2006/06/10

Football and tackleball

To honor the beginning of World Cup competition, I hereby issue this call to all Americans:

In recognition of the fact that America is not the center of the world and should, from time to time, accept cultural imports,

In recognition of the fact that so-called American football has almost nothing to do with the feet (except when you fail to score a touchdown or when you kick off),

In recognition of the fact that the world's most popular sport does actually have a lot to do with the feet,

And in recognition of the fact that the rest of the world (apparently with the exception of Australia) is unified in what they mean when they say "football",

I call upon all Americans to call "soccer" by its internationally recognized name: football. And to call "American football" by a far more fitting name: tackleball.

6 comments:

Chris said...

agreed. henceforth it shall be known as "tackleball" in these fair lands.

too bad you missed mischa's sweet world cup brunch on saturday (being in china and all.) it was real fun, the only bad part was iran getting trounced.

still the announcers had a lot of fun facts like: iranians didn't like soccer until their team beat the US in... well, sometime in the seventies. that resulted in dancing and music in the streets and women removing their head scarves "which is UNheard of!" consider the source (abc sports.)

also ahmadinejad "threatened" to attend the game, but i guess he didn't follow through with that.

Anonymous said...

That dastardly dictator! First he wants global nuclear annihilation, then he threatens to attend a sporting event! This would never happen if Iranians were free.

Walker said...

whatever, i already knew all about iran and football, the new york times wrote about it last week. it seems that football is helping to liberate iran from the mullahs, who enforce a "culture of mourning".

in beijing the games are on at night and everyone gets together and drinks, and when something exciting happens you can hear huge collective roars even from my tenth floor room with the windows closed.

Anonymous said...

collective roars. sounds peaceful to me.

meshugah said...

well, in the interest of fact-checking, iran's win over the US was in 1998. which makes the ABC loser's statement that iranis just discovered the game even more ludicrous. the odds of a rematch aren't great, sadly. iran doesn't qualify very often, and neither would the US, except by virtue of a painfully weak qualifying region. i mean, canada? c'mon. they play tackleball up there! also not particularly well.

Anonymous said...

Tackleball is ACTUALLY a game where the person with the ball is tackled indiscriminately with the objective to get the ball.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tackleball