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Post by Bill Thompson on Feb 5, 2007 13:59:51 GMT -4
It isn't what the rest of the world thinks when you say "football". To the world outside of the United States, football is what the yanks call "soccer" which is a game full of motion and activity on a much larger playing field.
After the Super Bowl I wonder what others think. What do you think, honestly, of American Football? If it was not for the big get-together and the excuse to see family and friends, would you fall asleep during this stop-and-go spectacle?
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Feb 5, 2007 14:08:47 GMT -4
I don't habitually watch football, but I do watch the Superbowl. And I enjoy a good game from time to time, especially when watched with friends.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
Posts: 1,453
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Post by Al Johnston on Feb 5, 2007 14:40:34 GMT -4
I actually played a bit in my last year of university; great fun, although (perhaps because) we couldn't afford all the pads and stuff. As center, I used to joke that my role was to give the ball to someone else and then get on with the real game. We had a great laugh, and did quite well in games against other UK universities, although pretty much any US high-school team would have doubtless stomped all over us without undue exertion ;D
There was quite a boom in following American Football in the UK in the mid-eighties, probably due to the newly-fledged Channel 4 picking the sport to fulfil its "cultural diversity" remit an putting an hour-long edited highlight package in a good Sunday-evening slot that previously offered little choice for the non-religiously inclined. As fashions come and go, it has declined somewhat to a stable core of afficionados with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but there are still weekly broadcasts featuring games during the regular season, and the Superbowl is broadcast live on one of the terrestrial channels.
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Feb 5, 2007 15:04:10 GMT -4
Television is for sheep, sports doubly so.
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Post by gwen on Feb 5, 2007 15:22:44 GMT -4
The telly is a scourge.
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Post by gillianren on Feb 5, 2007 15:58:51 GMT -4
I quite enjoy television. However, football is dull and silly, and the players' salaries are quite overblown. I didn't even know who was playing in Overrated Sports Event # Too Many (TM) until I was watching the news last night. Though I do know that I was christened on Super Bowl Sunday in 1977.
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Post by wingerii on Feb 5, 2007 20:00:32 GMT -4
As a huge fan of association football (soccer), I find American football to be terribly dull. I find the Canadian Football League to be slightly more interesting than the National Football League, as three downs per possession encourages a passing game, but the only full matches I watch will be the Grey Cup and the Superbowl, and then only because they tend to be social gatherings.
Last night, my cable cut out halfway through the first quarter. I wasn't too mad about it, as I ended up getting a lot of homework done instead. I was muched more ticked off Saturday morning, when I got up at 7:45am to watch the Liverpool-Everton match, and found that the cable was out :S
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Post by PeterB on Feb 5, 2007 22:02:40 GMT -4
I have to say I find American Football interesting, but only at an intellectual level. For sheer enjoyment, I much prefer Australian Rules Football, or Rugby League or Rugby Union to a lesser extent. I find soccer generally uninteresting, though I did watch a bit of the World Cup.
American Football as a spectacle doesn’t engage me, for a number of reasons, the largest of which is the clock manipulation. On the one hand, it seems absurd to me that a game which nominally lasts 80 minutes can take three or more hours to complete. But on the other hand, when the side in the lead takes possession in the last couple of minutes, it can deliberately run the clock down, and the other side can’t do anything about it.
Another factor I find bizarre about the game is that a team roster can include something like 50 players, yet only 11 (is that the right number?) can be on the field at one time, allowing for extreme specialisation. In other forms of football, most players have to spend most of the game on the field, and so they must have a combination of offensive and defensive skills.
Then there’s the rule that only certain players are allowed to handle the ball. WTF? Why?
The closest game to American/Canadian Football is probably Rugby League, and a little comparison is worthwhile. In RL, there are 13 players on the field. When a team takes possession, it has six tackles (downs) to move the ball as far as it can. No matter how far they carry the ball downfield, they lose possession on the sixth tackle. As a result, sixth tackle plays usually involve a kick, though running with the ball is occasionally tried (as with fourth down plays in American Football). The other major difference is that there are no forward passes allowed in RL, even accidentally. If you drop the ball and it goes forward, the other side gets possession from that point, but if the ball goes backwards, you can pick it up and carry on. What you can do instead is regain possession from a kick. But kicks are much harder to direct, so they’re usually only tried in specific situations.
RL is a great game for TV, in the same way that American Football is, in that most of the grunt action is easily concentrated within a TV screen. It doesn’t work that way with Australian Rules Football, or so well with soccer. So I can see why RL and American Football both do well on the TV. Aussie Rules is much better enjoyed live.
So what do I like about American Football? Well, the tactical side is intriguing, as coaches come up with plans and counter-plans, feints and misleads, all in the search of the sack or first down. It’s interesting to compare that with RL, where the play is continuous, and special plays have to be called on the run. And I suppose the games are more interesting when you’re watching a highlights package with all the down-time cut out.
We had the Superbowl on TV live at work here in Canberra, though I only paid attention to a few minutes of it. Neither the Colts or the Bears raised particular interest either way. If there’s anything close to a side I support in the NFL, it’s the Patriots (only because they were coming last in their division when I started watching American Football back in the late 80s).
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Feb 5, 2007 23:31:04 GMT -4
Americans like the downtime in football - it makes it more of a social sport in that you can talk to each other between plays, and talk about the plays before the next one is set up. Americans tend to find Soccer boring because there is so much time spent with no obvious progress made one way or the other. And if you want to talk about byzantine rules, there are much stranger sports out there. I don't get Cricket at all, for instance.
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Post by PeterB on Feb 6, 2007 1:12:22 GMT -4
Jason said:
Is that because the people who like it have the attention span of a - oh look! Shiny thing! ;-)
Much the same reason I don't like soccer either. Ninety minutes for 0-0? You've gotta be kidding!
Well, to be honest, cricket isn't that different from baseball. And baseball, too, has its fair share of strange rules. IIRC, if you bunt foul on the third strike, you're out. Uh-huh? Richard Dawkins twitted fellow biologist Stephen J Gould over the latter's love of baseball in one of the former's essays. Dawkins loves his cricket, and was a bit tired of Gould's constant use of baseball analogies in his writing.
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Post by gillianren on Feb 6, 2007 1:28:38 GMT -4
Okay, but you know, I can summarize the point of baseball in one sentence. Dorothy L. Sayers has a lengthy description of a cricket match taking up an entire chapter of her novel Murder Must Advertise, and even though it's one of my favorite books, I still don't understand the rules of cricket. Even enough to get what the point is or how you score.
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Post by wingerii on Feb 6, 2007 2:37:50 GMT -4
Much the same reason I don't like soccer either. Ninety minutes for 0-0? You've gotta be kidding! I've been playing fullback for, oh, twelve or thirteen years now, and I personally find hard-fought defensive battles to be massively entertaining (their defensive prowess is one of the major reasons that I'm a Liverpool FC fan). But I can definitely understand why some people might not like low-scoring sports like soccer. Basketball, on the other hand... wow, highest-scoring popular sport out there, but is it ever boring!
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Post by Bill Thompson on Feb 6, 2007 4:31:47 GMT -4
Humanity is in such need.
I wish the energy and money that went into sports when elsewhere.
On the other hand, I know I am virtually all alone in thinking like this.
The athletes in state universities get the best dormitories, the best tutors, and even the best perks. They graduate uneducated because their professors are pressured to wave them through because of the funds they provide the alumni the administration. Then they live in the lap of luxury while more deserving scholars and efforts to benefit humanity struggle in obscurity.
To be honest, I never understood sports. It was only an excuse to spend time with family and friends. We could have -- and I would have preferred to have -- sat around and discussed science or history.
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Post by echnaton on Feb 6, 2007 8:23:23 GMT -4
Basketball and football athletes at big state schools and many private universities are essentially paid entertainers like pro atheletes. They are there to raise the profile of the school among potential donors and students. Athletic departments can raise a lot of money through ticket sales and attract general donations to the school. It is big business so the schools allow them a great deal of autonomy, privileges and ethics violations that no other part of the school could get away with.
It is no different that the Olympics which started out to bring amateur atheletes together but has become a high stakes money game for pros.
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Post by gillianren on Feb 6, 2007 8:31:05 GMT -4
In her first year at grad school, my best friend worked as a tutor for athletes at the University of Pittsburgh. You'd be amazed at some of the stories she can tell. Or possibly not.
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