# What does "football" or "football shaped" mean outside North America?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 28, 2017, 6:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379 "2017-01-28T06:51:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/41 "2017-01-30T08:52:06Z")

</div>

> [@thelurkinghorror](#):
>
> “Football” typically doesn’t mean association football, aka soccer, in USA, Canada, good parts of Australia (where AFL seems to be the biggest associated term) and NZ, **Ireland,** (I think) South Africa, and other non-English countries like Italy and Japan.

If you say “football” in Ireland without any qualifier then you are talking about association football, and its not even close.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/42 "2017-01-30T09:00:56Z")

</div>

> [@bucketybuck](#):
>
> If you say “football” in Ireland without any qualifier then you are talking about association football, and its not even close.

Unless, of course, you’re talking about Gaelic football, which is frequently referred to as simply as “football”.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/43 "2017-01-30T09:04:14Z")

</div>

> [@thelurkinghorror](#):
>
> [Wikipedia sez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_Australia#Spectators) Aussie Rules = 7,150,586 spectators in 2016, vs. 4,361,310 for league+union. Of course you may be correct using a different metric for measuring dominance, such as $ earned.

FWIW, I’d say that Australia doesn’t have a nationally dominant football code. Rugby League is dominant in Queensland and New South Wales, AFL in all other states. In the League states, AFL has much less prominence; in the AFL states, League is practically invisible, and Union (except for internationally representative matches) is tiny.  
Soccer and Union are the only two codes whose support is spread more or less uniformly across the country, but in every state they’d be third or fourth in terms of participation/attendance.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Remember\_me](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/82dd89/32.png) [@Remember\_me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Remember_me)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 10:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/44 "2017-01-30T10:13:20Z")

</div>

German perspective:  
When talking German, the standard term for the American sport is “American Football” or simply “Football” (using it as a loanword without translation). The translation “amerikanischer Fußball” is only used ironically or not at all. The German word “Fußball” is without doubt reserved for association football. Other types of football would be either called by their original, typically English, name (e.g. “Gaelic football”) or in rare cases using the German translation (“gälischer Fußball”).  
With this in mind, concerning the term “football-shaped”

- If someone would describe something as football-shaped, using the German translation “fußballförmig” or “geformt wie ein Fußball”, I would assume a spheroid shape with an outer structure like a C60 molecule or something very similar.
- If someone would describe something as “football-shaped”, using the English word “football” in the sentence (“footballförmig” or “geformt wie ein Football”), I would assume an elliptical shape like the ball used in American Football.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/45 "2017-01-30T10:25:39Z")

</div>

All of which goes to show that a good editor would elide “football shaped” as a description and substitute a less ambiguous description like “basketball shaped” or “rugby ball shaped”

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 10:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/46 "2017-01-30T10:30:53Z")

</div>

> [@bob\_2](#):
>
> All of which goes to show that a good editor would elide “football shaped” as a description and substitute a less ambiguous description like “basketball shaped” or “rugby ball shaped”

Melon shaped, if it’s the ones used in rugby.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Remember\_me](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/82dd89/32.png) [@Remember\_me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Remember_me)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/47 "2017-01-30T10:38:33Z")

</div>

Melon shaped is also ambiguous. There are types of melon that are elliptical and there are others that are nearly spherical.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![bucketybuck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@bucketybuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bucketybuck)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/48 "2017-01-30T10:46:38Z")

</div>

> [@UDS](#):
>
> Unless, of course, you’re talking about Gaelic football, which is frequently referred to as simply as “football”.

I played Gaelic football most of my life, and now that I am older I’m still an active fan.

GAA is indeed often called football but only when in context, absent any context if somebody should randomly refer to “football” they are talking about soccer.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 10:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/49 "2017-01-30T10:53:22Z")

</div>

> [@Remember\_me](#):
>
> Melon shaped is also ambiguous. There are types of melon that are elliptical and there are others that are nearly spherical.

OK, allow me to re-language: _melón_. Those are all elliptical (I know people who are pretty traumatized by cantaloupes: “it’s like a melon, sort of, only it’s round, but it’s not a watermelon because it’s hollow but… damn, I sound like I’m describing a coconut, it’s not a coconut”).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/50 "2017-01-30T15:18:22Z")

</div>

For what it’s worth, an American football is not the same shape as a rugby ball. Both are elongated, but the rugby ball is still rounded at the ends, while an American football has more or less conical ends.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/51 "2017-01-30T16:17:56Z")

</div>

> [@thelurkinghorror](#):
>
> [Wikipedia sez](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_in_Australia#Spectators) Aussie Rules = 7,150,586 spectators in 2016, vs. 4,361,310 for league+union. Of course you may be correct using a different metric for measuring dominance, such as $ earned.

I was going by the numbers in the section “Popularity” [here](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2014/apr/15/australia-football-interactive-statistics) where  
32,163 \< 15,940 + 19,629 for weekly attendance and 519,975 \< 590,145 + 82,246 for weekly viewership (in fact, by that metric league alone is more popular even absent union.)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/52 "2017-01-30T19:19:14Z")

</div>

Pnin, Nabokov’s mild-mannered Russian professor eternally newly arrived in America, goes shopping:  
Pnin entered a sport shop in Waindell’s Main Street and asked for a football. The request was unseasonable but he was offered one.

‘No, no,’ said Pnin, ‘I do not wish an egg or, for example, a torpedo. I want a simple football ball. Round!’

And with wrists and palms he outlined a portable world. It was the same gesture he used in class when speaking of the ‘harmonical wholeness’ of Pushkin.

The salesman lifted a finger and silently fetched a soccer ball.

‘Yes, this I will buy,’ said Pnin with dignified satisfaction.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/53 "2017-01-30T19:41:43Z")

</div>

> [@Baron\_Greenback](#):
>
> Sir Martyn has excellent Professor Hair, and that’s a really fascinating collection of videos on his channel. Thanks friedo.

Just for clarification’s sake, it’s not his channel. He’s just one of the more prominent people in front of the camera.

The channel is owned and edited by the guy behind the camera, Dr. Brady Haran, the guy who asked “why?” in the video. He asks the right questions and gets the right film. He’s working with the University of Nottingham for this particular channel.

He has made a whole host of educational YouTube channels, the most prominent are [Numberphile](http://www.numberphile.com/), [Computerphile](https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile), [Sixty Symbols](http://www.sixtysymbols.com/), and [Periodic Videos](http://www.periodicvideos.com/) (the latter which started out as just a channel describing all the elements on the Periodic Table).

In fact, that doctorate is an honorary one for his work on YouTube. (He only uses it when being cheeky, but I thought it appropriate since we’re using titles.) And while Sir Martyn got his knighthood for his role in chemistry education, Periodic Videos were explicitly mentioned.

If you can’t tell, I’m a pretty big fan of Brady’s work.

And, if you’re interested in hearing him talk to another famous educational YouTuber, CGP Gray, check out the [HelloInternet](http://www.hellointernet.fm/) podcast. It’s kinda got an odd couple vibe, albeit more friendly, with Brady as Oscar.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Baron\_Greenback](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baron_greenback/32/48_2.png) [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/54 "2017-01-30T19:49:20Z")

</div>

> [@BigT](#):
>
> He has made a whole host of educational YouTube channels, the most prominent are [Numberphile](http://www.numberphile.com/), [Computerphile](https://www.youtube.com/user/Computerphile), [Sixty Symbols](http://www.sixtysymbols.com/), and [Periodic Videos](http://www.periodicvideos.com/) (the latter which started out as just a channel describing all the elements on the Periodic Table).

Thanks BigT, just subscribed to them all.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/55 "2017-01-30T21:03:35Z")

</div>

FWIW a rugby league ball is a different ellipsoid shape to it’s union version.

Does Canadian football use the same ball as NFL?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\
**Post date:** [January 30, 2017, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/56 "2017-01-30T21:30:55Z")

</div>

> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> I was going by the numbers in the section “Popularity” [here](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2014/apr/15/australia-football-interactive-statistics) where  
> 32,163 \< 15,940 + 19,629 for weekly attendance and 519,975 \< 590,145 + 82,246 for weekly viewership (in fact, by that metric league alone is more popular even absent union.)

Thanks. I figured it was something like that. In the US, football gets watched on TV more, but baseball _may_ get more attendance. Of course it doesn’t help comparisons that the average baseball season has 10x as many games.

> [@penultima\_thule](#):
>
> FWIW a rugby league ball is a different ellipsoid shape to it’s union version.
> 
> Does Canadian football use the same ball as NFL?

Not identical, but [close enough](https://cfldb.ca/faq/equipment/). Two random balls could be basically identical, as the tolerances aren’t extremely tight.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2017, 10:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/57 "2017-01-31T10:58:08Z")

</div>

> [@Chronos](#):
>
> For what it’s worth, an American football is not the same shape as a rugby ball. Both are elongated, but the rugby ball is still rounded at the ends, while an American football has more or less conical ends.

And the (aus) AFL ball is somewhere im between: not as round as rugby, not as pointed as “gridiron”.

Aussie rules started in 1858, soccer split off from rugby in 1863, so at the start, Aussie rules would have been within the family of (ball games played on foot by English “public” school boys)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\
**Post date:** [February 6, 2017, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/58 "2017-02-06T19:42:19Z")

</div>

> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> A spheroid, obviously.
> 
> “And all the world is football-shaped  
> It’s just for me to kick in space  
> And I can see, hear, smell, touch, taste  
> And I’ve got one, two, three, four, five”
> 
> “Senses Working Overtime” XTC.

No. In their world, the earth really is a prolate spheroid. 'Tis a weird song.

He also sings the world is “biscuit shaped”. Does he mean [American biscuits](http://www.cookingmaniac.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/buttermilk-biscuit-1.jpg), or [British biscuits](http://fandbnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/68364855_68364854.jpg)? Neither one looks like the actual Earth, or a soccer ball, for that matter.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2017, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/59 "2017-02-07T01:08:34Z")

</div>

> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> I was going by the numbers in the section “Popularity” [here](https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/interactive/2014/apr/15/australia-football-interactive-statistics) where  
> 32,163 \< 15,940 + 19,629 for weekly attendance and 519,975 \< 590,145 + 82,246 for weekly viewership (in fact, by that metric league alone is more popular even absent union.)

The weekly attendance figures are average weekly attendance _per game_ in the principal professional competition; they ignore the number of games in played each week (and of course they ignore attendance in lower professional and amateur competitions). Among other corollaries of this, adding together the average attendance at a rugby league game and the average attendance at a rugby union game is a meaningless exercise; taking the mean of the two figures might make some sense.

The average weekly viewership figures are harder to explain, but they are wildly at variance with what gets reported elsewhere. [Here](http://www.footyindustry.com/?page_id=1755), for example, is an article asserting that average weekly AFL viewership was 4.727 _million_. True, this includes both free-to-air and subscription broadcasts, but I struggle to think that that accounts for the difference. The only think I can think of is that the figures again refer to average weekly viewship _per game_, and they ignore the fact that there are many more AFL games broadcast each week than NRL games.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![CeleTheRef](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9f8e36/32.png) [@CeleTheRef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CeleTheRef)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2017, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379/60 "2017-02-08T13:55:20Z")

</div>

In Italy “football” means solely the game, never the ball used to play it.  
To describe the ball, we’d use an expression like “american football ball”, “rugby ball”, “soccer ball” etc.  
BTW in Florence still survives a medieval [“calcio”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dua6oLvBhSM) code

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379.md?page=2)

[Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-does-football-or-football-shaped-mean-outside-north-america/778379.md?page=4)