Football: Pads and violence better than rugby

Modern Europe, in general, has to be one of the most uncivilized and unregulated
civilizations the world has ever seen.

“Hold on,” you might say. “What about the Hellenic Greeks or the debaucherous Romans?
What about the Wild West of America in the late 1800s? What about those other ancient
cultures that we learned about in our high school history classes?”

Yeah, they were pretty bad, although America in the late 1800s was marginally better than
the rest of them–it was still America, after all.

The Greeks were indeed purveyors of most unpleasant hedonism.

The Romans were indeed perverse (seriously, go read some Roman love poems, they’re
downright scandalous). Still, though, they aren’t quite as bad as Modern Europe.

You see, Modern Europe, and places like, say, Scotland, to throw out a totally random but
pristine example, like to participate in a “sport” called rugby. “Sport” is of course in quotation
marks because I am not sure how a bunch of uncivilized, funny-talking, angry louts in polo shirts
qualifies as a “sport,” except in the loosest definition of the word.

If you have ever had the misfortune of flipping through some of the more obscure sports
channels on American television, you might have come across this collection of brutality, and it
may have been accompanied by a graphic displaying the score, time and countries featuring it.

No doubt, it would not have been America playing; America would not impugn herself so
much as to participate in this uncontrolled expression of violence.
We do enjoy our violence, but we like it very controlled, in bursts that signify the honest
exports of American life: organization, teamwork and the pursuit of the ball-carrier in hopes of
giving him some type of brutal concussive force.

In rugby, they skip the first two steps and just try to concuss the other team. The highest
level of rugby you might find on television is international competition, in which teams of
Scotsmen take on teams of New Zealanders, for example, in a mess recalling the worst
renditions of the Harlem Shake. I
’m pretty sure we only show it on television here in the States as per a trade
agreement…something about helping other countries’ sports not fall *too* deeply into the waters
of global irrelevance. It’s actually pretty nice of us.

Seriously, compare rugby to our football and be appalled at the lack of assembly of form. We
require our gents to strap on colored tights, cleats, helmets (that free the wearer to use the best
device for impaling the enemy sternum–the head), shoulder pads and jerseys that often only
display a number, signifying our humble nature in pursuit of destruction.
The frenzy is contained to four sets of downs, and it requires immense planning to gain even
the smallest advance. To play “three yards and a cloud of dust”– style football is to play football

at its most respected. The level of strategy that goes into it is plum righteous, a true celebration
of the American nature.
Oh, yeah, and we use yards instead of meters to count the earning of territory.

In rugby, they probably use meters. I know you can’t see how smug I am right now, so I’m
going to tell you how smug I am about this fact: I am very, very smug.

In rugby, the use of polo shirts and shorts to play the game is most distressing to the trained,
American eye. Instead of there being a clear separation between sport and life, the rugby
players just look like they were returning from school and decided to have a public brawl. They
have no equipment, and the rules of the game actually prohibit the ball from being thrown
forward.
That actually used to be the case in American football, too, but in this country we have a
system called “science” that allows us to make gradual improvements to things, so we allowed
the forward pass a long, long time ago. I am personally optimistic that rugby scientists are
working feverishly on this issue, but then again, they haven’t figured out helmets yet, so who
knows what the rugby scientists are thinking.

Again, this is only a brief and limited synopsis of why American football is better than rugby,
so bear with the counterpointer here. Bless his heart; he knows not what he says.