There’s been a lot of focus this year on violence in the NFL — hard hits, horrific injuries, past players looking for ways to prevent future concussions, bounties on players, new rules that may or may not be “pansying up” the game, and so on.
It’s all quite absurd, really. Those who prattle on about the violence of the gridiron game seem to forget that it is violence. It’s a brutal tactical war game that requires players to collide into each other at the fastest possible speed to stop an opponent — something players learn at a very young age.
For as bad as it looks now, though, American football was much worse a century ago. There was no padding, very little forward passing, and far more brutal battles in the trenches.
That might be one reason why the New York Times took a look at the state of American football and thought, hey, maybe those Aussies have a better idea.
“Practically a similar summing up as that of the major’s is the consensus among the Californians who have seen the game as demonstrated as it is now being taught on the coast. Its general absorption of most of the other types of contests with the leather spheroid has proved the rule whenever the issue was football”, wrote the Times.
“If we Americans want a safe and sane game of football we can do no better than to emulate the Australian style of game”, Major Peixotto says. “It is almost as open as lacrosse, as changeable as basketball, presents almost as many dribbling chances as the association game (soccer), and admits of no such close formations as exist under our college rules, and which, because of their tendency toward injuries, have raised such a hue and cry against the game”
Sure, it was published in 1910, and the old Major had something to sell people back then, but still, it makes you wonder just how many people would be more than happy to make the same arguments today. Perhaps the only difference is the number of deaf ears on which those arguments would fall. For all its faults, we’re still committed to the gridiron game around here. It’s enough to make you think we might be having too much fun with all this violence.
You can read the full Times article here. Nobody writes like that anymore. I wonder why.
1 response so far ↓
1 a different Dave // Nov 25, 2008 at 10:18 pm
I’m not sure which group is more delusional, aussie rules fans or rugby league fans, but reading the comments on that page you linked to was a laugh.
As to the article itself, you could find similar articles from that period and earlier in the American press extolling rugby and soccer; what does that prove? I also wonder if the aussie rules game has changed radically, or did the writer actually see it played? “Presents almost as many dribbling chances as the association game (soccer)”??? Really, since when? How? You wanna demonstrate soccer dribbling with that there egg ball, pal?
Aussie rules fans do seem a bit more arrogant than rugby league fans, though. They assume that their game has a “right” to dominate Australia, and one of the posters linked above called people who like soccer, in essence, “globalists” who were anti-American and anti-Australian, whereas American gridiron fans and Australian aussie rules fans were true patriots.
Yeah, f_ck you too, pal. Have a nice day.
And they are making these bigoted, xenophobic, patriotard comments on the same thread where they are arguing about how aussie rules should become the world game and how they should do everything they can to spread it to places like India where other codes of football aren’t dominant yet!
Irony is obviously lost on them. If you want your game to be a global game, stop acting like a bunch of backwoodsmen.