Why do they call it American Football?
- Thread starter Crazy_Dude
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Yes but the question is WHY do you call it that? I think a more accurate term would be American Rugby and even then the two sports are different in several ways.NeutralDrow said:
According to wikipedia:Jumpingbean3 said:
The various codes of football share the following common elements:
-Two teams of usually between 11 and 18 players; some variations that have fewer players (five or more per team) are also popular.
-A clearly defined area in which to play the game.
-Scoring goals or points, by moving the ball to an opposing team's end of the field and either into a goal area, or over a line.
-Goals or points resulting from players putting the ball between two goalposts.
-The goal or line being defended by the opposing team.
-Players being required to move the ball?depending on the code?by kicking, carrying, or hand-passing the ball.
-Players using only their body to move the ball.
-In most codes, there are rules restricting the movement of players offside, and players scoring a goal must put the ball either under or over a crossbar between the goalposts. Other features common to several football codes include: points being mostly scored by players carrying the ball across the goal line; and players receiving a free kick after they take a mark or make a fair catch.
-Peoples from around the world have played games which involved kicking or carrying a ball, since ancient times. However, most of the modern codes of football have their origins in England.
So...American football fits these parameters, but more importantly, American Football is descended from Rugby, which was originally called Rugby Football (as opposed to Cambridge Football or Eton Football---which became Association Football, which is what is generally called football today). So Americans were developing their own form of football from Rugby football, and just dropped the rugby part.
For more information see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football
Sports dont need a reason to be called something. Some have taken the idea. IE curling Football handball rocketball, you can work out some of the game from title others have no reason Tennis Hockey etc. The real question is why did America choose to call it American Football when Football had already been around for a long time and then insist that the orignial football is now soccer. Which being English i can accept the term Soccer beacuse we used it as slang for football but it was never meant to become a word to define it. Just something i always wonderd was there a reason to call it American Football? I think Tank ball would have a better effect and on youtube it might accidently get WoW players clicking links.
I'd just like to point out that even if you do call what we play something other than "football", the term "handegg" is just as inaccurate. In American Football, the hand is really nothing more than a glorified ball-holder crossed with a catapault. Most of the work is still done with the legs. Also, the ball is hardly egg-shaped. *puts on his geometry glasses* According to the internet, an American football is in the shape of a "prolate spheroid" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prolate_spheroid). An egg, by contrast, is wider on the bottom (also it isn't pointed like a football, that'd just be painful on the chicken's part). What we really ought to be discussing is how we came up with the name "soccer" for what the rest of the world plays.
Either way, I still prefer baseball. Let me know when you Europeans come up with some of that, then we can get together and have a more appropriately-named World Series.
Either way, I still prefer baseball. Let me know when you Europeans come up with some of that, then we can get together and have a more appropriately-named World Series.
its a regional thing, here in ireland we have gaelic football. i guess by your logic it should really be called.... gaelicfistfootfistfootfistfootball.... i like it 
I'm pretty sure they have Cricket, which if I'm to believe the shows like Family Guy making fun of it, is just a more confusing version of baseball.Mello Yello said:
You know, Australians do things differently and no one throws venom at them like they do at Americans. Australians have Australian rules football that doesn't look like soccer. Canadians, too.Ran.Dom said:
Everybody does there own thing. No need to stress about it. England uses stones to measure people's weight, and have a measurement for men's shoes that no one else uses either. I don't insult them about it.
It just is what it is. There are historical and cultural reasons and that is what makes the world and interesting place. If we were all the same it would get boring.
And lastly, to be honest, the US doesn't think enough about the rest of the world to base its decisions on what would upset everyone else. One of the side-effects of being separated from everybody else by two oceans and being provincial is that we don't tend to do things to upset Europeans, we don't tend to think about Europeans much at all (except when we want to go on and on about how exciting the royals are). I don't think it is a good thing we are so provincial (especially paired with the huge impact with have on the rest of the world), but we honestly don't do things just because we want to upset other people or because we feel we have to everything differently. We really aren't that spiteful of a country. On the downside, we also tend to charge into places in order to "help" without a lot of cultural sensitivity or knowledge of what those other places have going on.
Think of us as a good-natured, very creative, but really self-centered teenager (as teenagers tend to be), who is a super beefy football/rugby player and is prone to knocking things over because he or she doesn't pay as much attention as he or she should. But when European countries were 250 years old, they weren't all that different.
Personally, I no longer care what it's called. I'm far more interested in the secondary game that's going on. It's the game of 'how fucking big can the coaches headset be?'!!