Dave’s Football Blog

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.

Admit it. Unless you’re from Ireland — or married to an Irish national, like this friendly drunk I met while watching the AFL Grand Final in an Irish Pub in Raleigh last September — you have no clue what this is, do you?

I didn’t, either, until that fateful day last summer when I looked up the world “football” in Wikipedia. I just figured they played soccer and rugby in Ireland like everyone else in Europe — which they do, but those sports don’t capture the Irish imagination quite like the football game of the Gaelic Athletic Association. Gaelic football and hurling are Ireland’s national obsessions. They first played a football game in Ireland called Caid during medieval times, and Caid was legalized in the Statute of Galway all the way back in 1527. The GAA was formed in 1887 to formalize the rules and build upon that old Irish tradition.

It’s worth noting that Gaelic football may be the only major football code left on the planet that is strictly amateur. These footballers play only for the glory of their home county, though even that tradition may give way to 21st century reality soon.

It’s also worth noting that Gaelic football was a direct response to certain “foreign imports” from the United Kingdom…

(More after the jump.)

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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.

I know exactly what you’re thinking.

Why does Canadian football get its own post? Isn’t football in Canada, like everything else in Canada, pretty much the same as it is in America, but just different enough that it can call itself “Canadian?”

Perhaps. It takes a few minutes to get accustomed to the 12-on-12, 110-yard, three-down football they play in Canada, especially with all the pre-snap motion of the wide receivers and the end zones bigger than Jerry Jones’ ego. Ultimately, though, Canadian football and American football share a lot of similarities, and as a result, a lot of American players who can’t make the NFL end up in the CFL. Some would argue that this the reason Canada is one of the few countries on our lonely little planet where football is not the number one sport. I think it has more to do with all that ice, but that’s just me.

We should give a little credit to Canada, though, because Canadians had a much bigger influence on football in America than most people realize…

(More after the jump.)

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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.)

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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.

Somewhere in the Land Down Under, there are people in high places who want you to believe that Association Football is “the only true football” — and how could that be if you can’t kick a guy in the shins, hmm? — and therefore it’s the only form of football that should be promoted on the continent. A couple of good runs in the World Cup will give you just this sort of ego.

The soccerroo onslaught, however, hasn’t even put a dent in the audience for Aussie Rules. In fact, as of last year, the Australian Football League has the highest per capita attendance of any sports league on the planet, and most indicators suggest that these attendance figures are stilll growing.

In America, though, Aussie Rules is still thought of as some bizarre afterthought that used to be shown on ESPN in the early 80s. That’s patently unfair. Once you figure out what’s actually happening on that oval pitch, you realize that Aussie Rules is really fun to watch. It’s a high-action, high-scoring, high-contact game that doesn’t get nearly enough respect here in the Northern Hemisphere, because nobody here really understands the rules.

So what are those rules, anyway?

(More after the jump.)

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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.

I’ll be honest with you. Rugby is probably my least favorite form of football to watch.

Perhaps it’s because I don’t get all the nuances and subtleties of a good rugby match. Perhaps it’s because I grew up with American football, and when I watch rugby, I start thinking that guys like Walter Camp and John Heisman had the right idea.

Of course, what Americans like me might think is largely irrelevant here, as rugby is arguably the second most popular football code on the planet. It plays second fiddle to soccer in Europe, but it still has a strong following there, not to mention a huge fan base in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. National teams compete in Six Nations and Tri-Nations competitions every year, and there’s even a Rugby World Cup coming up in September, though I doubt ESPN will pimp that as much as they did the FIFA World Cup last summer.

So how did rugby manage to separate itself from the Football Association? Well, if you believe the legend, it starts with a brat named William Webb Ellis…

(More after the jump.)

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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.

I have a confession to make.

Not too long ago, I used to believe that Association Football — or “soccer,” as the American kids like to call it — was evil. I even wrote as much on this very blog. I had always looked beyond the game itself, choosing to tie it directly to all the violence and hooliganism that happened around it. Those nutters in Italy and France could have given me more ammo for that viewpoint in the last few months, too.

The truth, though, is that I’ve been horribly biased for a very long time, and it’s time I came to terms with that bias. You see, I took a corner kick in the crotch when I was 13.

(More after the jump.)

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