Football or Football or Futbol or Soccer or..

[The Reality Salesman01]

They don't have instant re-play or coach's challenges in English Football (soccer)?

[pocaracas]

They don't have instant re-play or coach's challenges in English Football (soccer)?

No.
Either the referee saw it and acted accordingly, or tough luck!... that's why there are 4 referees
1) The main referee, the guy with the whistle. Has to run the whole time.. must be the fittest guy in the court.
2&3) line referees. One for each half-court. They use flags to signal the main referee that something has happened.
4) I think the 4th does have a tv screen in front of him, but is rarely used... Of course, I quit watching the thing close to when they introduced this 4th guy, so I'm biased!

On top of that, the clock keeps ticking!
But there's some overtime, which is determined by the 4th referee, to compensate for the time lost when the ball is not in play.

[The Reality Salesman01]

There are several officials on an NFL field as well, but no matter how many people you have, none of them are impervious to error. When the games on the line, you want the right call. I just wish baseball was as progressive.

[Tiberius]

They don't have instant re-play or coach's challenges in English Football (soccer)?

They have it for the fans watching TV (and probably in some stadiums) but it's not how the referee makes the decision. The 4th official on the pitch is the guy who handles all the substitutions (i.e. he checks they are valid, and holds up a board denoting the numbers being substituted). None of the referees has a TV with replays, at least not in any professional league I've heard about.

Just recently in the Premier League they introduced a system called "Hawk-Eye" which has previously been used in both Tennis and Cricket. It relies on a large number of cameras positioned around the goal which record the ball's position and can calculate very accurately whether a goal has been scored, before transmitting the result to a device on the main referee's wrist. Hopefully the system will be implemented in all pro leagues and in the World Cup.

[Faith No More]

Instant replay is great, but it can get tedious when every play has to be scrutinized. I'm glad they have the ability to make the correct call, but I get impatient when they have to go to the replay frequently.

[Tonus]

There are several officials on an NFL field as well, but no matter how many people you have, none of them are impervious to error. When the games on the line, you want the right call. I just wish baseball was as progressive.

I wonder how much of the approach in baseball is based on some form of nationalist politics. Since it's considered to be "the American Pastime" and our national sport, it gets treated differently from other sports (note how long it held that ridiculous anti-trust exemption, and the extent to which congress has fallen over itself to investigate steroid use in baseball, but not in football).

Baseball is slowly adopting instant-replay, and I expect that at some point it will be used to determine close calls at the bases, and whether balls were fair/foul or caught/trapped. It may be a very very long time before it's used to call balls and strikes, but I think that will also happen someday. There is too much money riding on getting the calls right.

[Jackalope]

Football: A game where you use your feet to move a ball.
Handoval: A game where you use your hands to move an oval shaped pigskin.

You know, while "handoval" and "handegg" jokes are cute, you have to realize that the sport of American gridiron football bears little resemblance to the original game - where a round ball was used, and the ball could not be picked up and carried. Shockingly, the ball was moved downfield in much the same way as it is in association football (soccer).

The game as it is played today bears only superficial resemblance to how it was when the name originated in the same decade as association football. The games were similar, but diverged greatly.

What the two sports share in common is this: They're both a damn good excuse to drink a metric asston of beer.

[Ryantology]

I know nothing of American football, but I think that the Super Bowl is played around Thanksgiving(?)

First Sunday in February, though there are always a slate of games on Thanksgiving, usually involving teams I hate.

Is american "football" also infected with that disgusting disease called hooliganism?

Nothing even remotely approaching what happens in Europe. The worst you usually get is people throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. Or, that one time, when fans threw beer bottles onto players and refs because the refs blew a call. Such incidents are rare and always newsworthy.

I've watched American Football and I think the game is great; I can definitely see why it is so popular and I like it. My girlfriend is from Boston so I naturally support the New England Patriots (who won against the New York Jets last night, go Pats!). I know their quarterback is Tom Brady (and until very recently, they also had Tim Tebow) but other than that I don't know anyone.

I understand why but ew.

The only thing I dislike about American Football is the word "football", because having watched the game, I still don't understand how it can be justified. I mean, granted the ball can be kicked at some points, but usually only in the 4th play and after a touchdown. A more accurate name might be "American Rugby" as the games are quite similar.

Kicking used to be a marginally more important aspect of the game in its earliest days. I'd be okay if they renamed it Handegg.

Edit: I should also add, I love the fact that in the professional games, pretty much every decision by the ref is made by going back and looking at slo-mo replays to make sure the decision is correct. In English football (soccer) there have been a number of controversies in recent years over goals that were disallowed despite replays showing them to be actual goals.

You'd think that would prevent really terrible calls, but replays only overturn on-field decisions if the people who made them find incontrovertible evidence that they made a mistake. They tend not to, even when the mistake is obvious to everyone present. Honestly, I like the replay idea in theory, but in practice, it slows down a slow game even more. I definitely do like the fact that coaches can make challenges.

[The Reality Salesman01]

[LastPoet]

Handegg, s'il vous plait