football not soccer
 

Why do americans insist on calling american football "football" ?

A football is spherical, football is played by using the foot to control and direct the movement of the ball. American football seems to have more in common with rugby. Does anyone know how this sport came to be called this ?

ps Loved your superbowl, kept me awake until 3:30am over here in London.

Re: football not soccer
 

Ummm, well, b/c if we referred to it as anything other than "football" today, it would confuse the shit out of most Americans.

The name "football" apparently came around the late 19th century, after rugby made its way to the States.

It was a good game...probably in the top 10 Super Bowls of all time.

There was a football game? I thought there was just a tit-flashing incident.

FWIW, I'm a soccer/football fan. English Premiere League games are damn near Rugby, sometimes. Incredible skill levels, unthinkable endurance.

Soz mate, but football is 'soccer', we (the English) invented the bastard, and every other country which is decent at the game knows it as football. And Elspode, English Premier League (yes, there's no 'e' at the end of premier) football is nout like rugby, how the fuck did you come to that conclusion? Jesus, stick to American games like basketball.
SAFC Are The Greatest

basketball is not an american sport, it's a european sport.
russia, serbia, lithuania and the latvians have conquered it since it began.

try baseball

and just for the record ...the premiership cannot compare to the campionato

Basketball was invented in 1891 in Springfield, Massachusetts by James Naismith who, incidentally, was Canadian.

Reminds me of another place that likes to brag, but doesn't really deserve to.

North Carolina likes to tell everyone that they invented the airplane. But the Wright brothers were from Ohio, and they basically invented the plane there. They just went to North Carolina to fly it because the state had nice sand dunes.

i didn't say where it was invented, i said where it is being mastered

Seriously whip, Basketball is American. America, Canada, same fucking thing. And yeah, the English Premiership is the best league in the world, since it has the best team in the world, Chelsea, and other class ones like Arsenal, Man U, and Wigan. No other European league comes close apart from the Spanish Premier, but that still is not as good. 4 words: Wayne Rooney, Thierry Henry.

you have no argument at the moment as to where basketball is being mastered, your nba leaders all come from europe, so forget about that.

although you do have an argument regarding the premiership now that chelsea has picked up all the greatest youngsters...thiery dosen't say all that much.
shevchenko, vierra, nesta, nedved, cannavaro, buffon, toldo, idrahimovic, seedorf, trezerguet, thuram, veron, adriano, zambrotta, totti, recoba and fiore are all the worlds elite, and all play for teams like juventus ac milan, inter milan, roma fiorentina and lazio, which are some of the elite clubs of the world, and are way ahead of the premiership teams prior to chelseas purchases... you can't say that the premiership is the greatest in the world.
sure chelsea is a superteam, liverpool is seriously one of the greatest in the world, but the other empires are falling ...wenger has destroyed arsenal ...man utd's middle line can compare with sunderlands, and arguably it is worse ....the spurs show a future, but are not so much, so you see, apart from two superpowers in england, there isn't much of anything else...not that interesting if you ask me, unless man.utd do some serious purchasing this year, and arsenal fire wenger ... the campionato will remain a better league in my books.

Wow...ya'll really know how to do the PR thing to grow the fan base, doncha?

futbol

hmm.. my reading says futbol and soccer come before football.

ok, the one thing about that list is that it's based on games the teams have played. now this does not favour european teams as they face each other mostly, all the elite soccer nations are in europe, so this heavily favours soth american teams. my idea of how the world ranking really stands based on the players that combine the teams at the moment are;

1]holland [netherlands] the youngsters say it all
2]italy lacking a striker, but are solid everywhere else
3]argentina still the greatest s.american team
4]france still producing youngsters, out with the old
5]england best they've ever been imo
6]brazil still good, but not great
7]]sweden great form, still elite
8]czech rep. nedved, koller, rocinsky
9]denmark always great form, good team all round
10]usa some serious work has been done the past decade
11]spain will never achive anything with the whole basque thing
12]germany ....after a mediocre decade, they are coming back strong
13]ghana ...best african team without a doubt
14]japan ..representing asia
15]mexico ...always up there
16]portugal ...great players, but terrible team
17]rep.of ireland ..... who can deny them, they're almost unbeatable
18]paraguay ...has conquered s.america the past 4-5 years
19]greece ...not really, but the european cup and all
20]australia ...best australian team ever..seriously..this is not a fluke

what else would we call it?

really. there's no other name for it.

Gridiron would do.

Or maybe 'Rugby with padding'.

New Zealanders refer to rugby as 'football' too.Quite bizarre when you consider that the game is mainly about carrying a funny shaped ball to the opposition's end of the field.

Handball is an option
 

What else can we call 'american football'. Well, something that actually maps what its done in the field. What about 'Handball' or "handcer" or something of that sort...

Someone else mentioned the name was adopted before rugby came to the US, well that is not true. Football was the official name given to the sport before rugby came to the US. North American schools were influenced by English universities at the time, and rugby was one of the things that came along with it. Rugby was seen as the sport that 'high class' students should play in English schools. Curious enough the first 'American football' like game played between schools here in North America was years after the rugby and football rules were defined in England, and after football as a name was given to the game that the world as a whole knows as football. Simply football.

It's evident that 'soccer' is a word that the US media and 'american football' organizations in particular are promoting to differentiate football from their form of 'american football'. They are using the argument of football being called 'soccer' at its inception as a widely known fact, which is wrong and simplistic.

-Ef

just watch who'll be lifting it ...germany is in europe right ....yeah , thats what i thought ...2nd place just dosen't cut it

You know, you were right. Second place doesn't cut it.

Who lifted it again?