ExRx.net

Our school just built a multimillion dollar facility just for sports/recreation/fitness - Ball State University. You can even see me on their webpage :P

robertscott wrote:(yes, I have to put the word "American" in there or else the rest of the planet think i'm talking about what you yanks consider to be soccer...).

No, not the rest of the world, just a big part of it. Australians think of Aussie Rules, except Queensland and NSW, where "football" means Rugby League. Papua New Guineans, think Rugby League. New Zealand usually says "Soccer", although some say "foodball" for that game. Canadians call soccer "soccer" and Canadian Rules Football "football". In Ireland, "football" means Gaelic Football.

I had an argument about this a year or two ago (with KPj, as I recall), so I started reading on the subject. Interesting history, how the different games evolved. My favorite is the version played several hundred years ago in England and Scotland, where games were played between villages, no limit on team size or how the ball could be moved, no off-side rule, and the object of the game was to strike the other village's church with the ball. So you had to run back and forth between the villages.

A little carried away here, huh?

That honestly sounds more like capture the flag-ish type stuff. Like something you'd do with paintball guns.. I'm assuming they were much more violent though

Jungledoc wrote:I had an argument about this a year or two ago (with KPj, as I recall), so I started reading on the subject. Interesting history, how the different games evolved. My favorite is the version played several hundred years ago in England and Scotland, where games were played between villages, no limit on team size or how the ball could be moved, no off-side rule, and the object of the game was to strike the other village's church with the ball. So you had to run back and forth between the villages.

A version of that actually still exists in Scotland, they play it on an island called Orkney way up North. It's this ridiculous sport called the "The Ba'", and it's mental. People get really badly injured in what is basically a free-for-all between two massive teams trying to get a ball from one end of a town to the other. Here's a video if you're interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5_YTSQpIuE

if you skip like 3 and a half minutes in you can see it descend into violence, which apparently it does every year.

People from the islands are weird.

Thanks. That should be interesting, but I can't see it right now. I'm in a situation where I can't download video, but I'll look at it next week when I get home.

KPj wrote: "typical college kids" across the pond look far different than typical college kids over here.

Very different! When I'm out it's normally a mixture of the sports lot with their tops off barely being able to walk or the little skinny pretty boys. Don't get many athletic type looking people as all the big guys seem to drink heavily too!