Alex Yates

I just received an O2 ad/promotional email (O2 is a UK mobile phone company) and found this to be really funny. (I like watching both, but am more a "footie".)

Rugby’s my game

Football’s a sport
played by a bunch of overpaid, chest-waxing, little mummy’s boys.

I’m a footie fan

Rugby’s played by overweight toffs that love falling over and cuddling in the mud.

Jimi Michiel

I'm a footie fan, although I'm not overpaid and I don't wax my chest. (I am a proud member of the University of Minnesota School of Music intramural soccer team, the Gustav Maulers)

Richard Oliver

Richard

Vulgano Brother

Soccer or rugby? That's like asking us to choose between 2nd violin and viola. C'mon, American Football and Baseball are real sports, so let's recall what George Carlin had to say on the very first Saturday Night Live....

George Carlin: "Thank you! Talk about a live show! It's nice to see you, welcome, and thanks for joining us - live. Um.. I'm kinda glad that we're on at night, so that we're not competing with all the football and baseball. So many, man.. And this is the time of year when there's both, you know?

Football's kinda nice, they changed it a little bit - they moved the hash marks in. Guys found it and smoked them, anyway! But you know, football wants to be the number-one sport, the national pasttime. And I think it already is, really, because football represents something we are - we are Europe, Jr. When you get right down to it, we're Europe, Jr. We play a Europe game. What was the Europe game? [ high voice ] "Let's take their land away from them! You'll be the pink, on up; we'll be blue, the red and the green!"

Ground acquisition. And that's what football is, football's a ground acquisition game. You knock the crap out of eleven guys and take their land away from them. Of course, we only do it ten yards at a time. That's the way we did it with the Indians - we won it little by little. First down in Ohio - Midwest to go!

Let's put it this way - there are things about the words surrounding football and baseball, which give it all away:

Football is technological; baseball is pastoral.

Football is played in a stadium; baseball is played in the park.

In football, you wear a helmet; in baseball, you wear a cap.

Football is played on an enclosed, rectangular grid, and everyone of them is the same size; baseball is played on an ever-widening angle that reaches to inifinity, and every park is different!

Football is rigidly timed; baseball has no time limit, we don't know when it's gonna end! We might even have extra innings!

In football, you get a penalty; in baseball, you make an error - whoops!

The object in football is to march downfield and penetrate enemy territory, and get into the end zone; in baseball, the object is to go home! "I'm going home!"

And, in football, they have the clip, the hit, the block, the tackle, the blitz, the bomb, the offense and the defense; in baseball, they have.. the sacrifice."

Manny Laureano

Baseball Almanac - George Carlin in Baseball and Football

Here's another version of that, Jerry. It's accompanied by an audio clip at the bottom of the page. What's amazing is how you can have the text in front of you as you listen and it's STILL funny! And clean, fancy that...

Thanks for posting that,

ML

Alex Yates

Oh yeah ML - THAT has to be one of my all time favorites! Big baseball fan, big Carlin fan, spells a winner! Thanks!

Very funny Vulgano!

Way to go Jimi.....good for your lungs, but watch out for the stray ball in the chops! Love the name for the team.

Tootsall

Neither. For sheer mayhem I prefer the Irish sport of Hurly. All About Hurling

A bunch of guys whacking away at something about the size and shape of a hardball with hardwood clubs shaped like battleaxes. No padding and helmets are "optional"!

Managed to watch a game on TV once..... people laying out cold all over the place while the game roared on. Too violent for North American television.

TotalEclipse

Hurling looks like fun to me!!!
I was in Berlin on the weekend and was watching some Lacrosse(sp) on the hotel tv..........
Those guys are just as made, and it seems quite big over there.
That said and done at heart I'm a RUGBY LEAGUE fan to the core. We dont need no padding/helmets and as for 'the beautful game'........hmmmmmm.
I think it has lost its beauty with the amount of 'diving' going on.
Baseball just takes waaaaaayyyyyy too long, which is probably why I'm that big a fan of cricket either. I would mention AFL but I don't think anyone here would know what it is.

Mikey

Gee, I did not realize "hurling" was a sport. That will give those drunken Frat boys something else to do at 3 AM on Sunday morning....

davidquinlan

I am a fan of both, but it was the International Rugby that I enjoyed most this weekend...

Irish Rugby : Happy Ending To An Historic Day