And it seems every single one has its own rules depending on the country it's in. From what I've seen so far, only the "American" version (I think it's called Gridiron Football or something like that) is noticably different in that while everyone else wears shorts, shirts and cleats American players wear padding and helmets.

Why is it called "football" anyways? There are only a few instances where the foot is used. The ball is handled most of the time with hands for throwing, passing, or just running around with it.

Now I only know Gridiron football and I'm not versed in the rules for rugby, or whatever the version of the game is called in England or Australia. Maybe Soccer is what true football is supposed to be? I'm more than a bit confused...

Yup. Football (or association football to give it its full name - "soccer" to those crazy US types!) came first and is (gasp!) played by moving a ball around using your feet. It originated in Europe (probably England) and was spread to Eastern Europe and South America by construction engineers during the great age of railway building.

According to tradition, Rugby football (or just rugby) was supposedly invented at Rugby school in England during a game of "ordinary" football, when an errant pupil picked up the ball and began to run with it.

The other games (including Gridiron etc) are more or less variations on rugby.

As far as I'm concerned, there's only two versions.

There's the Gaelic type too, which is "apparently" rather old... But you know those nationalist Irish, who like any nationalist group rediscover "old", "traditional", and "original" forms of things.
Annyway, The Gaelic type football is supposed to be very old, involves more hands and rough stuff and had some influence on the creation of Aussie Rules football, which is what we play in Australia.

There are two main types of Rugby as far as I know: Union and League. One is traditionally more associated with the upper middle class and exclusive schools, the other is the common man's sport. I have no idea which is which or what the differences are.

I reckon American Football was invented when a few guys saw rugby and said:

"HOLY SHEEYIT! Y'ALL GON' GIT KILLED AND WE'LL HAVE LESS FOLKS TO HAVE PISTOL DUELS WITH AND HELP US FIGHT DEM INJUNS, CONSARNIT!"

Ok. Now I really want to know. Where did that stupid name 'soccer' come from? Who decided it was a good idea to call a sport, that is globally known everywhere else as football, something other then football?

When I saw this title I figured this was gonna be a discussion about the different variations of sports that revolve around kicking a ball that had been developed around the world over the time. I'm kinda disappointed that it's just the old American football vs Football(soccer)

For example, didn't the Aztecs also create their own game where you'd kicked a ball into a small circle that was suspended high in the air? Also, if memory serves me right, didn't they sacrifice the team that lost?

...or was it the team that won?

It was the British, who invented the game who came up with the name. It's already been mentioned that it's an abbreviation of "Association football". That was probably something to do with the team organisation of the game in Britain when it became a professional sport, but also to differentiate it from Ruby which even in Britain was ALSO known as football AND "Footer" by the people who followed that sport.
As well as "Rugger".

I've heard it was more like Basketball or maybe handball? -

Besides we've bought up Rugby league, Rugby Union, Aussie rules football and Gaelic football.

Where are your eyes Viking man? >:|
Certainly didn't trade 'em both for wisdom.

-No offence intended ok?

I think that was mayan... and the sacrifices were often the losing team- sometimes just the team leader, sometimes the whole team(depending on the situation) or i could be completly wrong.

http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/worldhistory/mayanballgame.htm] sounds about right...

No. It wasn't kicking, it was throwing and dropping it through the circle.
Basically, similar to netball. Except that the captain of the team that lost was killed and his head was used in the next game.
At least that's what I've read.

I don't care what people call it as long as my beloved Packers beat the point spread.

PACKERS! PACKERS! PACKERS! PACKERS! PACKERS!

For serious. The only thing that matters in life is whether or not a bunch of guys I'll never meet can throw a ball properly and if they can't then I'm gonna hella lose it and punch the guy sitting next to me at Hooters because he is wearing the wrong color hat and he totally jinxed the game THANKS A LOT ASSHOLE!

... I was referring to the original post with that comment of mine.

And that was awfully rude.

I'm honestly not sure it was addressed, but as I see it: Association football gave way to rugby, which was still termed "football", which gave way to American football which is closer to Rugby but not at all like association football, but as we had American football before we really had association football, we went with the other name for association football, ie Soccer, since football had grown to mean something else entirely here, even though they all gained popularity in the same general timeframe.

As for that Mayan game I'd read some places they competed for the priviledge of being sacrificed, and in others the losing team got it. Not sure anyone really knows.

In other news, I hope the Saints go all the way this year. Louisiana could use the revenue.

See Ozone? This is what I would describe as a polite answer to someones question.

I believe this may help with the ancient mayan/aztec issue:

And I think soccer should hold the name "football". It makes sense, no one can deny that.

No. The name Soccer was British in origin, not American and it's been around at least since the early 20's.No, I was clearly joking, given the facetious nature of my statement, whereas you were very rude in not acknowledging any of the other posts in the thread in claiming that everyone was just talking about US Vs British football. That rudeness was the reason for my facetious statement which I even added a disclaimer to to say it wasn't meant to be rude. -_-
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edit

I've talked this out with PP and it was all a misunderstanding.
Sorry for offending you PP.

I propose renaming the American Football into either one of the two...

1) RugBall (as it comes from Rugby)
2) American Footlong (as that's how long the "ball" is supposed to be)

:D

Heh, those are funny, especially the second one, but they already call it "Gridiron".
I used to think that was because of the face grills, but it's because off all the lines on the field- looks like a cooking grill apparently.

They use their hands more than anything, like Lonnehart says and the objective is to score points by getting that ball to certain score lines or something...? They say it's highly strategy based.

Personally I'd be inclined to call it "Tackleball" ^__^



Out of all the football types I know, only soccer is really and truly a foot game only (cept for goalies and referees). We have a lot of big kicks in Australian Rules Football, but you're allowed to "punt" it to other people (hold it in one hand and punch it out to someone with the other), you can also run with it if you bounce it... which is amazingly hard to do with a funny shaped ball. Mostly people kick it to each other. I don't know for sure, since I'm no expert on anything to do with football of any kind, but I think Aussie Rules is probably the version of football where the ball is kicked in the air more than any other.

He meant that we already had American football here before we picked up the English version so since we'd already used the name football, we just went ahead and used the name soccer for it.

Personally, it was always my understanding that football was so named for the advancing system it uses with feet and yards going down the field. Which to me makes perfectly logical sense as it's the only game I know of that uses the measure as a major component of the game's rules. Not even rugby ( at least as we play it here. ) does that.

The explanation for that one seems to vary. I've heard people explain it as being called gridiron football because it was initially played in prisons in the exercise yard which was called the gridiron for some reason as a way to get inmates to let go of some aggression.

Either way though, nobody but the world's lamest football historians actually calls it "gridiron" in the US.

Well the Brits were already calling it soccer too and so were a lot of other countries, but that's mostly forgotten now since it's become so popular and dominant. Now it's mostly only known as football.
They say that Gridiron came from Canadian football and that came from Rugby? True?

Heh, I like the version I learned about for the Gridiron name better

Shouldn't it be "feetball" or "Yardball" then? Or "measureball"?
I don't buy that explanation at all. Seeing as you can trace the origins back to the European football variants and they all carried the name "football" (yes, Rugby does too), it seems logical that the name just carried over as it always does. ...even though Gridiron seems to have mutated into something rather extremely different over the years.

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Wikipedia seems to agre with me... I don't know if wiki is right, but it's a good sign.

MAN, why are sports always so amazingly complex? That stuff is more complicated and boring than reading about quantum mechanics. UGH -_-
I cannot understand the first thing about American football and reading about any other type of football is also equally baffling and complicated... and yet actual football fans of any type are often not overly baffling or complicated people. Quite the opposite.

Got me dude. I don't know the history that well, I was just clarifying what he said. It makes sense though that we chose to use the name soccer if we hadn't picked the game up until after we had our version of football.
Yeah, but you're forgetting the American inclination to use whichever tense or to make up words that sound better colloquially rather than are most accurate when it comes to describing stuff. We invent tenses and words for things all the time. So it's not exactly impossible for it to be plausible especially seeing as how I'm not a fan of the sport and don't much pay attention to it. Chances are good that it's more that it just carried over, I just always understood it as the thing with the field layout.

lulz

The object of the game is to take the ball to the other team's "end zone" to score a touchdown without dropping the ball or getting tackled. And there is some strategy involved since you've got the other team blocking your way. It's like a military campaign to capture territory or something, I guess. So you have to create strategies to get that ball past the other team to get to their end zone. They then use strategies to block you and drive the ball back towards your endzone. If you fail your four attempts to get past the scrimmage line (I think that's what it's called) you become the defender and you have to block the other team from getting the ball PAST YOU!

I'm starting to think the reason why it's called "football" in America is because of all the measuring lines on the field. It's all in yards, which is 3 feet each. Well... something like that.

Soccer is the sport Italian women played at work while the men stayed home and cooked dinner.

Not quite...
"They're often not overly baffling or complicated".
-Meaning that they are, but not often. "simple" isn't the opposite of that in the context of talking about human beings because that doesn't mean "uncomplicated", that means "stupid", that that's NOT what I meant.
No, it's not. But it's a nice fake reasoning. It has a lot of appeal
Thanks for the explanation of the objective of the game ^___^