Football ("soccer") vs NFL kneeball: which is better?

Two things can be counted on every four years: the World Cup, and conservative pundits smearing football. Not only that, those pundits go on to promote NFL/NCAAF kneeball.

I'll look at the differences between the two sports and discuss some of the objections those pundits have, focusing on blogs by Ann Coulter, Michael Medved and others.

Regarding terminology, I'll refer to the "sport" the NFL/NCAAF play as kneeball due to their obsession with taking a knee. I'll refer to "soccer" as football. Other terms can be easily found online. So:
  • World Cup = football
  • Super Bowl = kneeball
Here are some of the key differences between the two:
Kneeball Football
Kneeball is anti-white and that's never going to change due to the racial makeup of their teams. The great majority of kneeball players are black, and almost all of them support the black nationalist group BLM [1]. BLM's core concept is "white privilege", which is just a generalized version of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories [2]. Many NFL players want reparations [3]. The NFL panders to those sentiments and has completely caved to BLM.

The NFL even plays the racial separatist "black national anthem" before each game. Having a separate national anthem is about as anti-American as it gets. NFL also actively engages in anti-white affirmative action. Whites rarely can play anything other than offensive line, quarterback, or special teams. For instance, in 2014, there were zero white cornerbacks or nose tackles [4]. The NFL and others are keen on more black quarterbacks; after that they'll probably go after kickers.

For more on how "woke" kneeball is, read the NFL's releases on "equity", etc [5]. It was obvious to me and some others that NFL would edge ever closer to being the National Farrakhan League, but conservatives like Coulter couldn't figure that out (as with so many other issues).
Football, on the other hand, is whites-friendly. Whites can excel at every position. Most of the top football players are white. Admittedly, after the George Floyd incident, MLS and a few other leagues went woke, resulting in several players taking a knee. However, due to the racial makeup of football players and their fans, that's mostly petered out.

MLS flirted with the "MLS is black" slogan [6] but soon replaced it with a "soccer for everyone" slogan. Good luck getting MLS to admit to the [6] slogan nowadays. The English league took a knee, as does the England national team [7]. However, none of them are as far gone as kneeball.

The teams in the Spanish, Italian, Mexican, etc, etc leagues never once took a knee. The bottom line is that football is about as "woke" as baseball: sometimes they play along with SJW pieties, but after that they just play the game.
One core belief of kneeball boosters is how manly it supposedly is. Those boosters consider kneeball to be the very apex of heterosexuality and manliness and football players to be effeminate. That's ironic considering how incredibly gay kneeball is.

Kneeball is one of the few sports where players wear makeup, shoulder pads, and spandex tights. The terminology in kneeball is as gay as a Broadway musical: "endzone", "tight ends", "wide receivers", etc etc.

Every single kneeball play starts with players bending over and raising their butts in the air. Then, other players hover over those bent over players. The quarterback takes it a step further: he slips his hands between the center's thighs.

After the bent-over warmup, those macho macho men begin groping each other and end it all by falling on top of each other.

A kneeball tackle is a very intimate affair, with one dude lying on top of another dude. They frequently get into a spoon or scissors position, with their spandex-clad legs intertwined. Not to put too fine a point on it, but a kneeball tackle is basically simulated gay sex. Not surprising since the goal of kneeball is to get into the "endzone". I'm not the first person to realize how incredibly gay kneeball is, of course [8].

I'm not making a value judgment on this, but it would be better for kneeball fans if they just admitted what they're actually watching.
There is occasionally grapling and jostling in football, but not falling on top of other players or groping as there is in kneeball. A football tackle involves taking the ball away from another player using your feet with minimal man-on-man contact.

Anything close to NFL-style contact would result in a yellow or red card (and probably a suspension).

Kneeball fans who want hot man-on-man action won't find it in football: they should stick with kneeball or try oiled wrestling.
Kneeball is like a weird prison exercise: "line up, bend over, do exactly as you're told". It's like the "gladiator fights" that prison guards have been accused of staging using prisoners.

Many NFL players committed crimes before, during, or after their careers. Kneeball is excessively violent, a mugging disguised as a "sport". When the "sport" you play is a mugging, committing a real mugging isn't much of a stretch. And, that's how most kneeball fans like it. And, unfortunately, that doesn't stay on the field.

Countless NFL players have been involved in violent crimes [9]. The NFL even put Ray Lewis in their Hall of Fame after he was involved in a double murder.

Kneeball extolling violence no doubt contributes to black criminality. Coulter and others present senseless violence as a conservative thing and they frequently cheer hockey fights. Those are usually just pantomime boxing matches and, as with kneeball fans, hockey fans eat it up.

However, the key difference between hockey and NFL violence is the cowardly nature of kneeball violence: it usually comes as a sneak attack of some kind. Violence-as-entertainment is culturally corrosive, but the kneeball variety is of the worst kind.
Football doesn't present violence as the solution; it penalizes violence with yellow and red cards and even suspensions.

Compare the list of footballers' crimes [10]. If Mark Chapman had played in the NFL, the league and the fans would probably have given him a medal instead.
Kneeball is higher scoring than football and ties are rare. However, consider that the "most common final score for games throughout NFL history is 20-17, followed by 27-24" [11]. That's about 3 or 4 scores to 3. That isn't surprising since it's fairly easy to score in kneeball.

Compare basketball: once a team has the ball, there's an excellent chance they're going to score. Then, the other team gets the ball and they score, and so on. Kneeball is similar to that. The only ways a kneeball team can lose possession are fumbles, interceptions, and failing to get first downs. Passes are completed about 70% of the time. Once a team has the ball, they have a 20% chance of going on to get a touchdown. Then, the other team gets the ball and the process repeats. Both kneeball teams almost always score. That's very fair, except life isn't fair.
Football is more like baseball in that the defense is able to prevent a large number of scores except in occasional cases. Many baseball runs come when a pitcher is tiring or makes a bad pitch or three. While there are many clutch hits throughout the baseball season, it's never assured that even an excellent player will get a hit when necessary.

Likewise, in football even the best players frequently get stymied by a good defense. If it was as easy to score in football as it is in kneeball, you'd see basketball-style scores.
A common belief among conservative pundits who hype kneeball is that "hard work should be rewarded". I.e., if a team puts in a half an hour or so to conduct a drive, they deserve a score just for trying. Football is rooted in the real world, not an "everyone gets a score" fantasy world.

Football teams frequently have lots of possession but lose. A football team might have 20 shots on goal and lose to a team that only had one shot on goal. Conservatives pundits think everyone should get a trophy: the team that actually won and their opponents for trying hard. That's not how football or real life works.

The best team is the one that ends up in the better position after the game. No team gets points for failed shots or having more possession.
Unlike every other adult sport, kneeball has a very large number of emotionally-fraught Big Babies. While every sport has problem players, kneeball has the most per capita. How many times have you seen kneeball players throw tantrums, have to be consoled by their coaches, etc?

Most kneeball coaches are more like counselors or religious officials; kneeball players practically need a tent revival meeting to get them to do their jobs.

Kneeball players tend to have little or no impulse control, which is probably one of the reasons why so many have been involved in serious crimes.
Many players in other sports sometimes get emotional, and sometimes they cry when losing key series. However, Big Babies are very rare.

Most players in every other sport are professionals who realize they're getting paid exorbitant amounts of money, and act accordingly.

Plus, football players have some of the biggest egos in all sport and are driven to get goals. Top players tend to be prima donnas, but they can follow through.
One of the contributing factors to Big Babies in kneeball might be the fact that only some kneeball players have the opportunity to score. Few offensive tackles are ever going to score a touchdown: most such players will rarely be noted by the average fan.

Most kneeball players are like assembly line workers with their roles decided by body type: few defensive linemen could play as wide receivers. Never having much of an impact on the final score and knowing you'll never see the individual limelight probably leads to a great deal of frustration.

Kneeball's regimentation seems to be unique: few if any other sports have separate offensive and defensive teams and such clearly-defined roles. Only very rarely does a defensive player go on the offense or vice versa.
Every real football player - even defenders and keepers - have multiple opportunities to score in their careers. Even pitchers have hit home runs.

Many football defenders and midfielders are as famous as the more forward players. Offense-oriented players will frequently participate in the defense and vice versa.
Kneeball is an extremely structured sport: they even point the players in the direction they want them to go so they don't get confused. A soviet of coaches decides their every move. Almost all of the thinking is done for kneeball players: they just run a route, or throw to a "receiver" who's going to be at a pre-designated location.

Obviously, for the quarterback it's harder than that: they have to adapt to what the defense is doing. But, other players are just following orders.

There are few compound movements in kneeball: each play is distinct and only consists of a simple run, a hand-off plus a run, a throw plus a run, or a kick. Only in extremely rare plays like the "flea flicker" or the "Stanford band play" does a play consist of more than just one or two simple moves.

And, each and every kneeball play has a delay of 30 seconds up to ten minutes. That means fans can usually run an errand or three once their team gets the ball, and when they get back the team might have made it to the 20 yard line or so.
In football, players need to constantly think ahead... while running, and dribbling the ball, and keeping opponents from capturing possession.

A goal in football might involve several preliminary passes, each from a different player, all done without any breaks and all done by players on their own without any input from a soviet of coaches.

And, players have to be ready to switch from offense to defense at a moment's notice. One moment a forward player might be running towards the opponent's goal, the next an opposing player might have regained possession and the forward player would need to run back to defend.

A goal in football can happen at a second's notice. It could be 1 minute into the game, or in the last second of stoppage time. That seems to be one of the things that conservative pundits can't adapt to: they want a slow, plodding, structured, predictable game with plenty of breaks.
In kneeball, you can use your hands. The players use them to grope other players and there are no restrictions on that. There are, however, restrictions on who can handle the ball and when. The quarterback can only throw from behind the line of scrimmage and only to certain players. There are similar restrictions on kicking.

The player with possession of the ball can maintain possession by holding on to the ball. Occasionally an opposing player will wrest the ball from them, but that might only happen once or twice per game.
Football doesn't have restrictions on who can kick the ball when. The keeper can handle the ball, but only in the 18 yard box.

The ball is advanced by dribbling it, and opposing players are constantly trying to take the ball away while a player dribbles it. That happens much more frequently than the similar situation in kneeball, making possession much less of a sure thing in football.

If football players could hold onto and run with the ball, that wouldn't be football: it'd be rugby. And, the only way to stop the running player would be a violent tackle as in kneeball or rugby. Australian Rules lets players only run a certain distance with the ball before they have to pass it, but they allow tackles. If conservative pundits can design a game where players can carry the ball but there aren't sociopathic violent tackles, have at it. Otherwise, accept that dribbling with your feet is an acceptable way to have a wide open game where possession can change rapidly.
Concussions are a serious problem in kneeball and are probably another one of the contributing factors to Big Babies. Not only do linemen constantly have jarring head contact, but the head is a weapon in kneeball.

Reducing the numbers of concussions would require a wholesale change to how kneeball is played & might even do away with wearing helmets.

Kneeball's sociopathic fans are there for the violence so the chances of them supporting those changes are near nil.
Concussions in football are a serious problem too. However, there are fewer [13] than in kneeball because the head is not a weapon in football. Football concussions are inadvertent and due to two players jumping for a ball, two players colliding going for the ball, etc. Kneeball concussions are part of the "sport". Cf the belief by some conservatives that bike helmets are just for sissies [14].
A largely white audience watching largely black kneeball teams hurt each other as part of a "sport" has an unseemly plantation feel to it. That largely doesn't apply to football both because the goal of football isn't to hurt your opponents, and there's a much closer match between the players' races and the audience.
The average NFL kneeball game lasts 3 hours and 12 minutes [15]. The average MLB baseball game is 3 hours, 3 minutes [16]. Coulter claims football games take a long time. In fact, almost all professional football games end in less than two hours total.

In the cases where a game is tied after 90 minutes but must have a result (like in the elimination stages of the World Cup), it goes another 30 minutes. If it's still tied, it goes to penalty kicks (maybe another 15 minutes).

With breaks and stoppage time, the maximum total elapsed time is around 3 hours and thus around the same as kneeball or baseball games (unless they go to overtime/extra innings). No football games go longer than that because playing football is a lot more taxing than kneeball or baseball.
Kneeball in close to its present form started at Yale around 1888 [17]. It was derived from rugby and football.

Rugby has lots of groping and other forms of man-on-man contact, but that wasn't enough for Walter Camp and his successors as they added the bending over, the quarterback slipping his hands between another player's thighs, and the full-on man-on-man tackling that kneeball fans love today.
Football started as an organized college sport in 1876 when Princeton and Rutgers squared off [18]. Thus, it's older in the USA than kneeball. It too was derived from rugby. The claims of conservative pundits that football is somehow "foreign" rests on the "features" Walter Camp added, like dudes bending over. Otherwise, football and kneeball are both basically English sports that started in the USA in the late 1800s. One isn't any more foreign than the other.

Note too that modern baseball originated in the USA, but it came from English games. Modern hockey appears to have started in Canada but from an earlier English version. The only uniquely American sport appears to be basketball, but all sports have similar games going back thousands of years. It's not like the idea of hitting things with a stick, carrying a ball, kicking a ball, etc etc are new concepts.


The above answers some of the false claims by Coulter [19] [20] and others. Here are responses to some of their other false claims:

Coulter claims "individual achievement is not a big factor in [football]. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls - all in front of a crowd... In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised."

Why does Coulter want kids to be emotionally crushed? And, aside from games involving the youngest players, her claims are delusional. It's easy to find thousands of people discussing individual players' merits or failings during any major football game (or for years later). Individual achievement is a huge issue to most top players: they have egos to match their skills. After a key game, fans discuss the roles individual players played in the win or loss. Coulter might not know who the players are, but everyone else does. As in every other sport, the players have their names and numbers on their uniforms, they tend to cluster in various parts of the field based on their role, and announcers mention their names.

Coulter says "[t]he prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport." Hoping for traumatic injuries is an incorrect and sociopathic definition of sports, but many football players have been forced to sit out whole seasons due to injuries and many players have been humiliated. Coulter is ignorant and has emotional problems.

Coulter claims "[m]ost sports are sublimated warfare". It's just that in kneeball that "warfare" is between U.S. cities. While U.S. hockey, baseball, and basketball teams occasionally play other countries, and we have national teams in those sports and compete in the Olympics, the main example of countries facing off against one another is football. Coulter thinks it's acceptable that the USA should lose to Belgium, but few patriotic Americans agree.

Coulter says "I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer." That's getting closer to her real objections, and yet again she shows she just isn't smart enough to take on those like the New York Times. The NYT hyping something doesn't tell you whether it's a good thing or a bad thing; if they hype walking does that mean you should sit around all day? (If you're a Coulter, it probably does). Just because the NYT has hyped football doesn't make football bad. The correct response is to co-opt.

Coulter claims "we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is". That's not exactly true: the 30 seconds to 10 minutes between each kneeball play is filled with bright shiny graphics and loud music designed to keep the viewer from realizing what a snore-a-thon it is. Some of the NFL graphics are like something from The Onion. You don't see things like that in real football.

Coulter says "[o]ne group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it." If blacks want to keep NFL and NBA as their own, by all means let them have it. For the reasons outlined in this post, whites should avoid enabling kneeball. Don't try to play kneeball, don't watch it, don't refer to it, discourage others from watching it. Instead, whites should focus on whites-friendly sports where they can excel: football, baseball, and (to a lesser extent), hockey.

As for the Coulter's obsession with what the French like, their male and female national teams are almost all of African descent, and their top-level pro teams tend that way. Apparently playing football isn't something middle class French whites do. Which leads to the same unhealthy plantation dynamic as in kneeball: a largely white audience cheering for largely black players. Football in France also has lower revenues than the other Big Five European leagues (England, Spain, Germany, and Italy).

Coulter complains, "Team USA tied Portugal and lost to Germany - and then advanced". Understanding the points system and tables isn't that difficult. This is yet another example of her intellectual laziness. (Note that the NHL uses a similar point system to football, and the table comes into play for the MLB playoffs and probably NFL kneeball too.)

Coulter claims "[kneeball] players are wearing about 100 pounds of gear". Actually, it appears to be 15 pounds or so [21].

Coulter complains about football players taking breaks during very hot weather: "[t]ell that to NFL players in New Orleans or Miami, where regular-season games have reached temperatures of over 100 degrees". There's about 5.5 minutes of actual action in one half of a kneeball game; most of their time is spent milling about or on the bench (unlike football, kneeball players can be substituted in/out at will). They have access to water throughout the game.

If Coulter had bothered to actually watch it, she'd know that football is very different. Players can't just go sit on the bench and come back in. They're constantly moving, and frequently running. Some players run five miles or more per game. Few kneeball players would survive running several miles in 100F weather (for the ones that can run, of course).

Finally, I'll briefly look at a couple of claims by Medved [22]. He says, "[t]he conservative temperament instinctively and admirably recoils at the fashionable and the faddish, rightly preferring the timeless, tried and true." Yet, as we see above, kneeball started in the USA after football. Referring to the USMNT loss to Belgium (then and now one of the top teams in the world) in the 2014 World Cup, he says of claims USMNT had improved to becoming a "middle of the pack team", he says: "The Left celebrates the idea of the USA as a “middle of the pack team”; the Right prefers a demonstration of unassailable American dominance." The USA only does well in kneeball because no one else plays it. It's the same reason why Australian teams keep winning the AFL Grand Final: no one else cares about their version of rugby.

Conservative pundits don't care if we can beat Belgium, but patriotic Americans should.

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[1] "The [Creator’s House in California] has served as a safe haven to protect the leaders of our Black nationalist movement." from https://blacklivesmatter · com/we-want-to-talk-to-you-about-the-creators-house-in-california/
[2] If "white privilege" exists, it's something granted by others. By non-whites? Not likely. Only whites would be the ones granting "privilege. Ergo, the only way whites can use their "privilege" is if most whites are part of a vast conspiracy.
[3] https://www.prnewswire · com/news-releases/players-coalition-urges-passage-of-reparations-bill-hr-40-in-partnership-with-congresswoman-sheila-jackson-lee-301135971.html
[4] https://www.reddit · com/r/nfl/comments/2haic0/nfl_race_distribution_by_position/
[5] https://www.nfl · com/news/league-announces-enhancements-updates-to-diversity-equity-inclusion-efforts https://www.nfl · com/careers/diversity
[6] "MLS is back" was the slogan the MLS used when they first started playing again during the pandemic. Then, a black nationalist group morphed that into "MLS is black".
[7] At the 2022 World Cup, a ludicrous sight was England taking a knee while the Cameroon players just stood there.
[8] https://www.outsports · com/2012/2/1/4052496/football-as-a-homoerotic-ritual-are-players-really-gay
[9] https://bleacherreport · com/articles/585002-the-20-worst-criminals-in-nfl-history
[10] https://bleacherreport · com/articles/907087-not-so-smooth-criminals-25-footballers-and-their-rap-sheets
[11] https://www.nbcsports · com/philadelphia/eagles/scorigami-origins-and-how-it-works-nfl
[12] https://www.stampedeblue · com/2019/8/12/18256932/drive-success-rate-and-other-stats-i-love-points-per-drive-efficiency-td-fg-rate
[13] https://completeconcussions · com/concussion-research/concussion-rates-what-sport-most-concussions/
[14] https://www.youtube · com/watch?v=tL8InP_Srcc
[15] https://www.mirror.co · uk/sport/other-sports/american-sports/how-long-super-bowl-lasts-13626956
[16] https://www.statista · com/statistics/1310998/mlb-game-length/
[17] https://www.history · com/news/who-invented-football
[18] https://www.ussoccer · com/history/timeline
[19] https://www.clarionledger · com/story/opinion/columnists/2014/06/25/coulter-growing-interest-soccer-sign-nations-moral-decay/11372137/
[20] https://anncoulter · com/2014/07/02/soccer-part-deux/
[21] https://www.latimes · com/sports/story/2019-12-22/ask-sam-farmer-how-much-does-nfl-uniform-weigh
[22] http://www.michaelmedved · com/column/libs-really-love-soccer/