting that most of the time when you achieve that it leaves you, personally, at something of a disadvantage if the ruck forms before you can roll clear.

not to mention the technicality of lineouts, scrums and running lines

Yeah but to be fair a lot of that is code specific arcana. I think most people who don't have a Union background would be surprised at, for example, just how many rules there are governing scrums ('course being a prop I didn't have to remember half of them).

Rugby goes on for longer(average is 7 minutes continual between breaks), no restarts and team changes makeing it far more physically demanding.

True but the increased tactical use of kicking has shortened this from what it used to be. A kicking game is much choppier than when you've got 2 teams playing a running game, just look at the last World Cup final. No fucking flow (no tries, either, but that's a different bitchfest altogether).

Rugby padding is only allowed to be 15mm thick.

And it has to be soft padding. The last thing you want to give a flanker is a nice hard piece of plastic to use as a weapon in a tackle. You'd start seeing a lot of very fucked up scrum halfs if you did.

Its a shame that for some reason the scrums collapse alot these days. Use to be a rare occurance.

My hero of the day with that post though

 

[Wicky_42]

Spoiler: snip

That is all.

The brits use their way. And we'll use ours.

We invented it. Therefore our way is right

But we invented the Television but you guys call it a telly

The word, "debatable" springs to mind.

OT: I just see it as Rugby for pussies. And I don't even care about Rugby. Or football. Or American football. Or sport.

Gas-operated reloading
Zipper
Mousetrap
Volleyball
Cotton candy
Charcoal briquette
Semi-automatic shot gun
Assembly line production
Disposable safety razor
Hearing aid
Air conditioning
AC power plugs and sockets
Automatic transmission
Suppressor
Automobile self starter
Skeet shooting
Jungle gym
Jukebox

yay? XP

Ot: sports are silly, mostly the fans.

Oh, I like this game ^_^
English Inventions:
Tin Can
Magnifying glass
Reflecting Telescope
Steam Pump
Steam Train
computers
adjustable spanner
bouncing bomb (that's a fun one!)
celluloid
hovercraft
hydraulics
jet engine
electrical generator
...

America... ;P

OT: Bearing in mind that the OP was asking for people's opinions, I think that most of the 'rugby with too much armour and a misleading name' comments kinda sum it up. I mean, I can understand that the way the game works you kinda need the armour as a hit could come whenever (there are rules about that, right? Or can you just smack down anyone whenever?), but still, Rugby is much more hardcore.

The computer is half US half Bulgarian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#History_of_computing

It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability that produced the first recognizable computers. In 1837, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable mechanical computer, his analytical engine. Limited finances and Babbage's inability to resist tinkering with the design meant that the device was never completed. <- English
...
In the late 1880s, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a machine readable medium. Prior uses of machine readable media, above, had been for control, not data.
... <- German-American
Alan Turing is widely regarded to be the father of modern computer science. In 1936 Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, providing a blueprint for the electronic digital computer.
... <- English

So yeah, I'd go so far to say that the English invented the computer. Though an American made the first digital computer.

 

[octafish]

It's the stoppages, the changing of offensive teams and defense, there is sooo little activity. I much prefer Soccer or Aussie Rules because they run and run and run. And hit a bit too...

I see that and raise you this

Tell them to keep running for 100 minutes and take their armour off.

 

[tehroc]

Over here its pretty much looked down on over rugby due to the below reasons

As a rugby player and captain i would say that American football is alot more unrefined than rugby.

For a start an American tackle is just smashing the guy down, in rugby you need technique and power in order not to kill yourself in the process not to mention the technicality of lineouts, scrums and running lines

Rugby goes on for longer(average is 7 minutes continual between breaks), no restarts and team changes makeing it far more physically demanding.

Rugby padding is only allowed to be 15mm thick.

One of the leading American military academys plays rugby over american football as its a better team cordinated and conditioner for combat situations.

But then again i love rugby so im incredibly biast but its the general view of most of the contact sport watching community

Edit: Yeah no one wears a cup, there that new zealand prop having his scrotum ripped open during a match only to have it stitched up before heading back out

This pretty much tells me you don't know very much about American Football at all and probably haven't seen many games.

Handeggers hit a lot harder then a Rugby player also, it's like boxing, the gloves protect your hands not the opponent.

And lets not make this escalate, as far as I'm concerned Lacrosse is the more brutal sport, its like rugby except they give everyone sticks to bash each other with.

 

[BonsaiK]

As a fan and player of the American-style football, I was wondering what the international members of The Escapist have to say about it.

My first exposure to American Football (gridiron) was through a computer game on the Commodore 64, I can't remember what it was called. Damn, that game confused the shit out of me. Later I saw it on TV and it didn't make much more sense then either. To this day I don't really understand the rules very well, and I only have a very basic knowledge of what goes on (i.e the idea is for two teams to compete to get a ball from one side to the other, either through a goal or via a "touchdown"). The game seems needlessly finnicky and arbitrary, and all the different formations and rules concerning them are confusing. Also, very little of the game time actually seems to be spent playing the game, it seems that for every minute of play there's about ten minutes of waiting around for some shit to happen. Even though it's certainly very bone-crunchingly violent, it's also oddly pedestrian in a way which English Football (soccer) or Australian Football (Australian Rules) isn't.

To be honest I'm not much of a team sports fan in general (I play computer games partly as a replacement for sport and sport culture) but if I were to pick one to be into, American Football certainly wouldn't be it. I don't really "get" the fascination with it, but then I'm yet to meet anyone in person who is really that fascinated by it anyway. Mind you, nor do I hate it or anything, if others love it, that's great... I guess I just don't. To each their own...

 

[Von Faceless]

It's the stoppages, the changing of offensive teams and defense, there is sooo little activity. I much prefer Soccer or Aussie Rules because they run and run and run. And hit a bit too...

I see that and raise you this

Lets see them do that without all the gear on

 

[Duskwaith]

Over here its pretty much looked down on over rugby due to the below reasons

As a rugby player and captain i would say that American football is alot more unrefined than rugby.

For a start an American tackle is just smashing the guy down, in rugby you need technique and power in order not to kill yourself in the process not to mention the technicality of lineouts, scrums and running lines

Rugby goes on for longer(average is 7 minutes continual between breaks), no restarts and team changes makeing it far more physically demanding.

Rugby padding is only allowed to be 15mm thick.

One of the leading American military academys plays rugby over american football as its a better team cordinated and conditioner for combat situations.

But then again i love rugby so im incredibly biast but its the general view of most of the contact sport watching community

Edit: Yeah no one wears a cup, there that new zealand prop having his scrotum ripped open during a match only to have it stitched up before heading back out

This pretty much tells me you don't know very much about American Football at all and probably haven't seen many games.

Handeggers hit a lot harder then a Rugby player also, it's like boxing, the gloves protect your hands not the opponent.

And lets not make this escalate, as far as I'm concerned Lacrosse is the more brutal sport, its like rugby except they give everyone sticks to bash each other with.

I have and i can say just because you smash a guy with a shoulder barge dosnt make it a bigger hit than rugby with the same if not greater forces are applied with only muscle and flesh to dissapate them forces plus a hit in american football consists of either a close line or a flying bash to the body. Rugby has technique to it, the NFL would have less injuries if tacklers were taught how to tackle effectively and more safely

But boxing gloves arent about 6inches thick with hard helmets to back them up.

You havent seen hurling then.

 

[b3nn3tt]

I quite enjoy it in terms of games; I like playing Madden. But I find actually watching it rather boring, it takes so long for so little to happen. I've tried watching the Superbowl for the past few years, and I fell asleep every time! Granted, that may have been something to do with the fact that it was three in the morning over here, but I still found what I watched boring

 

[Kryzantine]

Alright, I'm an American, and I will be biased here, but I truly believe American Football and Rugby are at the same level for different reasons, and it has to do with energy expenditure.

See, everyone's talking about equipment here like American football players have enough body armor to stop a bullet and rugby players are essentially nude. But that helmet that American football players have? Your head will be bouncing around in it once you get hit by a linebacker. It's also a tad sharp. That armor is so you don't break all your ribs at once.

Because you see, those breaks that are in between plays? Those are for the players to communicate, get their plays going on both offense and defense, create mismatches, etc. They also provide a convenient frame of rest for the players on the field. Rugby players are on the field for a much longer time, but all that means is that they hit less harder each time. Football players don't have to worry about the continuous game; they throw their bodies into each and every hit. It's kind of like boxing, where fighters take small breaks between skirmishes to maintain their power.

And then there's the speed. You can only appreciate NFL speed by going to the games. TV is too slow to handle it. Both offensive and defensive players move at significantly faster speeds than rugby players. It's why NFL teams look at the 40 yard dash so much. Power is only half the equation when you're looking at a hit; velocity is the other half. A fast wrecking ball will do a hell of a lot more damage than a slow wrecking ball. NFL players are extremely fast. If they are on offense, they will score; if they are on defense, they will hit a lot harder or make a play deeper down the field. As I mentioned, this is barely noticeable in the NFL; this is very noticeable in college football, however.

Yeah, rugby players are tough on a consistent basis, but football players have to be tougher on a less regular basis. Sports Science did a analysis on force generated per hit and found that football hits were a lot harder even with the equipment on (mostly because of the speed difference), but averaged out for the # of plays a rugby player makes in a game and a football player makes in a game, the avg force was very similar. Once again, if you think that Rugby requires a lot more stamina, keep in mind that football players must give it their all every play if they want to win. There is no downtime once play begins. It's a different kind of stamina.

Now, away from Rugby, I enjoy American football mostly for the strategy and hometown support. And I really can't stand soccer, it's just too slow. I fucking love hockey, though. That's my favorite sport, easily. That's skill, speed, grace and power in the same package.

 

[Wicky_42]

Spoiler: snip

That is all.

The brits use their way. And we'll use ours.

We invented it. Therefore our way is right

But we invented the Television but you guys call it a telly

The word, "debatable" springs to mind.

OT: I just see it as Rugby for pussies. And I don't even care about Rugby. Or football. Or American football. Or sport.

Gas-operated reloading
Zipper
Mousetrap
Volleyball
Cotton candy
Charcoal briquette
Semi-automatic shot gun
Assembly line production
Disposable safety razor
Hearing aid
Air conditioning
AC power plugs and sockets
Automatic transmission
Suppressor
Automobile self starter
Skeet shooting
Jungle gym
Jukebox

yay? XP

Ot: sports are silly, mostly the fans.

Oh, I like this game ^_^
English Inventions:
Tin Can
Magnifying glass
Reflecting Telescope
Steam Pump
Steam Train
computers
adjustable spanner
bouncing bomb (that's a fun one!)
celluloid
hovercraft
hydraulics
jet engine
electrical generator
...

America... ;P

OT: Bearing in mind that the OP was asking for people's opinions, I think that most of the 'rugby with too much armour and a misleading name' comments kinda sum it up. I mean, I can understand that the way the game works you kinda need the armour as a hit could come whenever (there are rules about that, right? Or can you just smack down anyone whenever?), but still, Rugby is much more hardcore.

The computer is half US half Bulgarian.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#History_of_computing

It was the fusion of automatic calculation with programmability that produced the first recognizable computers. In 1837, Charles Babbage was the first to conceptualize and design a fully programmable mechanical computer, his analytical engine. Limited finances and Babbage's inability to resist tinkering with the design meant that the device was never completed. <- English
...
In the late 1880s, Herman Hollerith invented the recording of data on a machine readable medium. Prior uses of machine readable media, above, had been for control, not data.
... <- German-American
Alan Turing is widely regarded to be the father of modern computer science. In 1936 Turing provided an influential formalisation of the concept of the algorithm and computation with the Turing machine, providing a blueprint for the electronic digital computer.
... <- English

So yeah, I'd go so far to say that the English invented the computer. Though an American made the first digital computer.

I was talking about the digital computer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Atanasoff
His father was a Bulgarian eimgrant killed in an uprising. His mother was Irish and French. He did the invention and lived most of his life in AMerica. Cant blame him though. Bulgaria is beautiful but ruled by fuckking stealing Mafia. So the digital computer is a multi-cultural invention.

Well, I wasn't - as stated in the Wiki article, the origins of what we would recognise as a computer were made largely by Englishmen. Hence it appearing on a list of English inventions. Note the absence of the word 'digital' from the original quote.

 

[ChocoFace]

soccer is shit. And i live in Europe. There's just so much faking of injuries it makes me sick.

Football, however, is something i try to watch a lot. It's just fun to look at. Haven't really had the chance to play it, as the sport isn't played in Estonia. Anywhere.