::But the vast majority of native English speakers are Americans. [[File:English_dialects1997_modified.svg|right|thumb|225px|native English speakers by country]][[User:Rreagan007|Rreagan007]] ([[User talk:Rreagan007|talk]]) 15:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
::But the vast majority of native English speakers are Americans. [[File:English_dialects1997_modified.svg|right|thumb|225px|native English speakers by country]][[User:Rreagan007|Rreagan007]] ([[User talk:Rreagan007|talk]]) 15:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
:::But hundreds of thousands of people play "association football" (common name: football) and only a few thousand play "American football" (at a professional level). And "native speakers" is a meaningless statistic. Our own article says that up to 1.8 billion people can speak English, of whom around fifteen percent are American. And American football is played where else outside the Americas? Hmmm.... [[User:The Rambling Man|The Rambling Man]] ([[User talk:The Rambling Man|talk]]) 15:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
:::But hundreds of thousands of people play "association football" (common name: football) and only a few thousand play "American football" (at a professional level). And "native speakers" is a meaningless statistic. Our own article says that up to 1.8 billion people can speak English, of whom around fifteen percent are American. And American football is played where else outside the Americas? Hmmm.... [[User:The Rambling Man|The Rambling Man]] ([[User talk:The Rambling Man|talk]]) 15:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
This article should be moved to soccer.
== Requested move ==
== Requested move ==
Revision as of 15:58, 30 September 2011
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Football article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Sports, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of sport-related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.SportsWikipedia:WikiProject SportsTemplate:WikiProject Sportssports articles
Assess : newly added and existing articles, maybe nominate some good B-class articles for GA; independently assess some as A-class, regardless of GA status.
Cleanup : * Sport governing body (this should-be-major article is in a shameful state) * Field hockey (History section needs sources and accurate information - very vague at the moment.) * Standardize Category:American college sports infobox templates to use same font size and spacing. * Sport in the United Kingdom - the Popularity section is incorrect and unsourced. Reliable data is required.
* Fix project template and/or "to do list" Current version causes tables of content to be hidden unless/until reader chooses "show."
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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Football article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Why would it be American football? A sport that's only really played in the USA and Canada and elsewhere pretty rare except for amateur matches. For the rest of the world football refers to Association football (soccer to the Americans) except for a few countries where both rugby and association football may be known under that name. This is English language Wikipedia not American Wikipedia.--ЗAНИAtalkWB talk] 14:25, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
But hundreds of thousands of people play "association football" (common name: football) and only a few thousand play "American football" (at a professional level). And "native speakers" is a meaningless statistic. Our own article says that up to 1.8 billion people can speak English, of whom around fifteen percent are American. And American football is played where else outside the Americas? Hmmm.... The Rambling Man (talk) 15:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This article should be moved to soccer.
Requested move
The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
The result of the move request was: Overwhelming consensus to not move. I, as the nom, am rescinding/closing this proposal due to unanimous opposition and because I have been convinced this article is properly titled in accordance with WP:CONCEPTDAB. Born2cycle (talk) 17:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
– The only conceivable primary topic candidates for "football" are Association football and American football, but neither one of those qualifies because the other one is too commonly referred to as "football" as well. In any case, no way is this broad and obscure (if not invented by Wikipedians) usage the primary topic, and it should definitely not be treated as if it is primary. WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is clear about what to do in this case: "If there is no primary topic, the ambiguous term should be the title of a disambiguation page". Hence this request. Born2cycle (talk) 23:31, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This page explains the distinction between various sports all called football quite well. I see no reason to change the status quo here. This is a treatment which isn't quite suited for a disambiguation page, and this page is informative and well written with regards to explaining the similarities and differences between all of the various sports all called "football". I don't see where the proposed move improves Wikipedia in any way, except shuttling good information off to an obscure, unlikely to be linked page and replacing this good information with a DAB. No, this isn't a good idea. --Jayron3223:36, 3 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not specifically, excepting that IAR is the only rule I live by at Wikipedia. In this case, this is a decent article under a good title. I see no reason to change the status quo. You invoked IAR specifically, not me. I was invoking "This is what I believe to be the best situation". Which is also probably the best reason to support or oppose anything at Wikipedia. --Jayron3201:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comment. Why do you need to "invoke" IAR? It's a fundamental pillar of Wikipedia. It's really quite amusing that you're suggesting that an invitation to ignore all rules if it improves Wikipedia is a rule that needs to be invoked. There's a splendid irony there that is perhaps lost on Wikipedia's sadly growing band of resident rulesmongers! -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:50, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I presume that we all try to follow consensus about how we decide titles in WP when reasonably possible, yes? And consensus is supposed to be reflected reasonably well in our rules, and we use IAR only when the rules fail and we can improve WP by ignoring those rules. Are we still okay? If that's the case here, I'd like to know, because maybe the rules can and should be updated to reflect this type of situation in general terms, which does appear to have consensus support. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:36, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This article seems to be a clear example of the broad-concept article described by WP:CONCEPTDAB and, as Jayron32 notes, it does the job reasonably well. Anyone looking for Association football or American football will find those articles linked in the opening paragraph. If this is deemed insufficient, perhaps they could be added to the hatnote. But the proposed page moves would not, it seems to me, bring any clarity to an admittedly difficult situation.--ShelfSkewedTalk04:29, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose For starters, Football (broad) is a crap title. I'm also not entirely sure why this concept is described as either made up or obscure? For comparison, the online version of the academic encyclopedia britannica (ie the version I can quickly access!) contains an article with the title 'Football' which opens with the following text: "Football, any number of related games, all of which are characterized by two persons or teams attempting to kick, carry, throw or otherwise propel a ball towards an opponent's goal...". Furthermore, I think that if we're invoking rules all over the place, then we should remember WP:TITLECHANGES. I see no advantage in making this move. --Pretty Green (talk) 09:02, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose; I'll invoke IAR here. While it is likely that readers are searching for one specific football code or another (without any single code being dominant), putting the overview article at this title is an elegant alternative to showing the disambiguation page first. WP:AT cannot possibly account for every possible case we might encounter in article naming, and at some point, common sense must prevail even if there isn't a rule for it in a policy document. PowersT17:28, 4 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
Is rugby ever called "football"?
Re the sentence "The word football applies to whichever form of football is the most popular in the regional context in which the word appears, including ... rugby league, rugby union and other related games", certainly as a British person I'm not aware that rugby is ever called "football". Where is rugby called football? This seems incorrect to me.Gymnophoria (talk) 19:36, 8 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Rugby is additionally called "football" in some places where it's popular. It's not called that in exclusion to "rugby", "rugby league", "rugby union", etc., but it is used. Take for example, this discussion of "Finals football" (ie "finals rugby league") from Sydney. this and this from Australia and New Zealand, respectively, contain multiple references to rugby union as "football".--Cúchullaint/c15:32, 7 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I can state for a fact that the famous Garryowen rugby club (note title of Wikipedia article, also!) in Ireland has a big sign on the front entitled "Garryowen Football Club", Established 1884. There was a radio programme, presented by Charlie Bird, about the club and its history on RTÉ Radio 1 yesterday morning. Here's the club's website where you can see "Garryowen Football Club" very clearly: http://garryowenrugby.com/. Soccer monopolising the word "football" is a very recent phenomenon so I'm glad this article has a much more inclusive and accurate understanding of the word 'football'. Where I'm from in Ireland "football" always means Gaelic Football and soccer is just soccer and rugby is just rugby. 109.76.212.114 (talk) 12:46, 25 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Gridiron football?
Why is this being used as the term for the codes of football played primarily in the USA and Canada? I understand there is some difficulty in finding a term as it's only really known as "football" where it's played; however, gridiron, at least in the part of the world where it's actually played is far more often used to merely refer to the field the game is played on or as a descriptor (e.g. "gridiron greats"). Rarely is the term ever used alone.
It seems that North American/American football would be a better term. The regional moniker is both fitting (the two countries wherein it is primarily played make up the majority of North America) and used to specify other codes (Australian Rules Football, Gaelic Football).
I do understand that it is referred to as "gridiron" by the Australians and New Zealanders, but I'm not entirely sure that this would be a proper "world view" term for the sport... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.178.21 (talk) 02:09, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You know, I think I actually would. While I wholly admit to having only what could be generously described as limited discussions with Europeans concerning sport (and admit to this being anecdotal as well), in each case, when the topic of football came up, it was described as some variation of "American football" and clearly understood. That phrasing even seems to be clear to those in the Southern Hemisphere where "gridiron" is the preferred, again, from my experiences.
It just seems an overly non-intuitive manner of referring to the sport and an almost ham-fisted over-correction in the name of "world view" that seems to take that to mean avoiding reference to "America", even when it would be logical.
I looked into it a little more and want to direct you to: International Federation of American Football which seems to be an international body headquartered in France that takes the name "American Football", along with some associated non-American national organizations that also refer to it as American Football. Membership in GAISF (detailed in that article) also seems to make the name more officially internationally recognized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.178.21 (talk) 04:05, 17 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Eh, "The IFAF includes Canadian football in its definition of the term American football, despite differences between the two; in international competitions, the Canadian teams play by American rules."
The differentiation between the two is fairly well overblown. A Canadian team and a States team of comparable level could take the field against one another under either set of rules and compete effectively against one another. Could you say that of an Aussie Rules side and a Rugby side -- or really any combination of the codes.
While it is true there are other variations such as Arena and x-man teams (typically played by smaller population areas that can't field a full team roster), these are variations of the sport just as the other major codes have variations such as sevens, five on five, etc. etc. Rugby football is still rugby football even though there are variations of the time played, the number of players per side, and other various incidental rules that while changing certain aspects, still share much.
Add into this the fact that as much as they sometimes don't like to admit sharing a continent with us, Canada is also on the continent of North America. While I'm sure our esteemed neighbors to the North often bristle at our hogging of the term "American" to mean from the USA, that still doesn't make calling it "American Football" any less correct, nor does it affect the recognition of the term "American Football" to refer to that game kinda like rugby but with pads.
This just reeks of "do everything possible to avoid using 'American'" -- try an experiment: go to the google site for various English speaking countries (e.g. google.co.uk). Once there, search for "american football". Take note of the topics of the results. Then do the same for "gridiron". Then do the same for "gridiron football". You'll find that the latter most search with only two exceptions (and even then they're not terribly strong: NZ and AUS) will *not* be as strongly related to the sport.
Well gents, it's been a fun discussion. However, bed calls. I wish you the best in your decision.
No doubt that it's more popularly called "American football", but we still need a way to distinguish "Football as played in the U.S." from "Football as played in the U.S. and Canada". PowersT12:20, 19 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Gridiron" for football has been well attested in the US since the early 20th century, and may have originated there. In some other areas, such as Australia, "gridiron" (or "gridiron football") is what the sport is primarily called. The real issue here isn't the term itself, it's whether it's actually used for both American and Canadian football. It is in some sources, (eg here) but other sources apply it to American football only. The real problem is that there's no widely used term inclusive of both American and Canadian football (besides just "football", which isn't workable for other reasons).--Cúchullaint/c18:04, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It's certainly not a made-up word, though in the U.S. it usually refers to the field on which the game is played (or, more accurately, the markings on such a field) rather than to the game it self. But players are sometimes colloquially called "gridders" and I think most Americans who follow the sport would recognize the reference fairly quickly. PowersT18:23, 23 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Edit request from 221.201.68.25, 20 September 2011
In 1314, Nicholas de Farndone, Lord Mayor of the City of London issued a decree banning football in the French used by the English upper classes at the time. A translation reads: "[f]orasmuch as there is great noise in the city caused by hustling over large foot balls [rageries de grosses pelotes de pee] in the fields of the public from which many evils might arise which God forbid: we command and forbid on behalf of the king, on pain of imprisonment, such game to be used in the city in the future." This is the earliest reference to football.
The last statement ("This is the earliest reference to football") seems inaccurate, as several prior references immediately precede this paragraph, including "Football was played in Ireland in 1308, with a documented reference to John McCrocan, a spectator at a "football game" at Newcastle, County Down being charged with accidentally stabbing a player named William Bernard."
This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.
The word "Football" is also commonly used outside of the English-speaking world.
In Spanish-speaking countries the word has morphed into the Spanish phonetically-correct word "Fútbol" [1] to refer to Soccer Football. In some instances the word "Fútbol" may be replaced by the word "Balonpié" from the words "Balón" (ball) and "Pie" (foot).
Jarzac (talk) 11:59, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This text is to be added to the section 'The use of the word "football" '.
Wikipedia is not a valid source for Wikipedia articles. Please provide more reliable sources for the statements you wish added. PowersT13:06, 27 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
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