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Football? Really? Football?

Soccer is in the news a lot lately. There apparently is something called a 'World Cup' associated with it and all of the rest of the earth’s nations want this cup. The cup is awarded to the country that has demonstrated that they are the best at getting a ball into a net without the use of their hands and arms. (I swear I’m not making this up!)

It sort of reminds me of Irish step dancing that way, or, from my native South, clogging. Legs and feet do all the work while arms and hands just sort of help balance. I don’t know whether soccer stadiums are allowed to play Riverdance music over the loud speakers while games are in progress, but it seems to me it would enhance the festivities quiet a bit. Or couldn’t they pipe in “Dueling Banjos” from the movie Deliverance?

Ok. Maybe there’s a little too much violence in Deliverance to make that association. From what I’ve seen about the passions of soccer fans, we do not need to be fanning those flames.

And speaking as an American, how do they get away with calling soccer “football?” No, I don’t know who first laid claim to that word, but as an American, I ever so unshakably suspect it was America. I mean, could some other country (it would probably be France) just come up with a strange activity like, say, trying to see who can best weave a basket in the shape of a ball using only their mouths and toes and call it “basketball???”

No. They could not.

And if they did we would be perfectly justified in sending in armed drones that would bomb them back to the Stone Age.

Yet, all the rest of the world calls soccer by our beloved and adored term, “football.”

Where are the drones, Mr. President? Where are the drones?

Richard Crowson is not only a editorial commentator for KMUW. He's also a cartoonist, an artist and a banjo player.