Lexicon Problems

Being one of the very few people in Hong Kong who is foolish enough to follow closely to the National Football League, I often have to explain to my friends what American Football is really about.

For a start, when being asked about the differences between American Football and rugby, I would tell them that American Football players are clad in pads and helmets, and they line up in special formation on each play, and it's basically a chess match between the coaches of the two teams by employing different tactics in different situation.

But some other comments have really made me frustrated and exhausted.

I have lost count how many times it has been, but when I tell people that I love watching American Football, their typical response was, "So you love playing the Superbowl?"

Hello?

Folks, it's an unforgivable sin to treat American Football and the Superbowl as the same. It's the same as saying that the boys kicking a ball around in the street corner are playing the World Cup.

(However if, being a die-hard supporter of the local soccer scene, you insist that the players are playing in the World Cup, where in fact they were just booting and poking at the ball around aimlessly on a sandy pitch of an empty stadium in the middle of nowhere, that would be another matter.)

Superbowl is the grand final of the NFL season, the winner claiming the bragging rights as the World (or only North American or American) Champion of American Football, as well as the possession of the delicate silver Superbowl trophy, courtesy of Tiffany & Co.

Surprisingly, the trophy is not a bowl. The game was named after the traditional and popular end-of-season bowl games contested by college football teams. The NFL, reigned supreme to all the college bowl games, decided to call its title game the Superbowl.

Interestingly (and fortunately), although the winner of the Stanley Cup is the Champion of the National Hockey League, I have never heard people saying that the young kids in the rink are playing the Stanley Cup.

Another football-related terminology which has caused much confusion is "Touchdown".

Touchdown is the act of scoring by a player reaching the endzone with the ball. The look of the word can be deceiving, and many wonder if the ball has to touch the ground in order to score.

And the answer is clearly no. The player only has to carry to ball across the goal line (such as running with the ball across the goal line), or gain possession of the ball behind the goal line (such as catching a pass in the endzone), and his team will score six points.

In rugby, players have to touch the ball down behind the goal line in order to score. And for some reason, they decided not to call it a touchdown. They call it a "Try".

Now if one calls a certain act that doesn't need to touch the ground a "Touchdown", but another act that needs to touch the ground a mere "Try", he deserves to be ridiculed.

More to come on the confusion and headache created in the world of sports lexicon. Stay tuned.