What we now call Soccer in the USA, back in the mid 1800’s used to be called Football. All universities played it, and, for all intents and purposes, it was the game of the land. Then one day, someone (can't recall the name) went to Britain and attended a Rugby game. He decided that this brutal game was more attune to the American character than soccer, so he pushed the universities to replace Soccer with Rugby. For whatever reason, the universities—in their wisdom, or lack there off—decided to go with the new game but kept the name of the old game—I can only guess that is was for sentimental reasons, and in this manner American Football was born. (This is a typical American move: not calling things by what they are, but calling them by what makes them sound better, and sometimes worst—depending how they feel about it.)
After a few years of English brutally on the fields of America, people came to the realization that this game, for all its purported brutality, was not brutal enough to cause death. After all, this people are on the verge of destroying most of the 500 nations that populated the woods, plains, and deserts of this continent for 100’s of years, and were just coming out from a savagely fought four year civil war that was everything except civil. Therefore, the game called for a bit more brutality, so the decision was made to change the rules of Rugby, to more closely resemble war. Soon after, the dead bodies started to show up, and things were good for a while. Then, those bleeding hearts "Liberals" in Congress had to go ruin things when the body count got out of hand, and sure enough, they started to have hearings and threatened to shut down the game unless things changed for the better—which in this case it meant: broken bones OK, but no dead bodies. Well, once Congress intervened, the lawyers had to follow.
The problem they confronted was simple: How to turn mayhem into a well organized and choreographed form of war without the corpses, please. Well, it isn’t easy, so they produced a set of rules so voluminous that it puts the Bible and the Talmud to shame. The result was this unnatural sport that contradicts all forms of logic and goes against the most common approach taken by all other team sports: A ball inside the playing area with time left on the clock is available for either team to score. This simple principle was put to death by the “incomplete pass” rule. Wow!
Enters the American businessmen: To hell with logic and permanence of rules. Let’s tailor Football to be a spectators sports by making the scoring ease and the scores BIG—and if the scores are not big, let’s tweak it again, and again. What Soccer counts as one, Football, for all intents and purposes, counts as six, followed by an easy one more point, or a one more difficult that counts as two. Heck 21 to 14 sounds a lot better that 3 to 2—not all the fault can be laid on football here. Rugby also has inflated scores, but a down is only 5 not 6, and the extra point must be taken from the same longitude as the down was scored—this makes it so much more difficult.
And then there is the plethora of other stupid rules. Here is one: The ball no longer has to “Touch the ground” for it to count as a score. Now, as long as the player and ball break the plane: that is an imaginary wall that goes from the touchdown zone to the sky, it is good for a Touchdown; who are we fooling here. It no longer matters if the player is lying on top of 20 other players, if ball and carrier broke the plane it counts—one way to increase scoring. On the other hand, I have seen players flying outside of the field, to avoid being tackle, while their hands with the ball “breaks” the “corner” of the imaginary plane; surprise, he just scored.
On the other hand, if a defender catches the ball inside the box drawn by all four imaginary planes and secures the ball on his arms, but one of his feet does not land inside the box, it is not an interception…say what!
So far we got that the knee counts, the ball counts, and now, feet count. Lawyers!!!
Another little pearl: If a the ball-carrier is brought down by a defense-man, the play is not over until the runner's knee, not his feet this time, touches dirt, so defenders now are going to have to learn wrestling moves, so they make sure that the ball-carrier's knee(s) touches dirt, running the risk that while throwing the runner around they do not get charge with a personal foul—what kind of nonsense is this.
Don't get me started with the idea of a zebra running around with the chain on his hands to measure if the ball has been moved 10 yards. Who can guarantee that where the zebra placed the chain is exactly at the right point that it was placed before, during, and after the measuring. What happened to simple addition? Besides if we were really that interested in accuracy, we could use lasers to do the job.
The same silly ideas are carried into the way Americans run their businesses. They do not make sense either, but I will get into that another day.
