Union troops playing ball

[unclefrank]

Re: Union troops playing ball

How about the guy who has rolled up the sleaves of his sack coat. Don't see that too often.

[5thMIkeydet]

Re: Union troops playing ball

A lot of people think that we call our sport "football" from the earlier latin word "futbol" that translates as what we call "soccer". In actuality, we call it football because the ball was originally a foot long from point to point (through the axis or middle of the ball).

All of the casual reading I've done on the subject seems to indicate the the term "footabll" originaly was reserved for a collection of sports that were played by two teams attmepting to advance a ball forward into another teams goal, or scoring area. Typically, this was done by kicking the ball, but there were some airborne passing variations. The rules varied form town totown and game to game. Football designated the sports as being played by players who were running on theri own feet. This is opposed to sports that were played by mounted opponents such as forerunners to Polo. Usually just the nobles could afford mounts for sporting. These are the designations used by the English, but it was typical all over europe for centuris. The game became more evolved and refined into what we call "soccer" in America, but retained the term football. Then you have the (in)famous incident at Rugby, where Ellis picks up the ball and runs and is only brought down by being tackled. The new rule variants are known as "Rugby" football. its infact still refered to as this occasionaly. Rules continued to bevaried, and some schools even developed ismiliar games, but named them different types of Football. AS the game was exported, it became more simply just football in America. It continued to have several rule variants for years, until the forming of college conferences and leagues, and the uniting of major pro leagues. Eventually football, reugby, and soccer became seperate entities as they each grew and developed.

I'd never heard about the length reference before. I'm interested in hearing more about that!

[lukegilly13]

Re: Union troops playing ball

It will take me some time to find it...but I will as soon as I can. When I played college football we had to study the origins in a PE class. I still have the book...but it's in storage at my parent's house. I'll try to remember to pick that up. What you are saying sounds very familiar but it always sounded like what we call "soccer" to me with mostly kicking and trying to get the ball itself into the other teams goal (which is technically what you do in modern football but I guess I tend to think of it more as getting yourself across as you must have possession). This will be a good read....sounds like you have a good source....it could be possible that these guys are playing a very early version of football. It is also very likely that they just simply were playing a game that they did not entirely understand the rules too. However, I have to stick with my earlier post that they are playing "kick the sack at the barell because winter camp sucks".

[5thMIkeydet]

Re: Union troops playing ball

Certianly true. I bet there is a plethora of unrecorded games and variants that the guys played. I'd really have to dig out where I was getting that information. I know a chunk of it comes out of a book on the history of pro football, unfortunately it is also at home. I do think that that is published by either the pro football hall of fame, or the NFL. Whether those are really great sources or really poor sources im not so sure :/ The other sources are kind of hodgepodge too...