You got a cite for any of your ramblin?
Don’t get me wrong–AFAIK, “soccer” is from “association football.” Just the other stuff.
I always thought it was called a football because it was roughly foot-shaped. (Until I learned the real reason, like at 10).
Yes, but it’s called soccer to us (in Canada; the USA is not the only place it’s called soccer. It’s also called soccer in Australia, is apparently called that by many South Africans, and even the Japanese call it “Saka.”)
We don’t wonder why football (our version) is called football any more than we wonder why cats are called cats or a computer mouse is called a mouse even though it is not a little rodent.
It’s soccer because they always fight and sock people. I guess we could call it Brawling, but that would confuse the bowlers, which is another sport Brits are confused about.
Bowling in America is done in lanes in a building.
Bowling in England is outdoors on a lawn.
Skittles in America is a popular candy.
Skittles in England is a a weird indoor bowling.
In 1905 there was a push to ban most football due to all the serious injures and deaths. This is the year changes were set in motion and Roosevelt was involved with pushing the changes.
I actually tried to snark about it as a kid, and quickly realized I couldn’t maintain the sarcasm. "Wait – football? Why do they call it football? Do they get so impressed by the kickoff at the start that they don’t notice what happens for the rest of the game? I mean, sure, the entire goal every time you get the ball is to reach the other end zone so you can then kick for a point. But if you can’t quite make it that far, the entire goal is – okay, to kick for three points. But if you can’t make it that far, the goal is to – uh, kick the ball far away, so the other team’s kicker will have to kick it back instead of, y’know, kicking for a point or three. I’m going to stop talking now.
I didn’t yet know about the two-point conversion.
No - because if it goes into overtime, there’s still a third kick to start the overtime period. I guess the game could end on a safety as time expires.
I wonder if they would require the punt after a safety if the safety happened with no time left in regulation.
Yes. We did wonder that. We then learned the history of the various modern sports that had the same type of game as their genesis, and we go over it. And we think it’s obnoxious that we must discuss it every time the World Cup comes around. People call the same thing different things, it’s not a big deal.
I’m an American football fan and, FWIW, I’ve long felt that “tackle” [or maybe “tackling”] would be a more rational name for the game, given its distinctive physicality and centrality to the game. Every play, including special-teams kicking, involves blocking and tackling.
But I also sometimes feel that a more rational name for soccer would be “diving,” so you probably shouldn’t take me too seriously.
Who said it was a big deal?
No, I never wondered, because it’s the only sport I saw anyone playing that had kicking in it.
Incidentally, I cannot express the level of disdain I’ve reached for non-Americans who cannot seem to get over the fact that someone might use a different term from theirs. The number of people on this board and on the net in general who trot out this as some sign of wrong-headedness is simply amazing and appalling. If you didn’t know this, you’re forgiven. John Cleese is not.
Let me give you a counter demonstration. Ahem: “You eat gross stuff and you only have about one sport and you use the wrong words for all kinds of stuff and the queen is ugly.” There, I’ve given an accurate and inoffensive assessment of Britain.
Except that it’s called bowls when played on a lawn. Never bowling.
And we do have ten-pin bowling in this country. Which (unsurprisingly) we call bowling.
In America its always lawn bowling or, more commonly, Bocce.
Rugby was not derived from association football, and Web Ellis likely did not pick up the ball and run with it at Rugby school. The two sports evolved together at the same time, and even in the mid-to-late nineteenth century there were still substantial differences between the style of football (soccer) played in different parts of the UK. The Sheffield rules effectively brought in the heading game, for instance, and allowed players to catch the ball from a throw-in and call “safe” (still a rule in rugby, if you catch the ball in the 22). There’s a rugby club in Edinburgh that’s the second oldest football (of any code) club in the world. It’s called “Edinburgh Academical Football Club”, and was formed when rugby and football were essentially the same game, hence no mention of rugby in the name of the club.
What’s strange about this recurring complaint is that most of the English speaking world calls the game being played at the World Cup "soccer." In the language being used here, “soccer” is not an unusual, minority regionalism, it’s the preferred term by people who speak English as a first language.
And that’s not solely because the USA has a huge population; again, it’s called soccer by most people in Canada, Australia, South Africa (does nobody notice they named one of the new stadia Soccer City Stadium?) and, I believe, New Zealand, although I think there it’s called both.
In fact, in 2005 Australia’s official federation renamed itself the Australian Soccer Federation to align its name with what Australians actually called the sport. To an Australian, “Football” usually means Australian football, not soccer or North American football.
So in English, the majority of people call the sport “soccer.” Deal with it.
“Tackle football” isn’t a completely unheard of name for the sport in western Canada although you’d sound a bit archaic calling it that.
Please, please tell me this is a joke.
I’ll take folks at their word that it used to be played more with the feet. But when I was a kid, any movies, TV shows, cartoons, comics or whatever involving football always had scenes that revolved around kicking; everything from Charlie Brown & Lucy to your standard tension filled film climax where the field goal will win the game.
So regardless of how much passing may go on these days, my awareness of football always involved kicking.