European Football vs American Football

American Football vs European Football Football = foot + ball. How could a word so simple be so ambiguous? One could only imagine the word football to mean usage of the feet to maneuver some sort of ball. And this is true, in one type of “football” - European football. Football played all over Europe involves people literally kicking a ball with their feet into a net. But when referring to football in America, the game has nothing to do with kicking, or even feet. American football is actually a game with primary focus on throwing, catching carrying the ball with the hands. In the world of sports, the biggest culture shock when you cross over the pond is the relative popularity of European football rather then that of American football. Football, the name given to both of these games, would never have been called football if it weren 't for the early days when the sports first originated. American football resulted from several major divergences from the European game of rugby in the late 1800‘s. This American game could just as easily have been called American rugby, but because everyone elsewhere was calling it “football”, the name stuck. Besides, in those days, the game was more more kicking orientated. It was only when the forward pass was legalized and kicks were limited to those taken from behind the line of scrimmage that the feet began to play a less prominent role in the American game. Professional American football began in 1892. In 1920, the American Professional Association was formed, but changed its name to the National Football League (NFL) two years later. On the contrary, European football was born in England in 1863, when eleven private clubs and schools met at London’s Freemason’s Tavern and agreed to come up with rules for a game that would differ from rugby, strictly by not permitting the use of the hands. This game of “football” quickly spread from England to Scotland, Wales and Ireland, all of which had organized football associations

Cited: BBC News. BBC, 06 June 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. Matthew Berry. "100 Facts You Should know." ESPN. ESPN Internet Ventures, 27 July 2012. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. "Premier League." Yahoo! Eurosport UK. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. "Statistics and Facts on the NFL | Statista." Statista RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013. The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, n.d. Web. 26 Mar. 2013.