Football: Some Random Thoughts

I wrote a post a while back about football, and as I’ve heard that the Super Bowl is today, I am shuffling this post to the top of the card deck. (Yay analogies!) I’m not really a sporty person. I have no idea what the football is actually supposed to be about. It’s a sport. (???)

I’ve always viewed sports as sort of a mock-war to satisfy the human thirst for violence while being less-violent because we value life. A sports-person would probably disagree. Even I sort of disagree with myself. *Shrugs* It seems as though I’m having trouble forming coherent thoughts today.

I usually just watch the Super Bowl for the commercials and the half-time show. I don’t even know who’s playing. (I don’t know how I missed this. I mean everyone’s talking about the Super Bowl.)

GO SPORTZ!!!

(I like hockey the best, but I don’t really keep up with it.)

So yeah. Football!

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I am very clearly not an athletic person. The only game I can somewhat play almost decently is tennis, but I dislike playing tennis, and the only sports game I watched was hockey. But I only watched hockey twice, and it wasn’t really of my own free will.

So being generally unathletic, I tend to look at sports differently than athletic people, which brings us to our question of the day: Why is a football called a football?

First, let us consider the first part of this compound word: foot.

Even with my limited knowledge of sports, I know that footballs are usually carried or thrown, and things that are carried or thrown by humans are usually carried or thrown by the hands, not the feet.

But we shall let this part of the word slide because footballs are occasionally hit by the foot (aka “kicked”) when a player is attempting to launch the football in a parabolic arc through the tuning fork-shaped apparatus.

So the “foot” part of “football” has been considered acceptable, although it is not the ideal choice of word. The most troublesome part of the word is “ball,” anyway.

According to Dictionary.com, a ball is “a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere.”

A football is clearly not a sphere.

It’s shaped more like a lemon.

Let’s all call it a footlemon!

P.S. That looks like foo-tulle-mon, but it is pronounced foot-le-mon.

Football: Some Random Thoughts

I am very clearly not an athletic person. The only game I can somewhat play almost decently is tennis, but I dislike playing tennis, and the only sports game I watched was hockey. But I only watched hockey twice, and it wasn’t really of my own free will.

So being generally unathletic, I tend to look at sports differently than athletic people, which brings us to our question of the day: Why is a football called a football?

First, let us consider the first part of this compound word: foot.

Even with my limited knowledge of sports, I know that footballs are usually carried or thrown, and things that are carried or thrown by humans are usually carried or thrown by the hands, not the feet.

But we shall let this part of the word slide because footballs are occasionally hit by the foot (aka “kicked”) when a player is attempting to launch the football in a parabolic arc through the tuning fork-shaped apparatus.

So the “foot” part of “football” has been considered acceptable, although it is not the ideal choice of word. The most troublesome part of the word is “ball,” anyway.

According to Dictionary.com, a ball is “a spherical or approximately spherical body or shape; sphere.”

A football is clearly not a sphere.

It’s shaped more like a lemon.

Let’s all call it a footlemon!

P.S. That looks like foo-tulle-mon, but it is pronounced foot-le-mon.

My Irrational Fears #4

This is probably the fourth My Irrational Fears post, but I may have lost count. I’m not sure and I don’t particularly care.

I strongly dislike walking into gymnasiums because I am afraid that I will be hit by falling basketballs.

This fear is not entirely unfounded. I have been hit on the head by falling basketballs about a fourth of the times that I decide to visit various gymnasiums.

This fear has been useful to me before. Once, my friend asked me to come to the gymnasium with her, but I refused because I was afraid that I would be hit by a falling basketball. She was hit in the face by a basketball and broke her tooth.

(Told you so.)

And plus, basketballs are red-orange. This isn’t a reason I’m afraid of them, it’s just a fact that they are red-orange.

To clarify, I am not afraid of basketballs when they stay still, only when someone throws one and I happen to be standing directly in the line of the parabola. Then I am afraid on my teeth’s behalf.