Oct 29 2007
A Few Notes About the Redesign
When I refocused this blog last February, I wanted to do more to help others understand the differences among all the world’s football games. When you know where football comes from, you can appreciate it just a little more. The continuing discussion about these different games underneath the NFL at Wembley post indicate that I’m not doing a good enough job at this.
However, I don’t really feel like rewriting a lot of these same ideas over again, so what I’ve done is make it easier for people to find them. In that far-right column, you’ll find a number of links to posts I’ve written about the origins of all our football games.
Know Your Football Codes: A quick overview of the major football codes played today.
Football Variations: A sideways look at different football games inspired by the major football codes.
Ancient Football Codes: We’ve been playing football for a very long time. These are some of the games we used to play.
The Playing Fields: A few posts on how the places where we played football had an impact on what type of football we play.
Origins of the Gridiron Game: A series of posts I wrote for FanHouse about the origins of American football.
The Great Rugby Split: Basically, a quick look at rugby union v. rugby league.
Feel free to look at some of those posts and add to the discussion. I love the fact that people are having a conversation about these things. It’s an esoteric topic, yes, but it’s one that deserves more attention, given that we have so much more access to international media here in the 21st century, and we all have different ideas of what football should be.
By the way, I’m still fiddling with the background, but I think I’m going to keep it black for a while. I like the contrast.
RSS Feed
“The continuing discussion about these different games underneath the NFL at Wembley post indicate that I’m not doing a good enough job at this.”
Dave,
You shouldn’t blame yourself for this. Trying to educate people on this is a bit like trying to empty the oceans with a spoon. No matter how many people you educate on the internet, ten more will show up the next day who missed everything you said and who will repeat the same kinds of errors or misunderstandings you thought you had cleared up the previous day. It’s why Usenet in the early days of the Internet invented the FAQ, and people still refused to read the FAQs.
BTW, I still think if you have separate entries for American and Canadian gridiron, you should have separate entries for rugby union and rugby league as well, under the “know your football codes” section. There are seven modern football codes worldwide.
I know nobody reads the FAQ, but it’s not going to stop me from trying to show it to people. Besides, I wanted some of these articles to have a little more daylight than they were getting.
As for RU v. RL, I know they’re separate codes now, but I do have that topic covered here.
Yeah, I agree with a different dave. You’re not at fault; in fact, I owe you a debt for compiling the wealth of information here. It’s helped me tremendously. Thank you.
[...] Dave put an intriguing blog post on A Few Notes About the Redesign.Here’s a quick excerpt:When I refocused this blog last February, I wanted to do more to help others understand the differences among all the world’s football games. When you know where football comes from, you can appreciate it just a little more. … [...]
I like the new redesign. Keep up the excellent writing and thank you!
“As for RU v. RL, I know they’re separate codes now, but I do have that topic covered here.”
Yes, you do. I’m just being persnickety because I’ve gotten used to thinking of there being seven modern football codes (excluding all the weird folk football and public school football codes and obscure variations of the big seven codes).
Seven seas, seven continents, seven deadly sins, seven virtues, seven wonders of the ancient world, seven hills of Rome, seven rings for the dwarf-lords in their halls of stone…..and seven football codes!