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American Football

Discussion in 'The Members Lounge' started by Boba Nette, Nov 2, 2004.

  1. cheeky_monkey

    cheeky_monkey New Member

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    im sorry but ill think you will find that soccer is a derative of association as in 'association football'

    oxford dictionary " soccer = colloq. Association football"
     
  2. JCalhoun

    JCalhoun New Member

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    The main reason most teams move, and not all teams move, is because there is a lack of fan support where they are currently located. This can be caused by a number of things. Some are that the team just sucks every year, they charge way too much for tickets, the stadium sucks, or in L.A's case, there is too much competition from other interests.

    L.A. has great weather, it's on the ocean so surfing and beach is popular, Hollywood is there, Disney is there, and they have the Dodgers, Lakers, and USC football.

    Fans like teams from different places and sometimes are die hard fans of that team. I'm in Alabama but I like the Pittsburgh Steelers.

    The real following here is college football. Some folks will kill you over that. :bang: :p
     
  3. GP

    GP New Member

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    A lot of Football fans do not come from the town/city they support, e.g. Manchester United, only 5% come from Manchester They have one of the largest fan bases in the world.

    BTW I thought The majority of Americans like American Football so how can your fan bases be small, They don't play many games and there aren't many teams, or have I been misled.
     
  4. corpcasselbury

    corpcasselbury New Member

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    It's complicated, GP. If a team has not been to the postseason in years, not even posting a winning season in a long time, fan support can erode, hurting game attendance and thus, team revenues. Also, there is nowadays a new phenomenon happening to professional team sports: the "We want a new stadium (or arena) built for us, or we'll move the team!" syndrome. Team owners will demand that a new venue for their team to play in be built at the expense of the city they're playing in, replete with large numbers of luxury boxes for rich customers to lease or even purchase. This is how many of the teams make a profit since player salaries are so ridiculously high now. Those salaries are also why tickets to professional games cost so bloody much, too. :angry:
     
  5. GP

    GP New Member

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    I realise the wages are high, I understand the lowest kicker is paid around $250, 000, Jonny wilkinson who is possibly the best kicker in rugby union is paid nothing like that.
     
  6. JCalhoun

    JCalhoun New Member

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    I personally think that it's nobody's business how much an athlete gets paid. No other profession tells the world what it's employees make. That between the boss, the employee, and the IRS.

    Also, if the league minimum is $200,000 a year and some players are making over $2 million a year, how much do you think the team owners are making? The biggest money maker in pro sports isn't from the games. It comes from media rights and team logo merchandise.

    That's one reason college sports is so popular. The players can't be paid (legally) so there isn't all that crap about money and contracts. Plus, most of the players are from the area that the college is located in. Makes for a more intense fan following, especially when rivalries are involved.
     
  7. GP

    GP New Member

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    Personally I think it is as it is the fans who pay their wages. On the amature side this is not an issue as the sponsers pay the sports personalities. The media rights and merchandise only come because of the fans. No sponser will pay money to a team with no fans.
     
  8. Charley

    Charley New Member

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    Soccer is not an American word; it is a British term dating from the late 19th century, the story goes that at University a student was asked if he played Rugger (Rugby) to which he replied "no I play Soccer". The term was later adopted by Americans and Australians to differentiate between their homegrown types of ‘Football’ and the British (later world) game of Association Football. The term soccer was widely used in England right through the first eighty or so years of the 20th century and was pretty much interchangeable with the term Football to describe the national game. In the 80’s though this changed as American Football began to be shown on British television at a time of plummeting attendances for Association Football in Britain. The American game was seen as a possible threat to the homegrown version, as replica American football shirts and other merchandise began to be seen adorning British teenagers and the game began to attract high viewing figures This worried (and annoyed) Association Football fans in Britain who became further irritated at commentators (some of them British) on the British TV coverage of American Football referring to their game as ‘football’ and our game as ‘soccer’, so use of the word soccer came to be viewed as playing into the hands of those trying to take away the name football from our own version, in favour of what looked like a strange version of Rugby from the other side of the Atlantic.
    Interest in American Football declined sharply in Britain in the late 80’s but it was perceived amongst (Association) Football fans here that many large companies (many of them American) wanting to be able to use the same packaging and advertising for products such as video games worldwide wanted to be able to use the same terms worldwide, as the companies were American they were used to referring to American Football as ‘Football’ and Association Football as ‘Soccer’ and seemed to be trying to use this terminology in Britain as well as the US, this approach provoked a considerable backlash amongst British Football fans during a period (the 90’s) of a massive revival for British Football to the point that these days hardly any British Football fans will ever use the term Soccer which they have come to despise, and regard (incorrectly as it happens) as foreign.
     
  9. Roel

    Roel New Member

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    :eek:

    The history of terminology... Thanks for the clarification, Charlie, this really helped putting this discussion in focus.

    In the Netherlands we use the Dutch word "voetbal" to indicate association football or soccer, and "football" or "American football" to indicate American Football. Both words mean the same but one is Dutch and the other English. Helps keep things apart. ;)
     
  10. cheeky_monkey

    cheeky_monkey New Member

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    Your quite right that soccer is an english word hence i quoted the oxford english dictionary.

    however the rest of your statement seems to be a little wide of the mark.
    ive played football all my life and now coach football, my uncle was a professional footballer in the late 60s and 70s.
    when i was growing up in the early 70s no one referred to football as soccer not my parents uncles or grandparents, so saying soccer was commonly used in the 1st 80 years of the 20th century isnt so?
    as a teenager in the 80s i dont remeber anyone ever wearin amercian football replica shirts, and amercian football was only shown on channel 4 for an hour on a sunday night for about 3months a year ( so hardly mainstream!)
    ill think youll find soccer became more widely used was when the american soccer leagues exploded in the late 1970s more than anythin to do with american football tryin to establish a fan base in england. dont forget many engliash and european footballers went to pl;ay in amercia at that time.

    i dont think football has ever been threatend in terms of popularity by american football, but i think the opposite is true that football (soccer) is slowly gaining a foothold in america and canada at the expense of grid iron.
     
  11. Charley

    Charley New Member

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    I dunno, I remember a fair few NFL shirts and NFL car stickers etc around in the mid 80's, and Channel 4's NFL coverage was pulling in almost as many viewers as Match of the Day for a while (only a year or so and MoTD was on late at night). I don't think anybody thought Gridiron would overtake Football in Britain but it was a bit worrying to see how it was growing in those days, even more worrying were the efforts to tell us that we needed American style razzamataz in Football (It works in America but not over here) and talk of four quarters, time out etc being brought in.
    I do remember the term soccer being used a lot here though when I was growing up in the 70's, and it certainly wasn't the almost dirty word it is now, and if you look at football books or newspaper reports from the 30's, 50's, 60's Soccer is a term used a great deal.
    Your quite right about football seeming to be making inroads in North America and I wonder how fans of native sports over there feel about it.
     
  12. rbagen

    rbagen New Member

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    Dont forget the good old dutch oven
     
  13. Ricky

    Ricky Well-Known Member

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    I grew up in the 80s. I do remembver a bit of an interest in American Football, but it was a fad and faded away (although there are still American Football teams playing in leagues around the country).
    I have always known it as 'football', and never as soccer until I heard Americans discussing 'football' and somebody had to explain it to me!
    Even in P.E at school it was 'football' not 'soccer'... ;)
     
  14. Gatsby phpbb3

    Gatsby phpbb3 New Member

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    Well in Singapore European football seems to be about the only sport that actually gets people talking. There are plenty of supporters for the more prominent English clubs from my class (The population of Chelsea supporters is undergoing a rapid growth rate), although we are nowhere as fanatical as the English themselves.

    What might interest you is that fact that our local league (Our standard of football is vastly inferior) is mostly ignored.
     
  15. cheeky_monkey

    cheeky_monkey New Member

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    when i got married in 1996 we spent aprt of our honeymoon in singapore(stayed at the concorde hotel). The hotel staff knew i was english and ask if i played football etc, when i said i did they used to ask me for tips and scores on upcomming premiership games for betting purposes.

    it got 2 a point where i was getting list of games put under my door each day by various ppl with money attached if i would fill out the results and goalscorers etc.

    anyway the upshot was i got a free suit (which i still have) made for me for predicting derby co to beat blackburn 2-0. fortunately i had left b4 the saturday games came round as i didnt do 2 well!!
     
  16. Charley

    Charley New Member

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    Wasn't it a far eastern gambling syndicate that was behind sabotaging the floodlights at a couple of Premiership games a few years ago?
     
  17. cheeky_monkey

    cheeky_monkey New Member

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    thats right a game was abandoned with about 10 mins to go and the result stood thus big payouts on the correct score!
     
  18. JCalhoun

    JCalhoun New Member

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    At least the NFL doesn't have to abandon games. :p
     
  19. Charley

    Charley New Member

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    Thats cos nobody cares enough to bet on them ;)
     
  20. JCalhoun

    JCalhoun New Member

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    Not true. There is A LOT of money bet on football games, both college and pro. In fact, many newspapers publish Vegas spreads.
     

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