A skewed view of football's history

Retro Blog

American football’s BIG GAME is fast approaching and I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at the sport’s colorful past.

I am tempted to give a breakdown of the teams going to the dance, but the Eneffelle (and their legal pitbulls) have prohibited pretty much everyone not officially licensed from using either the names of the teams going to the “Stupendous Shindig” or the actual name of the bowl itself.

Since I don’t have express written consent from the lords of American football, I won’t be telling you about the team from the England that ain’t old or the other hawkish team from the rainy spot.

I am just glad to even use the word “football”.

I am relatively sure that I can use the term since all of Europe uses it to describe their little kicking game (the one that usually involves more action in the stands than on the field).

I’m way more scared of the Eneffelle’s law thugs than I am of a Eurosport’s legal practitioners though.

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“An atheist is a man who watches a Notre Dame - Southern Methodist University game and doesn’t care who wins.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

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History (or at least History.com) tells us that gridiron football is derived from rugby and soccer. These rudimentary games were modified by early American universities to give them an opportunity to shake alumni down for contributions. This gave universities the further ability to advertise and turn the activity into the dollar-intensive game we all know today.

But let’s jump in the Mclendon Mind/Time Machine (patent pending)1 and go back even further.

GREEK BEGINNINGS

Football was started by early Greeks. In these games, teams representing city-states did battle over which direction hogs would run. While the hog was encouraged to run to a team’s barbecue pit, sometimes the pigskin2 was carried to said cooking area. Of course, the opposing team would try to stop the action. Pileups in these Greek games were much harder to separate than those in today’s game. Eventually one team would win by getting the hog’s tail past the gate3 where the barbecue pit was. The winner would then have a nice pork dinner.

City-states used these games to determine matters not worth all-out war. In a famous game held in 480 BC against Athens, the Spartans lost and were forced to play in the Thermopylae Bowl. The Spartans went on to lose that game by a score of somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 to 10,000. After this defeat, the Spartans moved to Michigan State where they have managed to win the Cotton Bowl a few times.

Roman Additions

Roman times saw new innovations in the game. Romans gave the sport pads (even though they called it armor) and, much more importantly, stadiums. Huge coliseums were erected to play porcuspila (pig ball). While there was no threat of a Roman team leaving the city they represented, the citizens were still expected to bear the huge cost of stadiums4, stadium additions and luxury owner suites. This great tradition is carried on today as taxpayers are expected to fund new stadiums any time an owner threatens to move to a city with a better stadium.

The hog was no longer alive in porcuspila, but the Romans did leave the tail on their version of the ball so that more tail-gates could be accomplished in the course of a game that didn’t end after just one score.

THE FRENCH

CONNECTION

France made its contribution to football in 1783 when the Montgolfier brothers made their historic first manned balloon flight. The first place these hot-airheads went was to cover a football game. The brothers accomplished this by yelling down the results of plays to the poor assembled outside Versailles stadium.

Aerial coverage went on for many years but didn’t really gain widespread acceptance until after Italian Gugleilmo Marconi had invented the radio5 and Joseph R. Teevee had invented the television.

THe German

contribution

Floating football technology was drastically updated in 1874 when a German football fan by the name of Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin gave us the original football-shaped football coverage device. Of course the Gütyar6 company stole the plans and brought us the flying football broadcasting platforms we know today.

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“Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.”

Joe Theismann

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Parties for the “Large Contest” abound across the United States. This year I have signed up for one that boasts all-you-can-eat seafood. Since neither of the teams playing for the Superb Owl this year are teams I like, I can concentrate on the food. Because there will be a lot of folks at this particular shindig it is probably just as well anyway. Watching a game while navigating as crowd with the pile of crab legs you just heaped on your plate is difficult at best—and that doesn’t event take melted butter into account.

So, while I will be paying peripheral attention to the “Magnificent Matchup” I fully intend to dig in and visit with people too.

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“The reason women don’t play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.”

Phyllis Diller

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Usually I digitally record my favorite shows and fast forward through commercials. This time of year brings the only exception to that rule. Since I will be out and not able to really watch TV anyway I am going to record the game. When I arrive home, I fully expect to know the final score. Since this is the case, watching the game portion of the recording is pretty much moot. However, for this event, advertisers spend supertankers of cash along with their very best ideas of the year making commercials that are actually entertaining and even *gasp* worth watching.

So I will be doing the unthinkable at some point and fast forwarding through the program recorded—just to get to the commercials.

Something about that makes me feel unclean.

Oh well, football is a gritty sport anyway.

1. Patent whenever I want. I have a Mind/Time Machine.

2. Yes, that’s where that term comes from.

3. And this is where the term “tailgating” comes from.

4. Along with the rocks they were built from.

5. First broadcast words: “If you are just joining us, the score is Italy 3, Switzerland 7”

6. Today known as “Goodyear”.

 

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