Steel Balls

Soccer vs Gridiron

What with all the World Cup hype these days and the dearth of gridiron news, much of the sporting world is expending energy on the periodic debate about which game is rightfully called football. The discussion usually goes something like this:

FIFA Announcer: “And the US have lost another bid to be taken seriously in the world of football…”

Yank: “To hell with it. It’s not real football anyway.”

Brit: “Bloody ‘ell, ‘ow can you lot call what you do football when your feet never touch the bloomin’ ball?” *

Yank: “Shows what you know, limey. We have kickoffs, punts, and field goals all using the foot.”

Kraut: “Ja, but only vun playah on za team can use za foot, und he is un object uff ridicule.”

Yank: “At least we aren’t a bunch of pansies flopping all over the field faking injuries and crying over stubbed toes.”

Frog: “Pfffffft… ah la la la, you Americans make my ass tweetch, hawh hawh.”

Aussie: “Mate, if you want to play a man’s game, you should try Aussie rules. We could eat your boys for breakfast. Crikey.”

Brit: “Blimey, rugby is what real men play when they can’t find a proper futbol, whut?”

(* Apologies to Steeltyke for this crude caricature.)

As it happens, there are a half dozen vastly different sports that are all referred to as football depending on who you ask, including: American rules (gridiron), Canadian rules, Association rules (soccer), Australian rules, Rugby, and International rules.

So what is real football? It turns out that all of these various games, and others besides, derive from a common ancestor game in medieval Europe that involved moving an inflated pig bladder back and forth across a designated contested area. Various means were used to move the object, including not just feet, but also hands and other body parts. The reason it was called football, apparently, had nothing to do with being required to move the ball with the feet as soccer purists might claim, but rather to distinguish it from the horseback sports played by the aristocracy that were beyond the means of mere commoners. Football was always a blue collar endeavor (or, to be more accurate to the time period, perhaps we should say “a shit, urine, and sweat stained tunic endeavor”). The name football also served to distinguish the sport as a contrast to activities involving propulsion of an object with something other than the human body, such as a bat, mallet, bow, gun, sling, racket, or club. In short, to play the game you only needed to be able to move around on your feet and to have the appropriate ball available. No special equipment was required.

The ancestral football sport evolved in different ways in different regions, and independent rules or codes were developed accordingly. The Rugby School (in Rugby, England) developed Rugby  rules in 1845 from which modern variants of football arose or diverged. These rules included various means of propelling the ball including both hands and feet. Cambridge rules (1848) also included both hands and feet as did Australian rules (1859). Sheffield rules (1857) introduced restrictions that are more recognized as modern soccer, while the original Rugby rules evolved in a different branch into gridiron variants of Canadian and American football. Soccer, Canadian football, American football, and modern rugby all emerged from these precursors during the 1860’s to 1870’s and therefore are more or less contemporary, with none able to claim definitive original use of the word football.

Rugby has always involved moving the ball by hand as well as backward or lateral passing of the ball. American rules introduced unique innovations including forward passing, the scrimmage line, and movement via the downs system. Rugby’s game flow was always more free-flowing and semi-chaotic as is soccer today, but the innovations of soccer include most exclusions of hands, the prohibition of tackling, and the addition of a goalkeeper in front of a ground-based goal. It’s easy to see how these two branches evolved in totally different directions from a common rugby ancestor, while modern rugby remained as its own viable branch. Similarly, humans, chimps, and gorillas are all viable modern variants of a primitive common ancestor, while creationists remain an unevolved separate branch retaining original features such as lower intelligence, belief in magic, and knuckle dragging.

So which game is properly called football today? All of them. Football is a generic term and is used to identify the dominant sport in any given region. The proper name for NFL style football is either American Football or Gridiron Football. The proper name for soccer is Association Football. It is provincial arrogance for anyone to claim their favorite sport is “real football” even if that name is used as convenient shorthand in each region.

The name “soccer” comes from the “soc” in Association Football. The schism in English football in the mid 19th century made the use of the term football confusing as both variants were played in the same geographical region. For shorthand, the players for the two variants were referred to as ruggers and soccers, for Rugby rules and Association rules respectively. Therefore the term soccer was originated in England, not in the US, which may come as a surprise to chain smoking European cheese eating surrender monkeys who tend to think of the word as evidence of American ignorance.

Each of these sports require a tremendous amount of skill and stamina, although obviously player attributes are mostly not interchangeable. Ronaldo would be knocked out of his shoes by any decent linebacker, and Zidane would be killed instantly if he tried to head butt an NFL lineman, not to mention Suarez attempting to snack on, say, Jack Lambert. Any player faking an injury in the NFL is an object of universal ridicule (think: Limas Sweed) rather than acclaim as in soccer, and incessant whining is acceptable in the NFL only if your name is Harbaugh. On the other hand, NFL players would be destroyed in trying to play a real soccer match. James Harrison nearly died of coronary infarction from his famed Super Bowl interception runback. Imagine doing that nearly non-stop for 90+ minutes in the sweltering heat of the Brazilian jungle! Soccer may be mostly boring as hell to watch, but it does take some serious skill to manipulate a ball at full speed without your hands and to keep it up with little break.

It’s true that soccer has evolved into an almost unbearable wussie sport of diving and crying, and suffers from an absurd officiating and timekeeping system. But to be fair I can’t say I’m fully ecstatic over where gridiron is evolving under the leadership of Roger Goodell and his team of cheeseless surrender monkey lawyers. Still, gridiron remains vastly superior to soccer in my completely biased view and I don’t think even Roger can do anything to change that assessment.

Postscript: For those unaware of it, we can at least very clearly pinpoint the origin of professional American football. William Heffelfinger issued a $500 contract in 1892 for a gridiron football game between the Allegheny Athletic Association against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Thus the first professional American rules football game was played between two Pittsburgh teams. Furthermore, the first professional league (known as the National Football League but unrelated to the current NFL) formed in 1902 as an offseason endeavor of several baseball clubs including the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates team, the Pittsburgh Stars, won the first league championship. (The baseball Pirates were also the National League champions in 1902, with 103 wins and a 27.5 game lead over second place Brooklyn.) Thus a pattern for the future was born.

Meanwhile, an ancestor of Ray Lewis was murdering two people in suburban Baltimore and getting off scott free.

Okay, I made up that thing about Ray Lewis. Probably.

+2