“Because the Moon has 1/6 the Earth’s gravity, lunar football would be [pretty different].”

That’s a good clue to the fact that there is VERY little science in Foot ball. x’D

You play the game “on foot” instead of on horseback.

This does not wash. Otherwise, why are games such as cricket, rounders (baseball), lacrosse, hockey, basketball, netball and so on not also called “football”?

After considering the comments here, it seems to me that the variants of football (AFAICT without looking into the matter in any depth) are those team sports in which every player is permitted to kick the ball.

The fact is that soccer is the only “football” game you play with your feet. Rugby football, aussie rules football, Canadian football aren’t played “with your feet”.

This is true.

In Europe, “football” refers pretty much only to soccer.

Rugby football is almost exclusively called just Rugby.

Aussie rules “football” seems to be a cross between Rugby and a bar-room brawl – does it count as a sport? I don’t know. I know too little of Canadian “football” to make any comment about it.

I think the point worth remembering here is that there are many versions of “football”, but in only one version is the juxtaposition of foot and ball the default mode of play. This is the only one that – in Europe at least – needs no prefix to distinguish it from other forms.

Perhaps, but more points are scored by kicking the ball in an average NFL game than in an average professional soccer game. In last year’s NFL regular season, football players (across both conferences) kicked the ball through the uprights about a thousand times for extra points and nearly the same number of times for field goals. In fact, NFL match-ups average about 14 points scored by kicking a ball in each game. Even setting aside the fact that field goals are worth more than one point, the average NFL team kicks the ball into the goal over 7 times per game. By comparison, a review of the same season of English Premier League soccer shows those teams average just under 1.4 balls kicked into the goal each game.

Hey, I never said football (soccer) was worth watching.

That’s the theory, in practice 1. because you’re standing on the Earth and moving with the Earths rotation, you will have moved a thousand or so km as the ball does one orbit and so escape being whacked in the back of the head. 2. obviously the ball isn’t going to stay in orbit if, at the lowest part of its orbit, it’s traveling through the atmosphere.

I’ve tried to do the maths, but I need some help understanding why a perfectly thrown spheroid (of any -lateness) wouldn’t end up in some kind of orbit.

I guess I got my confusion from thinking that ANY engine firing on an orbital vehicle was only needed as an error-correcting mechanism, but apparently it’s not that simple.

Any help clarifying would be much appreciated!

A bit more involved than that; that’s assuming maximum efficiency where the ball basically hits the ground at x=100 yards.

I do like football, and it’s largely because of the physics. NFL defenders have good 360-degree quickness, so sometimes the ball has to be thrown IN ANTICIPATION of an opening, and deliberately thrown at much higher speed (up to and over 90mph) at a high release point (to prevent deflection) and low angle (for minimum time to target) to give the defense no time to act. It’s classic ballistics. On a long pass, the quarterback has to adjust the speed and angle so it drops right in front of the receiver as the receiver runs down the field at full speed. The equation is more complex. There’s little margin for error (underthrow it and the defender can steal it; overthrow it and you’ve basically wasted a chance) and it takes many repetitions to get that sort of precision. But that a human can lob the football with such location and timing just by touch is amazing.

Receiver routes (the paths guys run to catch passes) themselves involve a lot of physics. One way to spread a defense thin is to have receivers run various distances, but it’s not that simple. If you have a guy just run a few yards forward and then wait for the “long” guy to run 40 yards down the field, he’ll have to stop for several seconds, which is basically several seconds too long for an NFL defender to figure it out and jump in front of him in anticipation of a pass. So you have to do various things to trick the defense and not just stand there waiting for your teammates to do their thing. Inclement weather can make the air unstable and/or ground slippery, making certain routes impractical and thus execution more difficult.

Even tackling involves a lot of physics. The actual tackle is wicked complex (a good one will involve a lot of angular momentum — you rotate your target’s frame around center of gravity, not just try to knock him backwards), but there’s plenty to be appreciated in just pursuit angles. That’s where the defender knows when and how to run. Too passive and the defender can’t accelerate in time to catch a quick ball carrier; too aggressive and the defender can’t adjust in time and basically “runs himself out of the play”.

We are not at the end of the Universe, so we don’t know when half time is. From the little astronomy that this chemist knows, I don’t think we’re even out of the first quarter.

Wait, are you assuming the 2012 doomsdayers are correct?

Don’t judge rugby on that Scotland v England game, it was one of the worst games I’ve seen in years.

By the way, did anyone catch today’s SMBC? Made me smile.

The fact is that soccer is the only “football” game you play with your feet. Rugby football, aussie rules football, Canadian football aren’t played “with your feet”.

That still doesn’t explain why Americans call a game that’s not played with your feet “football”

So “some weird reason” – blame the British.

Football is a game in which ten out of the eleven players on each team are not allowed to use their hands at all. For some weird reason, you USAians call that game soccer, and your version of rugby you call football.