Why do we call it Football

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

16 minutes ago, KD in CA said:

Easy fix, just add a 'P' in there.

 

NFPL......National Forward Pass League.

Naturally Favours Patriots Lies.

[SoCal Deek]

1 hour ago, Gugny said:

 

This is a great question!  I often find myself wondering about similar things.  Like, why do writers/journalists always use "she" and "her" as pronouns whilst writing about Sarah Huckabee?

 

Talk about an unsolved mystery!

Dude, come on! Get back to us when yiu e evolved enough to stop walking around on your knuckles. Geeez

[BritBill]

48 minutes ago, Motorin' said:

 

This is super interesting to my inner nerd. Our football, soccer and rugby were are the same game about 150 years ago. Or rather, there were as many iterations and rules of the game as their were colleges. 

 

In the US, as in England, the rules of the game were determined by the home team. One thing that was common was that all fields had soccer goals. In US college football, long before down and distance, and before the Touch Down was invented at McGill University in Montreal, the way a team scored was by running or kicking the ball down field and into the soccer goal. 

 

An oddity of the time was that there were no rules pertaining to how many players could be on the field at a time, and since there was no down or distance it was a free moving game, like soccer and rugby. So the home team was at a decided advantage. They would stash 20-30 defenders in front of the goal to make a human shield and block the net so that even if the opposing team could get the ball down field past their 200-300 man mob, it was virtually impossible to score. This seeming unfair practice resulted in the American football field goal posts that we know today. The posts were placed on the top corners of the soccer goals in order to prevent teams from blocking the goal with men. That's why you'll still see some high schools with soccer goals and field goal posts on top of them to this day. 

 

After 18 players died during the 1904 season, President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to cancel the sport unless rules and safety equipment were put in place. This lead to leather helmets, and down and distance being introduced into the game... 

 

In England, there were similar problems with differing rules. They decided to encode the "Law of Football," and enacted the oldest existing body in sports, the Footbll Association, or FA. The FA decided on rules that became English football or soccer, essentially making it illegal to tackle and stomp people. The schools that preferred the more violent aspects of the game were centered at Rugby school, and encoded the laws of Rugby Football. 

 

The British press, needing to abbreviate the two sports in the newspaper settled on RUG for Rugby football, but couldn't use ASS for Association Football. Instead, they used SOC, which lead to the slang term in England - Soccer. In America, we picked up on the English slang, while they stopped using so long ago that calling it soccer seems foreign to them...

 

In short, when college football began here in the US, there was no forward pass, the ball had to be lateraled or kicked forward, and scoring happened when the ball was kicked into a soccer goal. So it was football, for all intents and purpose. The TD only came into our game after Harvard traveled to McGill in 1874 and liked the rule so much that they incorporated it into their rules back in Cambridge. 

 

Today's soccer, rugby and American football all have common origins prior to each of the games carving out their own unique rules. 

 

 

 

 

  
The word “soccer” taken from shortening of the word “association”. I maybe wrong but I think this was first seen in the 1950s. 

[Motorin']

2 minutes ago, BritBill said:

  
The word “soccer” taken from shortening of the word “association”. I maybe wrong but I think this was first seen in the 1950s. 

It was first used in the late 1800's.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/soccer

[Nextmanup]

3 hours ago, Don Otreply said:

Being that feet by and large do not come into contact with the ball, on top of that, the league is trying to get rid of the kicking aspect all together, the game is in reality “American Rugby”. Why keep a title/name that has little to nothing to do with the sport as it is played? What would you all do if the league changed the name to reflect the actual game? 

The term "football" was officially established in the rulebook for the 1876 college football season, when the sport first shifted from soccer-style rules to rugby-style rules.

 

Although it could easily have been called "rugby" at this point, Harvard, one of the primary proponents of the rugby-style game, compromised and did not request the name of the sport be changed to "rugby".

[Boatdrinks]

1 hour ago, Foxx said:

no, thats a hot dog.

Ahh, but is that a sandwich ? 

[Motorin']

9 minutes ago, Nextmanup said:

The term "football" was officially established in the rulebook for the 1876 college football season, when the sport first shifted from soccer-style rules to rugby-style rules.

 

Although it could easily have been called "rugby" at this point, Harvard, one of the primary proponents of the rugby-style game, compromised and did not request the name of the sport be changed to "rugby".

Schools in the Northeast were playing "mob" style games they called football as early as the 1840's.

 

At Harvard they called it "football fightum" and had a yearly game called "Bloody Monday" where the Freshman class would play the Sophomore class. 

 

The rugby style game was still called "football" they just wanted to be able to carry it as well as kick it. 

[Gugny]

9 minutes ago, Boatdrinks said:

Ahh, but is that a sandwich ? 

 

It can be.

 

It's been a while, but I would sometimes take two hot dogs, cook them, then cut them in half, length-wise - leaving me with four hot dog "strips."

 

Then I would lay them side by side on toasted bread, top them with a slice of American cheese and dress with ketchup and mustard before topping it off with another slice of toasted bread.

 

Voila ... hot dog sandwich.

[Tuco]

I dunno. But when you guys get it all figured out can somebody then tell me why they call it cricket?

 

Thanks

[Foxx]

4 minutes ago, Gugny said:

 

It can be.

 

It's been a while, but I would sometimes take two hot dogs, cook them, then cut them in half, length-wise - leaving me with four hot dog "strips."

 

Then I would lay them side by side on toasted bread, top them with a slice of American cheese and dress with ketchup and mustard before topping it off with another slice of toasted bread.

 

Voila ... hot dog sandwich.

go to the deli shoppe. order some slices of bologna about a quarter of an inch thick.

 

heat up a frying pan to about medium heat, toss in a slab of butter, some thick long slices of onion. fry em up so they nice and soft. make a slice in one piece of bologna from the center to the edge, toss another slab of butter in the pan along with the bologna and slightly char the entire thing. place between two slices of bread with a bit of ketchup and your good to go.

 

[Gugny]

1 minute ago, Foxx said:

go to the deli shoppe. order some slices of bologna about a quarter of an inch thick.

 

heat up a frying pan to about medium heat, toss in a slab of butter, some thick long slices of onion. fry em up so they nice and soft. make a slice in one piece of bologna from the center to the edge, toss another slab of butter in the pan along with the bologna and slightly char the entire thing. place between two slices of bread with a bit of ketchup and your good to go.

 

 

I smoked a large hunk of bologna last summer.  It was phenomenal and made incredible sandwiches.  Nothing I could eat more than once/year, damn, it was scrumptious.

 

 

[Alphadawg7]

More irony...why do we call it a Touchdown and Rugby calls it a Try?  In Rugby the score isn’t crossing the line, it’s force-ably touching the ball down in what would be the end zone in football.  If anyone should call it a touchdown it’s Rugby.  
 

And why do we call it “Soccer”?  There’s no one out there punching girls. 

Great mysteries of our time

Edited January 26, 2020 by Alphadawg7

[longtimebillsfan]

Why not just call it what it is...MONEY BALL!!!

[RocCityRoller]

41 minutes ago, BritBill said:

  
The word “soccer” taken from shortening of the word “association”. I maybe wrong but I think this was first seen in the 1950s. 

 

that's what he implied association football. RUG and SOC in the papers. So in a way the Americans are keeping an old English tradition alive by calling it soccer.

 

So the Football field goal is the relative of the traditional soccer goal, or kick in rugby. And the touchdown is the relative of the try in rugby. The difference being how the ball crosses the goal line (carried or kicked). Rugby and football have two planes, a ground level one and an elevated one.

 

So in terms of evolution it would be SOC, RUG, Football

 

SOC - no hand touching, must kick the ball over the opponents goal, kicks to advance the ball /no pass, goal is ground level, free flow

RUG - hand touching allowed, may kick or carry the ball over the opponents goal, kicks or laterals may advance the ball, goal is ground level and elevated, free flow

Football - hand touching is prioritized, may kick or carry the ball over the opponents goal, laterals and forward passes used (I think a kick still can), goal is ground level and elevated, down and distance mechanism replaces free flow

 

this ended up being an interesting post after all

 

[machine gun kelly]

1 hour ago, Motorin' said:

 

This is super interesting to my inner nerd. Our football, soccer and rugby were the same game about 150 years ago. Or rather, there were as many iterations and rules of the game as there were colleges. 

 

In the US, as in England, the rules of the game were determined by the home team. One thing that was common was that all fields had soccer goals. In US college football, long before down and distance, and before the Touch Down was invented at McGill University in Montreal, the way a team scored was by running or kicking the ball down field and into the soccer goal. 

 

An oddity of the time was that there were no rules pertaining to how many players could be on the field at a time, and since there was no down or distance it was a free moving game, like soccer and rugby. So the home team was at a decided advantage. They would stash 20-30 defenders in front of the goal to make a human shield and block the net so that even if the opposing team could get the ball down field past their 200-300 man mob, it was virtually impossible to score. This seeming unfair practice resulted in the American football field goal posts that we know today. The posts were placed on the top corners of the soccer goals in order to prevent teams from blocking the goal with men. That's why you'll still see some high schools with soccer goals and field goal posts on top of them to this day. 

 

After 18 players died during the 1904 season, President Theodore Roosevelt threatened to cancel the sport unless rules and safety equipment were put in place. This lead to leather helmets, and down and distance being introduced into the game... 

 

In England, there were similar problems with differing rules. They decided to encode the "Law of Football," and enacted the oldest existing body in sports, the Footbll Association, or FA. The FA decided on rules that became English football or soccer, essentially making it illegal to tackle and stomp people. The schools that preferred the more violent aspects of the game were centered at Rugby school, and encoded the laws of Rugby Football. 

 

The British press, needing to abbreviate the two sports in the newspaper settled on RUG for Rugby football, but couldn't use ASS for Association Football. Instead, they used SOC, which lead to the slang term in England - Soccer. In America, we picked up on the English slang, while they stopped using so long ago that calling it soccer seems foreign to them...

 

In short, when college football began here in the US, there was no forward pass, the ball had to be lateraled or kicked forward, and scoring happened when the ball was kicked into a soccer goal. So it was football, for all intents and purpose. The TD only came into our game after Harvard traveled to McGill in 1874 and liked the rule so much that they incorporated it into their rules back in Cambridge. 

 

Today's soccer, rugby and American football all have common origins prior to each of the games carving out their own unique rules. 

 

 

 

 

Funny Motorin you bringing this up as this was a topic discussed last night on Late Nights with Alex and Gil Brandt.  It was also written in a post over a year ago by one of the veterans.  It’s good to know the beginnings.  The first pro football team in Buffalo was in Tonawanda (they ended pretty quick, maybe two years if memory serves as there were a couple of deaths).  They played in a local high school.  Then in the 40’s after WW2 we had the first Buffalo Bills team in I think it was the World league.  We can thank George Halas for not letting us enter the NFL as he said were not profitable.  This is why Wilson when being a major part of the Foolish 8 called the team again the Bills.  He was a student of history.

[RocCityRoller]

2 hours ago, Alphadawg7 said:

More irony...why do we call it a Touchdown and Rugby calls it a Try?  In Rugby the score isn’t crossing the line, it’s force-ably touching the ball down in what would be the end zone in football.  If anyone should call it a touchdown it’s Rugby.  
 

And why do we call it “Soccer”?  There’s no one out there punching girls. 

Great mysteries of our time

 

this was explained, it's shortened news paper speak for Association football versus Rugby

 

I didn't know that until today

1 hour ago, machine gun kelly said:

Funny Motorin you bringing this up as this was a topic discussed last night on Late Nights with Alex and Gil Brandt.  It was also written in a post over a year ago by one of the veterans.  It’s good to know the beginnings.  The first pro football team in Buffalo was in Tonawanda (they ended pretty quick, maybe two years if memory serves as there were a couple of deaths).  They played in a local high school.  Then in the 40’s after WW2 we had the first Buffalo Bills team in I think it was the World league.  We can thank George Halas for not letting us enter the NFL as he said were not profitable.  This is why Wilson when being a major part of the Foolish 8 called the team again the Bills.  He was a student of history.

I'm a history nut and love football too. You, Motorin and some others may really enjoy this video it goes all the way back to 1920.

 

 

Edited January 26, 2020 by RocCityRoller

[Hapless Bills Fan]

3 hours ago, 2020 Our Year For Sure said:

I think it's because the ball is a foot long

 

but but but but....the regulation length is only 11"

[machine gun kelly]

Roc City, thanks a bunch as I missed on a couple of facts, but essentially had the jist.  I’ve only watched the first 5 minutes, but this is great.  I’ll get through it today, and all of us on TBD, should watch it hen you have time.  Very cool my friend.

 

For most people you may not be able to click on it and work, but you’ll easily find on you tube.

[Buffalo Barbarian]

Iron ball

[Scott7975]

Because the very first play of the game is a kickoff?