stupid question

[ONESPEED]

It might be another attempt at English humor.

Much like FOOTBALL we perfected that as well.

 

[ClayJar]

Hehe, Kim... it's not like that in the States:

- In "baseball", you throw the ball toward the base.
- In "basketball", you throw the ball toward the basket.
- In "football", you throw the ball toward their feet.

Oh, wait, maybe that's just the Saints...

 

[Kim]

It might be another attempt at English humor.

LOL....he gets it!

Quite honestly though...American Football is much more similar to the game of rugby than real Football (as played by everyone else in the world except the US). I never understood why you chose that name - it makes no sense. The American game is so much more about throwing the ball than kicking it. Handball or Throwball would have been much better names/definitions of the game.

 

[ClayJar]

The forward pass was a latecomer to the game of American football, and given the choice between "carryball" and "football", they decided to play up the kicking game.

 

[wstein]

American football is an offshot of rugby, originally called ballown’. First using their fists to advance the ball, and then their feet, this game consisted mainly of one goal: to advance the ball past the opposing team. The earliest froms were mainly running with the ball, it wasn't until the 1920's I believe where the forward pass came into use.

 

[Kim]

The forward pass was a latecomer to the game of American football, and given the choice between "carryball" and "football", they decided to play up the kicking game.

OK...fair enough, I didn't know that. It's a pity though that they decided to go with a name that was already in use for another game everywhere else. Let's face it - it's only in the US it's simply called "Football", everywhere else it's called "American Football" - much the same way that the English that is spoken in the US is referred to universally as "American English" (which was the point of my earlier remark! )

 

[wstein]

yeah, and there is also australian english, canadian english, and so on. there is only one country where queens english is spoken and that is england. even scotlan speaks a different version of english

 

[Kim]

yeah, and there is also australian english, canadian english, and so on. there is only one country where queens english is spoken and that is england. even scotlan speaks a different version of english

Quite right...... (do the Scots actually speak English at all?)

 

[ClayJar]

Actually, from my reading, it wasn't until late 1863 when Association Football (a.k.a. "football", a.k.a. "soccer") split from Rugby Football. Prior to that, they were both simply different schools of rules in the generalized game of football. When American football, another branch of the football tree, had its first attempts at compiling a standard set of rules in 1876, it's only natural that it was also "football", just as association football and rugby football were "football".

Over the many years that followed, American football gained popularity in the US, and became known here by the simplified "football", while in the rest of the world, association football was most popular and won general use the generic term. Meanwhile, rugby football eventually just dropped the "football" on both sides of the world and became, simply, "rugby". In the US, where American football had won the race for the generic term, association football became known as "soccer".

Basically, then, the name "football" was used for each of three branches of one ancestor game, and the fact that two isolated groups grew to use the generic on different branches of the game isn't as inexcusable as, for example, changing American bowling's name to "cricket".

 

[H2Andy]

there is only one country where queens english is spoken and t is england.

well, they speak queen's english in San Francisco and parts of Manhattan, i'm pretty sure