Originally Posted by Kaltagesta
I know why. It's because originally, in England, there were two games, both called Football, which are known today as Rubgy and Football, in England. Now, it wasn't until the 1700's, approx, when schools like Oxford and Cambridge started making rules about all the games and giving each other matches, like how we know them today, as opposed to mass, 400-aside mass kickabouts with pig spleens. However, by this time, we had already colonised parts of America, and so over there, there were still some who called Football Football, and some who called Rugby Football.
Now as you know, the North of England tend to play Rugby more [in fact, there are still small towns up north that call rubgy 'football'] and generally speaking, at the time there were more working class up north than down south, them tending to be more of the businessmen type people. So obviously, when they colonised the America's, all the businessmen were terribly business organising stuff and shooting Indians to play Football, so the only ones who played much sport were the northerners who played 'Football' [rugby]. As a result, the community that followed, made up of Englishment, Irishman and other Europeans, played a form of Rugby that got a bit changed over time, yet still called it Football, thus the strong correlations between Rugby and American Football.
By the way, I wrote this out, i didn't copy it from a site. And THAT's why you guys call Gridiron Football, when you hardly use your feet - because in rugby you DO use your feet a fair bit, especially back then when it was more like Aussie Rules [a similar thing happening there, when we colonised Australasia] and it slowly got changed over time to use the feet less and less.
So, there's your lesson of the day.
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