"Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

These wikipedia topics have paragraphs that talk about the evolution of the sport and its relationship to rugby and other "football" games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_football

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_football

These were found by typing "en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football" into the browser's address bar and reading and browsing around to find the history and etymology.

Ok, so basically, what I learned from those entries: in 1876 someone changed the rules of the game, but forgot to change the name.

But also remembered to change the name of the original game.

You still kick the ball in American football. Once every four plays, if your team sucks.

American football is called "football" because back when they named it the game was a lot closer to European football than it is to modern American football.

Common ancestry. Football has been played in various forms since antiquity. Schools throughout England had developed wildly divergent rules for their own football variants until they were standardized as association football, or soccer. The rules at Rugby still proved popular, however, and gave rise to the sport of rugby, which in turn evolved into American football, gridiron, handegg, whatever you want to call it.

soccer is just slang for "association football" and this whole soccer/football debate is a very modern contrivance.

I googled "American "football" is a game played by carrying a ball in one's hands, or throwing it by hand. Why on earth would someone come up with such stupid name as "football" for this kind of game?" and this was the first result: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-American-football-called-footba...

It's funny how often Brits get offended at that and "American" spelling in general. They don't know enough history to realize they actually invented them and changed, not Americans.

the ball is shaped like a foot, unlike a soccer ball.

The journalist is the pretentious one. Like the dude saying football instead of soccer was something out of 18th century England... Soccer is how it's called, in the journalist opinion. Damn Americans...