- H0FFman J
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- Senior Mythic Member
Do you know what kind of hat I'm wearing?
A party hat; you don't get one. An honor will this party be, a party in your honor, for your honor. Some of Tfear's personal guards are going to be there. You'll be introduced shortly.
Prepare to die.
Posted by: kikashi hatake
I don't see how we adapted the two different words to be honest. Anyone have the history behind it?
American football evolved from football, it would have been easier to distinguish between the 2 sports if the names were more differentiable. So the name Soccer was invented.
The real question here, if you don't mind my saying so, is how footballs got to be prolate spheroids ("round but pointy," for you rustics) rather than perfectly spherical. As usual with these pivotal episodes in history, it was an accident. Henry Duffield, who witnessed the second Princeton-Rutgers game in 1869, tells why:
"The ball was not an oval but was supposed to be completely round. It never was, though it was too hard to blow up right. The game was stopped several times that day while the teams called for a little key from the sidelines. They used it to unlock the small nozzle which was tucked into the ball, and then took turns blowing it up. The last man generally got tired and they put it back in play somewhat lopsided."
The odd shape of the ball, eventually enshrined in the rules, was turned to advantage with the introduction of the forward pass in 1906, which was made possible by the fact that you could grip the ball (barely) around the narrow part. Passing got a lot easier in the 1930s when the rules committee ordered the watermelon of previous decades slimmed down by an inch and a half, opening the door for the modern aerial game.
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