Something Interesting
It’s been said before that there are no unsettled, friendly debates anymore. It’s no longer possible to sit next to a friend at a bar, or next to a loved one on a sofa, and speculate about some fact or event. You can’t even question the age or origin of some random celebrity without somebody immediately pulling out a cellphone and reaching a conclusion. These days interesting chats end quickly and succinctly.
It is in this context that I recently delved into the origins of the word “football.” Spurred on by a random internet comment, I sought to prove that it wasn’t so remarkable that American football should be called that, despite how little kicking is involved in the sport. Some part of my brain understood that football the game was derived from rugby, not soccer, so it wasn’t some New World bastard to be scorned by European fútbol purists. But as it turns out, I didn’t have the full picture.
As with most things in history, there isn’t a carved-in-stone record of how the name of football came about. But what I found interesting was the dominant theory that the name wasn’t assigned because kicking was involved, but because the game was played primarily on foot, as opposed to on horseback. Picturing the horseback sports of polo, steeplechase, or even jousting, one immediately senses that football, by contrast, may have been a sport that anybody could play in a pinch, regardless of whether or not you had a spare horse to risk in an athletic competition.
Several on-foot sports have emerged since the first time the word “football” was ever assigned to a game. American football in particular evolved from the sport of rugby football, now simply known as rugby. In the meantime, the version of football that Americans call soccer earned its name through the application of Oxford slang: the Football Association formed in 1875 gave rise to “association football,” which was then nicknamed “assoccer,” “socca,” and “socker.” In both branches of this evolutionary tree, the prevalence of kicking had no impact on the name chosen for the sport.
Though the English university students who formalized the rules of rugby and soccer were not working class lads, neither were they likely to gather on the quad for a pickup game of polo. So with this in mind, I think it’s worth remembering that the lingering “foot” that we find in the names of non-kicking sports is not the sign of that a game was misnamed by fools, but a reminder that sports are not the exclusive domain of wealthy nobility. That games can be played by any regular person with a ball and a group of friends.
Something Beautiful
Following the recent news that MTV was discontinuing all of their music video channels, I thought to focus my attention on one of my favorite videos of all time, “I’m Afraid of Americans,” by David Bowie. The clip co-stars Trent Reznor as the prototypical scary American, and features several vignettes of paranoid delusion. It’s simply flawless.
The video was directed by Nick Goffey and Dominic Hawley, working under the moniker Dom & Nic.
Something I Worked On
This week I’ve been working on redoing my mini-comic “Her Life’s Work,” which will be posted on my website and my fiction Substack. Though I hate to go backwards on creative projects, I felt it was necessary to revise and refine my comic style before taking on bigger projects.
I’m also still writing my short story “Dark Matter,” which used to be titled “Broken Finger Road.” I hope to post it soon.