“Football” is a term used to describe a wide range of field sports played on foot, as opposed to on horseback. It has nothing to do with whether or not you handle the ball with your hands.
I didn’t know handball was played by doing handstands.
But seriously, that’s the first time i hear that argument. 99% of field sports are played on foot, that’s a terrible criteria. Football is obviously called that because you use your feet (primarily) to manipulate the ball. In handball you manipulate the ball using your hands. In basketball, you put the ball in the basket. Name contains words that are directly related to the activity performed. Besides having no ball and not using feet (primarily) American football plays nothing like a football game. It’s definitely a misnomer.
You could argue that American football plays quite a bit like rugby football, Gaelic football, and Aussie Rules football though. Association football is the odd one that decided you literally can’t use your hands oh except the keeper and oh I guess throw-ins? Every other form of football involves handling the ball with your hands, including the older forms from which modern ones descended.
I think you’re looking at it through a modernist lens; a lens through which the role of horses is virtually nonexistent, and you have exposure to a wide range of international sports with different lineages. Basketball and handball are much newer than the concept of “football,” and share no history with it, so it’s no surprise that they didn’t wind up being called “football.”
The claim isn’t that everything played on foot should be called football (that would be a weird criterion, and not useful). The claim is that the group of sports called football are so called because they are played on foot, not because players are only allowed to use their feet.
It’s not a super widespread idea, but Wikipedia discusses it, so it’s at least not just something I made up.
“Football” is a term used to describe a wide range of field sports played on foot, as opposed to on horseback. It has nothing to do with whether or not you handle the ball with your hands.
I didn’t know handball was played by doing handstands.
But seriously, that’s the first time i hear that argument. 99% of field sports are played on foot, that’s a terrible criteria. Football is obviously called that because you use your feet (primarily) to manipulate the ball. In handball you manipulate the ball using your hands. In basketball, you put the ball in the basket. Name contains words that are directly related to the activity performed. Besides having no ball and not using feet (primarily) American football plays nothing like a football game. It’s definitely a misnomer.
You could argue that American football plays quite a bit like rugby football, Gaelic football, and Aussie Rules football though. Association football is the odd one that decided you literally can’t use your hands oh except the keeper and oh I guess throw-ins? Every other form of football involves handling the ball with your hands, including the older forms from which modern ones descended.
I think you’re looking at it through a modernist lens; a lens through which the role of horses is virtually nonexistent, and you have exposure to a wide range of international sports with different lineages. Basketball and handball are much newer than the concept of “football,” and share no history with it, so it’s no surprise that they didn’t wind up being called “football.”
The claim isn’t that everything played on foot should be called football (that would be a weird criterion, and not useful). The claim is that the group of sports called football are so called because they are played on foot, not because players are only allowed to use their feet.
It’s not a super widespread idea, but Wikipedia discusses it, so it’s at least not just something I made up.