“Football”
True football only refers to feet, never hands
In my many years as an editor, I spent considerable time and effort refining and tweaking what authors created. As an author, I had the advantage of being an editor. There are two sides to dealing with the works of writers. There is that which can be expressed with a variety of words and phrases to say the same thing, and that which simply should to be changed for accuracy and meaning. An example of the latter is offered below.
When it comes to writing this blog I’ve covered a wide range of topics, and I have to take significant time copy editing my own work. As I’ve occasionally noted here, I’m really writing for myself as a process to clarify where I’m at regarding one thing or another. The commonality is that pragmatism underlies everything. Once in a while there’s something that simply offends my editorial standards, and what follows is one of those moments. I refer to “football.”
I have had little interest in sports in general from a very young age. The singular exception is football, which I have watched on television for a few decades. But the term “football,” for me, is very specific. I only watch teams and events from Europe, where football means just that. All feet, no hands.
American football, Australian football or any other variant that allows the use of hands is not, to be absolutely correct, football. The use of the head — while a seeming contradiction to the term football — actually is a rational aspect of true football. The use of hands in “football” is absolutely not allowed, and doing so results in a yellow card to an offending player, with a second infraction resulting in a red card and banishment to the locker room. The only exception regarding hands is the goalkeeper…for obvious reasons.
The term football is used by all 209 countries with football federations. The term “soccer” is only used in two of these countries. One is the United Kingdom, where the term football is in all rules and official references. “Soccer” is a casual alternative reference to football. The other is the United States, which uses the term soccer because most citizens assume “football” refers to American football. The use of hands is, of course, not allowed.
In the world outside of the United States, “football” is the most popular sport by a vast margin. Technology has only increased this popularity as a result of satellites and undersea cables making broadcasting around the globe readily available. Indeed, it has never been easier to watch the best players and teams in the world. Actual football is played in two forty-five-minute halves, with a single fifteen minute half time, and a few minutes at the end of each half for time not played due to injuries or other issues.
With little personal interest in sports, I also note the realities of them as well. American football manages to take well over three hours for a “sixty minute” game. This is both because of how relatively little time is spent in actually playing the game — playing time for an average game is about a dozen minutes, and the vast amount of time given over to advertising during televised games. Of course, true American football fans seem not to be bothered by any of this.
I am well aware that the earth will continue to rotate and football will continue to not mean football in the United States. And I will continue to enjoy actual football from where it was created. I’ve known for decades that reality doesn’t change as a result of wishful thinking. Enjoy or ignore this entry as you see fit. :)
