Americans love football and wealth redistribution!

patbb

ThailandTom

I love you patbb, also why is it called football when most of the action is hand related? Seems kind of irrational to me.

andyrobyn

NFL is watched here in Australia too ( and US baseball too, I must add ). I still do not really fully understand the game ( and it is not really football - Aussie rules is the real footy !!) but actually have always liked the aspect of the series the commentator makes point of. I was hoping Greenbay would make it to the Superbowl, for the reason that he highlights ... looked like they may do it for awhile too.

Jeffrey

Because it developed from Rugby Football.

American football is called football because of its origin. It, like soccer, can be traced back to rugby football where you use your feet to kick a ball at a goal or successfully carry a ball over a goal line. Over time, some rules were changed such as the concept of line of scrimmage and of four downs and a certain distance required to get more downs and, of course, the forward pass. In earlier times, football had virtually no rules. If you wish, you can trace its ancestry back to the 1600's.

http://askville.amazon.com/American-Football-called-FOOTball/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=6059329

Jeffrey

Here's the video of my favorite (college) player that I watch to get juiced up:

person

Thanks @pattb

60 minutes just did a piece on the NFL. Maher summed it up well but if you want more detail you can watch the 14 minute piece.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7396840n&tag=re1.channel

Telly03

The NFL may not be the perfect Socialist model when you consider that Mathew Stafford earned $9,000,000 last year while team mate Matt Clap only earned $330,000, and 13 players from the team earned less than $500,000.

DaltheJigsaw

Yea, that is America for you! lol.

person

The NFL may not be the perfect Socialist model when you consider that Mathew Stafford earned $9,000,000 last year while team mate Matt Clap only earned $330,000, and 13 players from the team earned less than $500,000.

IMO pure socialism isn't an effective system. What Maher is really talking about is fairness and opportunity. By all teams having the same opportunity it makes the whole NFL better. He uses the term socialism because any attempt at wealth redistribution gets labeled that way.

So an NFL where all players make the same would be more like pure socialism or maybe communism. In actuality its more of a mixed economic system. But, certainly more 'socialistic' than American capitalism today.

Jason

The NFL may not be the perfect Socialist model when you consider that Mathew Stafford earned $9,000,000 last year while team mate Matt Clap only earned $330,000, and 13 players from the team earned less than $500,000.

True. The Green Bay Packers, however, are interesting in that they're the only community owned, nonprofit major league sports team in the US, making them the most socialist off all professional US sports teams. Have been since 1923.