No I never played football, I was a swimmer

And have you ever DONE concrete work? Have you ever been payed 12 dollars an hour doing back breaking labor plus mandatory overtime?

Sure for a few years it isn't so bad ... but then you have to support a family and your back fails on you ... you can't just "walk away" and say fuck this shit I have better things to do with my life.

And with respect to making plastic? I was reading an article TODAY about workers in China working in an analine plant. Analine is notorious for prostate cancer I believe, but that's besides the point.

The factory is having leaks, and they are blaming the poisonings on mass hysteria. These are people that NEED to work to feed and support their families.

A little closer to home, most of my peers are starting their families now. AFter 10 years of school, they are just about ready to start their families. Starting salary for Ph. D. chemist, is variable. You can make 100K a year provided that you are willing to abandon your personal life and family, or you can take the cut and have some semblance of a life 60 K.

Mind you this isn't bad money, but after about 10 years of higher ed. usually 30 years old ... now you are starting your life. Many of my peers have had some very suspicious and god aweful miscarriages. I'm not convinced that chemistry is totally innoscent.

And you say, well ... let's walk away. If you are doing that much harm to yourself and your family ... well duh ... quit.

I'm sorry, but you usually don't know how deep you are in your hole until it is much to late. Then you find yourself injesting toxins to support your life and your family, because it's not about you anymore.

Capiche?

How does this relate to football. These guys, many of them, are more than adequitedly compensated for hurting their bodies. They are chasing very big money, and they are chasing glory. I have no beef with that.

And people like you think that at 6'5'' 240 plus pound can simply get on a bicycle and he's an instant hero?

I mean, for real dude.

My step-mother used to give me midrin shots for my migraines. I've learned how to raise my body temp by 7 degrees by thinking warm. This helps relieve the swelling of veins.

I believe it's seratonin getting pumped through too much so your brain tells it to stop, then it all releases at once and causes the migraine. So while running around it would keep this from happening, but as soon as halftime happened and he rested this process was set forth.

As soon as he started back up he most likely would have had spike headaches...in the background.

It wouldn't have been until he stopped completely that it began to get worse and worse....

to former tri state - my bad. I seriously did not see that you were talking about the seattle mist. I thought you were speaking of soccer with that statement.

to Ben - Alrighty then.

1. Cricket - better than american football.
2. Rugby - better than american football.
3. Soccer(futbol)is a game played on foot with a ball that originated where? And the original meaning of futbol very well might be what you are describing....but the current generations meaning is entirely different(we aren't dining at Medievil Times, so let's not define current terms with past definitions).

Also if it only took you four minutes to read the entire history of futbol, then you must be a speed reading fool...either that, or you spent four minutes reading this section.

"While it is widely believed that the word "football" (or "foot ball") originated in reference to the action of the foot kicking a ball, there is a rival explanation, which has it that football originally referred to a variety of games in medieval Europe, which were played on foot.[1] These games were usually played by peasants, as opposed to the horse-riding sports often played by aristocrats. While there is no conclusive evidence for this explanation, the word football has always implied a variety of games played on foot, not just those that involved kicking a ball. In some cases, the word football has even been applied to games which have specifically outlawed kicking the ball."

If you were to go on further in the definition you would read this.

While football continued to be played in various forms throughout Britain, its public schools (known as private schools in other countries) are widely credited with four key achievements in the creation of modern football codes. First of all, the evidence suggests that they were important in taking football away from its "mob" form and turning it into an organised team sport. Second, many early descriptions of football and references to it were recorded by people who had studied at these schools. Third, it was teachers, students and former students from these schools who first codified football games, to enable matches to be played between schools. Finally, it was at English public schools that the division between "kicking" and "running" (or "carrying") games first became clear.

The earliest evidence that games resembling football were being played at English public schools — mainly attended by boys from the upper, upper-middle and professional classes — comes from the Vulgaria by William Horman in 1519. Horman had been headmaster at Eton and Winchester colleges and his Latin textbook includes a translation exercise with the phrase "We wyll playe with a ball full of wynde".[citation needed]

Richard Mulcaster, a student at Eton College in the early 16th century and later headmaster at other English schools, has been described as "the greatest sixteenth Century advocate of football".[16] Among his contributions are the earliest evidence of organised team football. Mulcaster's writings refer to teams ("sides" and "parties"), positions ("standings"), a referee ("judge over the parties") and a coach "(trayning maister)". Mulcaster's "footeball" had evolved from the disordered and violent forms of traditional football:

[s]ome smaller number with such overlooking, sorted into sides and standings, not meeting with their bodies so boisterously to trie their strength: nor shouldring or shuffing one an other so barbarously ... may use footeball for as much good to the body, by the chiefe use of the legges.

—[citation needed]
In 1633, David Wedderburn, a teacher from Aberdeen, mentioned elements of modern football games in a short Latin textbook called "Vocabula." Wedderburn refers to what has been translated into modern English as "keeping goal" and makes an allusion to passing the ball ("strike it here"). There is a reference to "get hold of the ball", suggesting that some handling was allowed. It is clear that the tackles allowed included the charging and holding of opposing players ("drive that man back").[citation needed]

A more detailed description of football is given in Francis Willughby's Book of Games, written in about 1660.[17] Willughby, who had studied at Sutton Coldfield School, is the first to describe goals and a distinct playing field: "a close that has a gate at either end. The gates are called Goals." His book includes a diagram illustrating a football field. He also mentions tactics ("leaving some of their best players to guard the goal"); scoring ("they that can strike the ball through their opponents' goal first win") and the way teams were selected ("the players being equally divided according to their strength and nimbleness"). He is the first to describe a "law" of football: "they must not strike [an opponent's leg] higher than the ball".[citation needed]

These are not the rules of American Football (or Gridiron Football, as it is also called). And the actual start of Futbol does not match your Medievil Times definition that you pulled out of your Wikpedia using ass. As I stated earlier, it very may well be that this term was originally describing playing on foot versions of horseback games, but it later (and more importantly) was used to define the game that every single country besides N.America knows as Futbol.

Not Rugby, Not Cricket, and not American Football.

But why have I even bothered typing all this for you? You couldn't even seem to read your way past the introduction to the entire description of the history of Futbol, so you certainly won't make it this far into my post.

If you have read this far, then how about you read the rest of the history of futbol, and back-up your statement with facts and actual knowledge of what you are speaking about. Rather than with Hargle bargle and wiggle waggles.

You learn so much more about things when you read the entire article, and then you don't look like a shit-for-brains.

"During the early 1860s, there were increasing attempts in England to unify and reconcile the various public school games. In 1862, J. C. Thring, who had been one of the driving forces behind the original Cambridge Rules, was a master at Uppingham School and he issued his own rules of what he called "The Simplest Game" (these are also known as the Uppingham Rules). In early October 1863 another new revised version of the Cambridge Rules was drawn up by a seven member committee representing former pupils from Harrow, Shrewsbury, Eton, Rugby, Marlborough and Westminster.

At the Freemasons' Tavern, Great Queen Street, London on the evening of October 26, 1863, representatives of several football clubs in the London Metropolitan area met for the inaugural meeting of The Football Association (FA). The aim of the Association was to establish a single unifying code and regulate the playing of the game among its members. Following the first meeting, the public schools were invited to join the association. All of them declined, except Charterhouse and Uppingham. In total, six meetings of the FA were held between October and December 1863. After the third meeting, a draft set of rules were published. However, at the beginning of the fourth meeting, attention was drawn to the recently published Cambridge Rules of 1863. The Cambridge rules differed from the draft FA rules in two significant areas; namely running with (carrying) the ball and hacking (kicking opposing players in the shins). The two contentious FA rules were as follows:

IX. A player shall be entitled to run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal if he makes a fair catch, or catches the ball on the first bound; but in case of a fair catch, if he makes his mark he shall not run.

X. If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time.

—[53][54]
At the fifth meeting it was proposed that these two rules be removed. Most of the delegates supported this, but F. M. Campbell, the representative from Blackheath and the first FA treasurer, objected. He said: "hacking is the true football". However, the motion to ban running with the ball in hand and hacking was carried and Blackheath withdrew from the FA. After the final meeting on 8 December, the FA published the "Laws of Football", the first comprehensive set of rules for the game later known as football (later known in some countries as soccer).

The first FA rules still contained elements that are no longer part of association football, but which are still recognisable in other games (most notably Australian football): for instance, a player could make a fair catch and claim a mark, which entitled him to a free kick; and if a player touched the ball behind the opponents' goal line, his side was entitled to a free kick at goal, from 15 yards (13.5 metres) in front of the goal line."