As I head to London’s Heathrow Airport en route to Malta for the holidays, I see this item during a spot of web-surfing. It is a piece by Gerard Baker, in the Wall Street Journal. Baker has spent a fair while in the US, and clearly, he’s been infected:
“But I discovered football when I first came to New York in the late 1980s and my prejudices melted away. It was the era of New York Giants greatness and I was hooked instantly: Lawrence Taylor, Phil Simms, Mark Bavaro, Jeff Hostetler. Yes, I did just say Jeff Hostetler. That should tell you how hooked I was.”
“In its energy and complexity, football captures the spirit of America better than any other cultural creation on this continent, and I don’t mean because it features long breaks in which advertisers get to sell beer and treatments for erectile dysfunction. It sits at the intersection of pioneering aggression and impossibly complex strategic planning. It is a collision of Hobbes and Locke; violent, primal force tempered by the most complex set of rules, regulations, procedures and systems ever conceived in an athletic framework. Soccer is called the beautiful game. But football is chess, played with real pieces that try to knock each other’s brains out. It doesn’t get any more beautiful than that.”
I must say that “soccer”, at least in how it is played these days in the English Premiership, tests my loyalty due to the real and alleged antics of the players as much as anything. Further afield, I am still spellbound by such players as Barcelona’s residing genius, Lionel Messi, but in general, I am not as much interested in soccer as I used to be. As a result of my general soccer fatigue, I have become more interested in following rugby union and cricket (it helps that England is playing good cricket at the moment; not so the rugby guys). As for American football, I have never really watched it much (I went to a game in Texas in 2004 but that was about it).
As for other sports and events, I can admire the courage and physical endurance of those taking part, such as horse racing jockeys, Tour de France cyclists and the downhill skiers. I can admire a gladiatorial game of tennis between such giants as Federer and Nadal, or, for that matter, watch nervously as a great golfer slugs it out on the greens against a rival. And non-PC though it is, a great boxing match can hold me in its thrall. For me, there are a whole group of sports that I like, and for different reasons. I like watching certain motor sports, but that is more a “spectacle” where the whole event – scenery, noise, colour and adrenalin – come together (as in Le Mans, which I attended this year with a bunch of friends).
I watched American football when it was regularly on Channel 4 of English TV. The moments when the Quarterback got the ball was the highlight for me. Complete mayhem around him but his main attention is 30 plus yards away. Some minor processes in his brain enable him to shimmy and sidestep those after him and then deliver an inch perfect pass to the far away wide receiver. I can’t think of another sport which juxtaposes the calm and poise of one man against the sound and fury of the mob.
Well put, David, and I would also add that once you get to understand the game you begin to see how it really is a chess match between the offensive and defensive coordinators. Each is setting up his team in a formation which disguises what the actual play will be; each is trying to second-guess and out-think the other, and once the play begins the players on each side have to recognize and react to what the other side is doing. It’s not merely physical skills, and in fact physically inferior teams regularly beat superior ones because they are smarter or better coached.
American ‘football’ has produced at least 2 savage assaults on the Ebglish language.
a) calling it ‘football’ when the ball is so rarely kicked
b) having a ‘touchdown’ when the ball is not touched down.
I don’t know what the game is like to play but it’s awful to watch without replays and different camera angles.
Play is in bursts of just a few seconds at a time, with so many decoys and dummy runs that the spectator can’t see what is happening.
Football, that is real football as understood by most of the world but called ‘soccer’ by Americans is a very good game to play. And it’s natural. Put a ball on the ground in front of a toddler and he will attempt to kick it. And at its best, played by teams like Barcelona, Arsenal and sometimes Manchester United, it is a beautiful game to watch.
But the best game to play is rugby union. The variety of positions and skills makes the game complex and enthralling. But rugby league players will say their game is better, and that’s a defensible position.
Unfortunately there are only a few hundred rugby union players in the world who are able to develop those skills to a level high enough to be worth watching.
The word “foot” in football is not a reference to the foot kicking the ball. It is a reference to the fact that the game is played by people on foot, as distinct from on horseback. Polo is a much older game.
As a child I was a huge football fan.
In college I enjoyed it for the accompanying beer and chicken wings (New York).
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But now, I don’t have the patience to spend 4 hours watching a game with 1 hour of playing time.
Plus, on the West Coast, the games are on too early.
On the rare occasions that I watch American Football I find college games to be more watchable than NFL which, as others have said, feels like four hours of commercials with the occasional bit of sports thrown in.
In contrast, this summer the wife, three cats and I drove from West Texas to Kansas City to watch Newcastle United play a friendly.
So, while I accept Laird’s chess match analogy (and indeed had long suspected that such was the case) I think it’s fair to say that, in my case at least, the English variety of football sparks a much greater passion than the American.
Something stirs in me when I watch football (English). And as my oldest son came of age, I couldn’t wait to introduce him to his first World Cup. Now, as I had been working abroad for a number of years this was the first long stretch of football I had watched as well.
And it was awful. The diving, whining and silly theatrics cheapened the game, but more importantly to me as a father, sent a terrible message to my son.
So off went the TV and quite frankly I wouldn’t be bothered if he never watches it again. It’s not the game I grew up with. The sport has changed as much as the country in which I was born.
Here’s an American vote for Soccer being the superior game. I never got much into NFL. To repeat the obvious points yet again another time already, it’s all start and stop and comes across as really artificial.
That said, I won’t call “soccer” “football” unless by mistake when abroad. And I’ll go ahead and add – not that it’s relevant in any way – that “soccer” is a British word that fell out of favor. If Wikipedia is to be believed, this happened in the early 1970s and only because it was perceived (incorrectly) to be an Americanism. Citizens of the UK older than 40 please verify or dispute.
And it was awful. The diving, whining and silly theatrics cheapened the game,
Yes, yes, yes. These theatrics are related to the appearance (to me anyway) that at the international level (the only level I know) teams try only to avoid losing as opposed to trying to win. As a strategy it’s smart, but it leads to long games with little scoring and lots of dirty play (which includes the theatrics).
The games get more interesting at the point one of the teams lucks into the lead and the other team has to actually play for something. Of course, then the team with the lead quits attacking at all, so maybe not…
This don’t-lose strategy is usually not employed in North American sports. It’s impossible in baseball and the rules are set up in basketball and football to discourage it. On the other hand, NAn sports do suffer from other issues touched on here by others. All true. Or mostly so. I thought David Robert’s description of football was particularly nice. Thanks.
Must admit, I never really understood [football|soccer] – Rugby’s more to my taste [and given my heritage we’re talking League not Union here]
Though the “Aussie Rules” football and Aussie NRL can be deeply intriguing to watch too.
Joshua, I am not part of the demographic you were appealing to, but take a look at this nonetheless.
There were various sports known as “football” in the Public (i.e. private) schools of England in the 1850s and 1860s. The Football Association was founded in 1863 in an attempt to standardise the rules so that the various schools would then be able to play each other. Their standardisation became known as “Association Football”. Another form of the game became known as “Rugby Football”. (This split further in the early 20th century, and two resulting forms of football became governed by the Rugby Union and the Rugby League, and the sports subsequently became named after their governing bodies). In the Public Schools, Association Football became known as “soccer” and Rugby football as “rugger”, both being colloquialisms. I doubt that anyone who did not go to a Public School has ever referred to Rugby as “rugger”, but “soccer” stuck, probably because the word “Association” has five syllables and there aren’t many alternatives. In places (the US, Australia) where there was ambiguity about what the word “football” meant, the word soccer was used, because there was no better word to use to distinguish the game from the other sports referred to as football.
However, claiming that Association football has a better or earlier claim to the word “football” than other sports is simply ignorant. It was not the first sport to use the name (even Australian football is older) and has no special claim to it. Given that, “soccer” is about all you are left with.
I cannot find a reference but I am nearly certain I once heard Mikhail Baryshnikov describe football (the American variety) as “violent chess”.
I rarely watch more than a half of any game but the athletics of it are amazing to me. When one sees it live and very close it is astonishing how quickly even those enormous linemen move.
War on a different battlefield. Any Englishmen who prefers the strategy and dynamism of football to soccer has discerning tastes.
I will not, of course, say the same of my sweetheart who has spurned coffee for tea. I, of course, still prefer the bitter black sludge.