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I have a Brit friend that insists that “American footballers are p***ies!”

Given what the Ravens did a couple of years ago over at the exhibition game or whatever it was, kneeling for our Anthem and standing up for theirs, I now have to agree.

Pro football is dead to me.

American football was born when those Ivy League sissies got tired of getting kicked in the face when already down. This was, and still is, a consequence of the continuous play nature of rugby. The ball is always live (unless it goes out of bounds, which leads to a throw-in as in soccer). If a ball carrier is tackled and can't pass the ball off before a dogpile is formed, rugby then resorts to a scrum, which is more tedious battering.

The American sissies decided that the ball would be dead once the ball carrier was down. Rugby was meant to be played by hooligans or, when at English boarding schools, the future servants of the Empire, many of whom would be soldiers in the back of beyond. Ivy League football was meant to be played by young gentlemen, future doctors, lawyers and investment bankers, who disliked the broken noses and missing teeth that are the stigmata of rugby players.

So: American football broke with rugby by whistling the play dead once the ball carrier hit the ground. This ended continuous play and produced the down and distance system. The rest is history. It took a little experimenting to get the rules right.

Ending continuous play, of course, ultimately yielded the commercial break, an unintended consequence that has now devoured the game. Rugby has held up better, as has soccer, because it is harder for tv to corrupt.

I have a Brit friend that insists that “American footballers are p***ies!”

Over the last few years I’ve taken to watching Premiership Rugby from England. They play a game very like our football in what amounts to soccer uniforms—no padding, helmets etc. It looks to be a very tough game. No commercial breaks, no forward passes, no blocking and whatever happens on the front row of a scrum I don’t want to think about.

Interestingly, the last Olympic gold medal for full-on rugby was won by the US in the 20s. Our team was made up of college football players so the two games still weren’t all that different.