In Honor of the Upcoming World Cup

The cheese will be posting a number of football related items. Also, the cable gets installed tomorrow at casa de cheese, so anyone who wants to watch any or all the games from Germany are welcome to come by...





It's Called Football Because You Kick a Ball With Your Foot

Why don't Americans like football, or as we stupidly call it here, soccer? There are three reasons for this, I believe, that are inherent to those of us born in the United States.

1. We like to watch people hurting each other, or getting hurt.
As an example, let's look at the two most popular sports in the US, American Football, or as the cheese likes to call it Tackleball, and Nascar. There is, on a second by second basis, more chance of seeing injury in a Tackleball game than nearly any other sport. Surely, critics can point to Hockey as being equally violent, and while checking is an important part of the game, it is not REQUIRED, as a tackle is, in every play. Also, Hockey has made numerous rules revisions over the last 15 or so years curbing how violent one can get on the ice, most recently in how defenders can challenge forwards when on fast breaks. But let's get back to the Tackleball. It is a sport designed, essentially, around causing injury. Certainly, there is a lot of "teamwork" and skill involved, but ask yourself this; if the NFL went from tackling to "flag football" next year would anyone watch? Probably not. Also, the name is misleading. For a sport calling itself "football" there is a serious lack of foot to ball action, unlike in proper football, where the players must kick the ball with their feet. Now we will turn to the second most popular sport in the land, Nascar. Not exactly the most thrilling of motor sports, since the races consist of 500 or so miles of left hand turns, but they often give the spectator the chance to see dozens of cars (driving at ridiculous speeds) suddenly entangle themselves in crashes of near epic proportions. Let's take nothing away from the drivers, because there is a whole lot of skill involved, but the cheese believes that, deep down, every Nascar fan will admit that part of the fascination is in waiting for the next inevitable crash. Proper football isn't ballet dancing (and broken ankles/feet/legs certainly abound) but it isn't inherently about hurting people, or watching people get hurt. It's called, in most of the world, the "beautiful game" because there is a grace and flow (even when the Germans play) present in the game that often alludes our simple, red-neck, Budweiser addled minds.


2. We like to prematurely ejaculate.
With the exception of baseball, which was invented in the mid 1800's, most American sports emphasize scoring points, lots of points, early, often, and in a thoroughly masculine way. Most tackleball games seem to end in at least one team amassing 20-40 points. Yes, touchdowns are worth 6 points, so this amounts to 3-7 TD's (or twice as many field goals). 3-7 isn't really "a lot" but it sounds more impressive to say 40 than it does to say 6. Not coincidently, a lot of hockey games end with 3-7 goals scored by either team. Hockey doesn't go in for this "one score equals 6 points" but, then again, it is mostly played by Canadians, who are by nature less ostentatious than Americans. Then we come to the sport with the largest scoring potential, basketball. In last night's Western Conference game 5 both teams scored over 100 points, and Dirk Nowitzki scored 50. Even in baseball, traditionally considered "boring" by other sport fanatics, the last 20 years has seen an explosion of offensive production. Yes, this came with the introduction of steroids, but even this year, under a fairly tough testing program, Albert Pujols is on pace to hit 78 home runs and 203! RBI's, which would both be new single season totals. Everywhere you turn in American sports one sees that scoring is all important. But what about proper football? Well, it's a cliché that some of the greatest games ever played ended in a 0-0 draw. The cheese has witnessed the odd game, here or there, where a team scores 5, 6, or 7 goals, but it's rare…really rare. Much more likely is a game ending 1-0, or 2-1, or god forbid 1-1 (that's another thing Americans can't seem to stand, ties). But in proper football the scoreline is not the most important thing, necessarily, at least not from the fan's perspective. Here, all we care about is the final score, who won, who lost. And certainly, football fans are passionate (even crazily fanatical) about their teams' winning and losing. But even the most diehard football fan will admit to the quality of a game, that is the enjoyment inherent in how the game is played, while watching his team lose. And in this way, scoring a goal becomes so important. Since the 94 World Cup (when the US hosted for the first time and was introduced to Jorge Cantor's famous GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL!) Americans have poked fun at the way players/fans/announcers all celebrate a goal in the football world. But in that world, scoring a goal is so special that nothing else would adequately display the emotion involved. American's are a gluttonous lot, and we routinely over-feast on the scorelines of our favorite sports.

3. We can't stand to like stuff that people in other countries like.
American's just can't bring themselves to admit that other people can come up with something good. Even when we do take to something from another country, we have to change the name to make it more US friendly; case it point, American Idol was first a show in England known as Pop Idol. American's invented tackleball, baseball, and basketball. The English invented proper football. There's in way in hell we will ever accept it as a sport equal to those we invented.