Feb 28 2007
Know Your Football Codes: American Football
For the first week of this new blog format, we’ll take a look at the six most popular football games on the planet, in no particular order but the one I choose, and give a brief overview of where they come from and where they might be going.
Just how popular is football in America?
Consider this: The most-watched sporting event on U.S. television for the second weekend in February was… wait for it… the Pro Bowl. Yes, the National Football League’s all-star game, which players consistently disrespect and pundits loathe more and more every year, outdrew every basketball game, every car race and every other televised sport that weekend.
Why? Because it was football, kid.
That’s not the only sign that football — or “gridiron,” as some folks outside of America call it — has long since replaced baseball as America’s #1 sport. The NFL has set records for paid attendance four years in a row. NBC is paying the NFL $650 million a year for its Sunday Night Football package, and ESPN is paying the NFL $1.1 billion per year for the TV rights to Monday Night Football. Fantasy football is a multi-million-dollar business that only widens the NFL fan base. We won’t even talk about all that gambling revenue.
That’s just for pro football, too. This doesn’t begin to touch upon college football, a huge business in itself, and high school football, which many small-town Americans take far too seriously.
All of this is for a variation on rugby that barely draws any interest outside of North America. When sports fans from other continents watch American football, they complain that it has too many stops and starts and too many strange formations. In rugby, players just line up on their sides and go. They don’t need 25 seconds to set up a play.
Well, to understand why American football is the way it is, you have to understand something about Walter Camp, the man who literally built the gridiron more than 12 decades ago…
(More after the jump.)
Walter Camp was never just some popular jock. Sure, he dominated every sport he played at Yale back in the 1870s, and he loved playing rugby the most. There was one game, though, that he loved more than rugby — chess. He loved setting up strategies and defenses and executing them against his opponents, and somewhere along the way, he realized he couldn’t do that in rugby. Players would just line up and go, winning games more often with pure athletic skills than intellectual skills.
Somewhere along the way, Camp thought, “Gee, I bet it be great if I could somehow combine chess and rugby into one game.” Luckily for Camp, he had more presence in a room than Jim Brown, and he used that power and influence to create his ideal football game — one that valued intelligence and strategic thinking just as much as athletic ability…
That kind of game falls right in line with the American psyche, which looks upon the gridiron as a theater of war, where coaches are generals leading well-armored soldiers into battle. Of course, sometimes we take that metaphor a little too far — Kellen Winslow Jr., holla! — but consciously or otherwise, many of us imagine of the American game of football as controlled warfare in an enclosed space, and we all want to watch the battle.
This idea also harks back to the medieval period, when football was literally one city against another, and entire villages became gigantic scrums every year during Mardi Gras. You think football is a rough game now? Picture two mobs of hundreds squaring off, with the whole town was the playing field. Enough men were severely injured and enough property was damaged during these contests that kings spent centuries trying to ban football.
That’s not to say American football hasn’t seen it’s share of death and destruction. After Camp created the down-and-distance rules we know so well today, coaches began using mass formation plays to advance the ball, and those plays tended to main and kill football players. By 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt literally stepped in and told schools to clean up the game or face its prohibition. The forward pass was legalized in response of this, and it opened up Camp’s game and made it fairly unique among other codes of football at the time.
Camp? Man, he hated the forward pass. He thought John Heisman was a crank for even suggesting it. Camp wanted to widen the field to open up the game and prevent so many injuries, but there were roadblocks in his plan, and he grudgingly accepted the forward pass and moved on. Now it’s almost impossible to imagine football in America without it.
But is it possible to imagine the gridiron game outside of America? Maybe. Response to the first regular-season NFL game to be played in England has been overwhelming, NFL Europa remains popular in Germany, and there’s even going to be an American Football World Cup in Japan this July. This strange rugby variant that Walter Camp created may yet prove to be just as big as rugby itself.
Japan actually has almost 400 high school, college and company-sponsored pro teams playing American football. Maybe Roger Goodell should set up a developmental league over there next…
RSS Feed
One of the things that has always frustrated me as a fan of multiple codes of football is the group of people who think that because American Football players where helmets and padding, they are somehow less manly than rugby or aussie rules players.
The scrimmage and down-and-distance rules have created a game whose essence, from the purely physical standpoint, is collision and the usually-doomed effort to avoid collision. I have seen quite a few rugby games, and there are precious few hits that are comparable to, say, a sprinting strong safety arriving at the last second from a deep position to stop a receiver who is running as fast as possible from the other direction. That hit certainly exists in rugby, but it is relatively rare, and there are certainly not half a dozen collisions of similar magnitude occurring simultaneously as the linemen square off at the line of scrimmage.
None of this is to detract from the incredible toughness required to play rugby or aussie rules, especially without padding, but there is a damned good reason why American football (from the culture often perceived to be the most accepting of casual violence) is the only code that requires players to suit up like riot police.
the other side to that argument is that americans are the only people who would wear such over the top padding. if that is because they are less manly than other nations is open for debate.
I happen to be from Melbourne, Australia and I WAS a fan of American football for the past 2 years or so, especially in the last 12 months and throughout the last NFL season. But in the last few days I’m just damn sick of it. During Super Bowl XLI I was screaming and jumping up in the air after Devin Hester’s opening kickoff TD return, hoping it was a sign for things to come. Nothing much else happened for the rest of the game. I just can’t stand all the stoppages like every 5 minutes, it’s disgusting. Just watching a game is like a grueling battle of patience in itself.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this game cannot catch on in other countries. The rules must be changed, 40 seconds for each play in the NFL is just too long. College football has 25 seconds. And don’t get me started on the NFL OT rules. That’s gay as.
I’m Irish myself and personally Hurling is my game, followed closely by Rugby/Gaelic Football, then Aussie Rules, then Rugby League, then Lacrosse, then …..
Sorry lads, I just cannot get into American Football. Its not that i’m some European eejit that only watched a game once and decided it was crap or anything. I’ve actually tried to get into it.
Reasons I can’t.
1. Its far far far far too slow. The stoppages are unbearable. I can definitely appreciate the tactics and strategy involved but the amount of time taken to set plays up is sickening. Yes its great to watch a well planned out play but American Football COMPLETELY loses other aspects of play in other football codes because of it. Fast thinking, player decision making, Fast play.
2. The “Footballers” on the actual field. Honestly, you have a guy whose sole and only job in Football is to kick the ball ???? Hes not a footballer! A footballer should be able to do everything, defend and attack. Yes sure theres place for specialised skills but to have a guy sitting on the bench who only comes on when a kick needs to be taken is pathetic. Then you have more or less completely different teams for offence and attack, its pathetic. A guy has one skill of the game and hes a footballer ? Yes i know hes probably got that skill off to a T but thats not the point.
3. Player Stamina -> Namely, American footballers have none. Sure you can hit like an elephant on the warpath in a play, then you get a 5 minute break before you do it again.
I can’t understand how this game is appealing to anyone.
This is an awsome blog. I love football
As for the footballers comment and the comments about stamina… You only start to become specialized in football when you get to the high levels of University play or the NFL. In most pop-warner( kids levels), high school, and lesser division colleges, but more so in high school and pop-warner, players play offense, defense, and special teams. I was personally played linebacker, offensive line, and was our punter. Our tight end was our place kicker. Also, there are no tv timeouts and stoppages are minimal, so stamina and all around football skills are required.
there are some good comments here…yes (see above), I have not watched a Professional grid-iron game in a good while… yet I have tryed to see as many College games as possible… this brand of the game has more strategy and is played with more heart
on the topic of ’stamina’… rest-bits ARE part of the game… do all games need to be the same? if you are simply into stamina, take up the game of rugby (or other)…. if you can accept pauses in the game, in order to strategize, take up grid-iron
Soccer might be a popular sport around the world, but to me it is the most boring sport in the entire history of mankind. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Now drag racing from a dead stop to 330 miles per hour in just a 1/4 of a mile whilst being catipulted by 7,500 horsepower -THAT’S excitement. Soccer is for people with nothing better to do than show off their ugly, knobby knees.
hey, sorry to interupt the conversation, but i have a quick question. my son is playing football, but has a bad elbow. he found a good pad for it, but it has a hard plastic elbow covering. is the hard plastic pad legal??
I love this blog, I view football as my religion. I agree with football being looked at as a theater of war. In fact I know a guy who was a commander in the Army who said he worked on a war strategy guide in the 40s that was based on the Army’s football team during their dominating 40s era.
I’m an Australian who watch’s American Footy on occasions but i do encourage everyone to have a look at our great game. don’t get confussed aussie rules is not Rugby Union or Rugby League, its a game of its own that started in 1858, it has a great history its a great sport to play and watch. It’s growing at a grass roots level in the US UK and Europe, Trust me join up with a local club and play, you’ll have the time of your life
This blog is great! I enjoy reading all sports blogs and can’t understand folks that trash other sports when they should appreciate them all for that they offer to their fans. Surely one sport cannot satisfy the needs of all fans. As fans, we should cherish top athletes because of their hard work, discipline, dedication and passion for the sport they love so much because this is what excites us as fans. Sports provides us all with an escape from our monotonous lives and offers us a multitude of entertainment, both directly and indirectly. A group of friends can get together and play a game based on the sport they love so much. For example, create an NFL football or European Cup Soccer office pool and invite friends to join. You can do this at MyOnlinePool.com where pool categories extend to PGA Golf Tournaments and College “March Madness” basketball pools. Just like fantasy sports sites, whether you are an athlete were an athlete or just appreciate athletes, you can continue to entertain yourselves and socialize with your friends through websites that offer these options to us all.
foot ball news i mean