American Football is Considered a Sport

Misbar has discovered that the claim was probably made in response to last night’s playing of the 55th Super Bowl National Football League championship game, held in Tampa, Florida. The game was held between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Kansas City Chiefs. According to NFL.com, the Buccaneers won the game with the score of 31 to 9. 

Even though the game of football has been around since 1869, it is still not included in the Olympics even though it is played in over 80 countries and canoeing and synchronized swimming made the cut. 

Football is also not that popular. Let’s face it. Soccer, the real football, is the most popular sport in the world. American football is not even in the top five most popular sports and according to WorldAtlas.com it even falls below cricket and table tennis. 

And then there is the name. Unlike the most popular sport in the world, football (or what Americans call soccer), the ball is only kicked in the game of American football once in a while. 

Fortunately, the Oxford Dictionary went easy on American football and provided some grace, maintaining that a sport is an “activity that you do for pleasure and that needs physical effort or skill, usually done in a special area and according to fixed rules.” In this case, football might squeak by. Last night’s players certainly did seem to be sweating during the contest, it happened in a very large special stadium, and if you ask Chief fans, they would probably tell you there were more than enough fixed rules because of all the penalties that were called on them. 

As far as pleasure goes, Tom Brady, the oldest quarterback to ever play in a SuperBowl, seemed to be very pleased. 

That also goes for the over 100 million people that were estimated to be watching last night. Most likely, many were enjoying putting politics, COVID-19, and frigid temperatures across much of America on hold at least temporarily to cheer for either the Buccaneers or Chiefs and eat chili and chicken wings.