How Important Is Football?

[Packy]

I don't know--but maybe this thread should be under the "Spirituality and Religion" zone on this board. I would like to hear your stories about Football Fundamentalists, and instances of their fanaticism.

[Miss Cellane]

I've always considered professional and some college sports (i.e. football, basketball and hockey, but not swimming and track) in general, and football in particular, to be the equivalent of the "circus" in the old Roman "bread and circus" method of keeping the commoners fed and and distracted and happy and out of the way. Football especially seems to be a way of vicariously working out aggression.

[CathyA]

I think it is somehow a primitive expression of "fighting the enemy". I wonder if any countries who have constant wars (civil and other) have absolutely no interest in games like football, since they are actually living out that aggression. It's just a "civilized" gladiator games.
Our family has never had much of an interest in it.........although both my children were in the marching band that played for their school games.....which was required of the band.
I think some people need to be part of a group more than others. Some of our relatives are talking constantly about football. Our immediate family has absolutely no interest.

[CathyA]

Haha......Miss Cellane.........we were typing at the same time. We're thinking along the same lines.

[Simpler at Fifty]

The thing that bothers me about football is that men are paid millions of dollars to throw and catch a ball yet when the CEO of a company makes half that much people think it is a bad thing.

[Tradd]

Football is very low on my list. Hockey is at the top. GO BLACKHAWKS!

[IshbelRobertson]

Anyway, it's not Football, it's American football! Real football is referred to as soccer in the USA.

[catherine]

I am not into spectator sports at all, EXCEPT for football and golf, and specifically college football and more specifically Rutgers football. Conceptually, I hate the idea of it--it's dangerous, it's combative, it's competitive in a very brutish way. But because I know a little bit about the rules of the game from attending my EVERY high school football game, it's fun to follow, and it's fun to root for a favorite team (two of my sons graduated from Rutgers)--as Jane suggests, it probably appeals to some ancestral tribal thing in the amygdala of my brain.

AND, lets not forget that Rutgers/New Brunswick is the home of college football--first collegiate football game was played in New Brunswick vs. Princeton in 1879. Rutgers won (sorry, bae).

Finally, football is SO much more fun to watch than baseball. Baseball is SO boring.

ETA: In looking up the exact year of that first football game, I actually found this, from a Princeton publication. What I also found interesting in this article is that American football actually predates soccer. (Waiting for the pushback on that from you, Ishbel, but that's what it says)

First Intercollegiate Football Game
Until 1800 outdoor exercise for Princeton students usually took the form of walking, horseback riding, canoeing down the Millstone River, and hunting small game in the hills and fields nearby. By 1857, cricket, baseball, and football arose as popular sports on campus.

The first American intercollegiate football game was held between Princeton and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. on November 6, 1869. The game played was a form of association football, forerunner of later-day soccer. The 25 players from each college played in their street clothes, and the several hundred spectators stood around on the side or sat on a wooden fence. The Rutgers Targum reported that Princeton's first goal was made "by a well directed kick, from a gentleman whose name we don't know, but who did the best kicking on the Princeton side." The Targum is equally silent about the identity of the first wrong-way player in American football history, a Rutgers man "who, in his ardor, forgot which way he was kicking," and scored for Princeton instead of Rutgers.

Rutgers ended up winning the game 6 to 4. A week later, however, Princeton won the return match on its grounds, 8 to 0.

(Adapted from A Princeton Companion.)

[bae]

AND, lets not forget that Rutgers/New Brunswick is the home of college football--first collegiate football game was played in New Brunswick vs. Princeton in 1879. Rutgers won (sorry, bae).

"That's all right, That's OK, You'll all work for us some day!"

[JaneV2.0]

The thing that bothers me about football is that men are paid millions of dollars to throw and catch a ball yet when the CEO of a company makes half that much people think it is a bad thing.

You could say the same thing about anyone successful in show business. Most football players have relatively short careers due to injuries, aging out, and general attrition, and risk permanent brain damage and orthopedic consequences to play. And they entertain millions. That may be part of it.

To quote an old co-worker of mine "I am neither an athlete nor an athletic supporter," so it's of no consequence to me anyway.