A Short Note on Football

You may be asking yourself, what's the wandering with hope girl doing talking about football?! Well, opening the TuneIn radio webpage today, the first thing that popped up was the NFL. "Touchdoooown," the screen read. I wish I had a way to get rid of that screen and just open up to my radio stations. I have no love for American football.

Yes, I said American football. Because the real football, called "soccer" in the United States, should be called football. Every other nation in the world calls it football. You use your feet ninety percent of the time, and no hands allowed. In American football, you only use your feet to touch the ball maybe twenty percent of the time. Or less. Most of the time, the ball is in someone's hands or in the air, having been thrown. With hands. Why isn't the sport called handball? Or throwball? I call it knuckle-head-ball.

Why are we the only people who call football, soccer and American football, football? Well I suppose it's the same reason we're the only nation that doesn't use the metric system. We're the oddballs of the world, and just because we're a superpower, we proudly display and hold onto our "individualism" and uniqueness. I think it's quite a bit of stubbornness, too. 

I, for one, will call soccer, football, and football, American football. Time to buck one trend and fall into another. For what it's worth, falling in with the rest of the world isn't such a bad thing. After all, football (soccer) is the beautiful game. Beloved by the whole world. American football is ugly, brutal and causes brain damage to the players. In my hometown, children have died during football practice. I have never heard of anyone dying during soccer practice. Yes, injuries do occur in football (soccer) but they are relatively mild compared to the heavy beating one's body- and head- takes in American football.

There has been much controversy over Colin Kaepernick's decision to take a knee during the flag salute (or was it the national anthem?). I wholeheartedly support this move, as it is an elegant and respectful form of protest, no marching or yelling required, and I also wouldn't mind if this controversy would just take the whole NFL down with it. I know time has passed since then, and it looks like the NFL is here to stay. One can always dream.