A Game Called Football...Which Isn't

Dear Tiffani,
What is the difference between football and soccer? And why is soccer called football in U.K.?
--Sunniya

Why, indeed? They use only their feet in the game, hence the name; otherwise there is no similarity with true football. The differences are legion. One paltry point per score. No real tackling—what? No helmets, no shoulderpads, no tight pants! No hands, so you can’t throw a pass, much less catch one. One similarity is pre-game partying, and incredibly the British (and maybe the rest of the Europeans and other foreigners too) get rip-roaring drunk, more so than we do while tailgating, then they go and beat each other up and knock apart the stadium. I don’t know if there’s something to be learned there.

The sport that they could have named football they call rugby, which is much more like true football. Played by some Brits and Australians, it’s kind of caveman football with no pads and no obvious rules, with lots of mud and toothless smiles we used to associate with hockey.

Soccer is an extremely unpopular sport in the US, with a limited number of parents (the brie and chardonnay set) coaxing their kids into soccer before they know better. Hopefully those kids will grow out of it without cult reprogramming.

One other similarity I found is there are also fantasy soccer leagues. What a snore that must be. (Sorry, fans.)

Soccer is an Olympic sport, what gives there? We should get our football into the Olympics so we could crush the rest of the world, like we used to do in basketball and baseball before they all caught on.