I set out to do a piece on the United States and our hot and cold relationship with our national soccer team. You know the drill; we don't give a fuck when they're losing, but if they're winning they're America's team. If there's two things Americans love they are, 1) Being American & 2) Rooting for the underdog (unless of course the favorite is the good old USA). So having now told you about the piece that I'm not going to write, this is what I will write about:
Why is American football called football?
We couldn't bend on this one? Football as "we the people" conceive it is a game where the only guy who uses his foot is widely proclaimed the biggest pussy on the team. Soccer on the other hand, unless you're the goalie, is based almost entirely on using your feet.
It's not like we even invented our version of football first; according to www.encyclopedia.com the first recorded soccer game was on a Shrove Tuesday in Derby, England as part of a festival to celebrate a victory over a contingent of Roman troops (AD 217). The first football match in America (actually a 50-person soccer game) was played (1869) at New Brunswick, N.J. The Intercollegiate (Soccer) Football Association was created by Yale among others (1873) to standardize rules, meanwhile Harvard looking for other opponents, accepted a challenge from McGill Univ. of Montreal to play a series of games (1874-75) under Rugby rules. The Rugby-type game soon caught on at the other schools also, and within a decade the distinctive game of American football evolved.
So having read the above, lets do the math shall we: 1869-217= 1652
Yes, you are reading that correctly one thousand six hundred and fifty two years after the invention of the original sport some self important elitist Ivy League pricks changed the rules of the game and decided to keep the name as football. That alone should be reason enough to change the name don't you think?
Now before I get into the forum and hear all about how I'm Johnny soccer, let it be known that come the fall I will be punching my NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV. Do I clamor to see the New York/New Jersey Metro Stars kick it? No.
It's just the principle here. I feel that we could have come up with our own name for the new version of the sport and just backed off on this one. Now I leave it to you the people to let me know what you think; there is a thread in the message forum where I want you all to go to discuss two things:
1) Should we have named our version of football something else?
2) If you think that we should have named it something else, what would you call it?