Daily Dose of English 167
American Football
Daily Dose of English 167
Intermediate
Hey everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about American football, or as it's known in the US, just football. That is the name that people know it by. The other sport that is way more popular in the world is called soccer. And that term actually comes from Britain, who now call it football, when it was originally called association football. Association football eventually got shortened to association and became sock, soccer. And so it really, it sort of became this association football, association of soccer, right? So there's a reason why we call it that. It's just history and that's just what we call it. So that's fine. But I'm here to talk a little bit more about the sport of American football because it is not that popular in other countries. There are parts of the world that do get weirdly popular with American football. I'm gonna be calling it football from now on, by the way. If you ever talk to an American, that's just what they're gonna call it. Um, and so I want to talk about that a little bit, that sport. So there are some places where it's popular right here in Mexico City. It actually is quite popular to follow American football. It's a fair, it's a fairly popular sport. Um, there's also big, the, the NFL, the, the national football league. So the, the, the football league. is trying to get more people into the sport in the world because they've sort of hit their limit in the US. Pretty much everybody who wants to watch football does. There's not really anybody that doesn't know what football is and isn't like somebody that they can convert to watch the sport. I'm never going to watch the sport. I know about it. I'm very aware that I could. I won't. It's something that you grow up with. It's something that you learn about over many, many years and get into. Um, and pretty much everybody that's going to like football already likes football basically. So that's why they're going to other countries. They're trying to get Canadians into it. Um, I think there were a bunch of games in China. Um, I think there were some in the UK as well. And so they're trying to get more countries interested in the sport so that it becomes bigger and they make more money basically because It's already very, very popular here and actually football makes a ton of money. It's so popular and people are very willing to pay for it, whether it's on tickets or jerseys or things like that, but also on Watching games the I think recently the basically there is an entire streaming service online only for NFL games I think it's called like NFL Sunday ticket or something like that and It's like $60 a month and you just get to watch football games. That's it. That is the entirety of what they offer you Which is kind of crazy in like that people are willing to pay that in my opinion because it is I don't know, it's a sport, right? But it is sort of an interesting sport in some ways. It's not the best sport. I don't even think it's close to being like a top tier sport, but there's some interesting things about it. I played football in high school only and only for about a year. And my experience with it was was not amazing. It was fine. But the thing is that I never got to play because with a football team. It's huge, like there is easily 50 people on a team. I think professional teams have almost 100 people on the roster at any time, because one, injuries are really common, but then also there are special teams, and you can change who's playing at any time, basically. After every single play, after every single stoppage, you can basically change who's on the field. If you watch soccer, so real football, you only get like three substitutions per game. So you have to strategically choose who's going to go on. And so that means that there's maybe, there's what, a maximum of 14, maybe 15 people that ever play a single game of football, of soccer on one team, unless there's like some freak injuries or something, right? But I think even then you have to use a substitution to bring on somebody unless it's like they like died or something um, but So yeah, but with football, there is a different team that can come on after every play, everything basically. There's an entire team just for kicking field goals. There's an entire team for defense, for offense. They completely change everybody often, which is very different than many other sports. And that makes it kind of interesting, right? It means that the team is a lot more team-like. Yeah, there's often very, very good players that stick out and are known to be really good, but the entire team is important for the game, right? You can't just have one good player that dominates and carries the entire game. You have to have good people at every point or else you are going to lose, which is sort of interesting. But that means that teams are big and so I got on the team. But the problem with where I went to high school is that everybody already knew each other except for me. Like I didn't, well, a bunch of us didn't know anybody else. Like we came from other schools. But a huge core of the team were all kids that went to middle school together. They'd known each other for like a decade. And they had the same coach. And so there was a coach that knew all the kids, knew all the kids' families, and they played more. I also wasn't that good. I was average, I was fine. I wasn't bad. But that just means that I'm not gonna play because all the kids that are better and that he knows and everything is just gonna play. That's actually quite common in the US. It's very frequent that you make a sports team and they just never play. It's... It's sort of, it's annoying, right? Cause you have to, you go to practice, you practice, you play all these things, but then you just never actually play in a game. And I remember pretty much the only time that I really got to play was when we were absolutely crushing this other team, right? There was this team that was very bad. They were all not really football players. They didn't have a good team or anything. And we were up by so many points that the coaches basically like just put in whoever, essentially. And that was like the only time that I got to play that I remember. There was a couple other times, but that was pretty much it, which was sort of disappointing. But yeah, it's an interesting sport also because it's contact, it's full contact. And that means that you can get hit. You can tackle somebody and you hit them and you bring them to the ground. That is not only legal, but like that is expected. When somebody has the ball, you have to put them on the ground forcefully, basically. You don't want to like intentionally injure them, but you do want to push them down. And so it ends up being pretty rough. Because of that, you wear a bunch of padding, shoulder pads, a helmet, a whole bunch of things, a mouth guard, everything to make sure that you don't get terribly injured. However, most people that play for a long time do get injured and have long-term health impacts on their, especially in their brain, which is pretty messed up. So it's not a very healthy sport to play, but professionals, sure, that's fine. The problem that people have is more when kids are playing, right? Because it's very popular for young kids to play. And so... Yeah, something that's more popular like casually is called flag football, which is where everybody has a flag around their waist, like a bunch of flags. And when to get somebody down, so that's what it's called when you are pushed over or you fall over with the ball, it's called the down. To get somebody down, you have to just yank off their flag while they still have the ball. And flag football is actually really fun. It is a cool sport, right? There's some interesting things going on because what you have to do is slowly move the ball down the field with the other team trying to forcefully stop you, right? They are very much trying to stop you from getting the ball down there. And that makes it sort of a very much an interesting sport in the sense that it is pretty clear to see why it's difficult, right? Okay, there is a bunch of 200 pound men, heavier, 300 pound men trying to stop me from getting this little ball down the field, right? That is a clear, like, it's a very simple thing to understand, I guess. And I think that's one of the reasons why it is fairly popular to watch casually, like in the Super Bowl. because people can understand the basics of what's happening. Okay, we gotta get this ball from here to there. And every time we make it a certain amount of distance, we get a reset, right? And that's sort of it. And then if you don't get far enough after four tries, right, then the ball goes to the other team or whatever. And that's essentially it. Everything else is built around those core rules, which I think is actually interesting. I don't watch football. I don't care, but it is sort of a cool fun sport to play on like a Saturday or Sunday with some friends. Or if you're like, it's also a. a tradition to play on Thanksgiving because there's often a Thanksgiving game, but a lot of people play with their family. They go out and they throw the football a little bit and yeah. It's also difficult to throw and catch a football because they're pretty big and bulky, which also makes it sort of interesting. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff going on. It gets a bad rap, I think, because of the injury thing, which is messed up. And also because it has the name of football, which a lot of other countries don't like. But I think that it is actually an interesting sport, just sort of like any other sport. It's just that it has a couple of bad things going for it. And I also specifically don't care. So if you want, go ahead and hate football, or like it, or try it out if you want. But yeah. That's all that I got for today. I know I didn't really get into the rules or anything, but I hope that you enjoyed and maybe learned a little something about what football is like. And yeah, that's everything. I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
For email updates, subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed.