Austrian Rules Football
October 26, 2011
The most exciting finish was the Michigan State Fighting Chippewas' win over the Wisconsin Badgers. Now I'm still a bit confused about these overtime rules, especially in the Big Ten. I remember tuning in one game a decade ago where Michigan State and Michigan were going into overtime tied at 3 and they settled it by playing a game of hockey.
This time they wrestled around the goal line until the ball broke the plane. After a while I realized they decided to settle it by playing rugby. At first I thought they were playing a different foreign game: Austrian Rules Football.
Austrian Rules Football was devised in the very violent 1920s. Players were allowed to kick the ball like in soccer, shove each other near the goal line, punch each other in the jimmy, and slash each other with knives and, eventually, swords. It was very popular in decadent Vienna and fans looked forward to the match between the home team and Salzburg.
A vicious young Vienna player, Ernst Schmidt, had sharpened an extra long sword for the match. Late in a tie game he used it to stab a pair of Salzburg players, shoving it into one player's left side, through him, and out the other player's right side. As the two men started to collapse, the leftmost man's right leg instinctively swung forward, launching the ball toward the goal and past a stunned goal keeper for the win.
Due to the carnage on the field, it was decided that live action Austrian Rules Football was not a good idea. But, thanks to Ernst's inventiveness, the sport was preserved in a different, inanimate form.
Creative Austrian inventors recognized the deceased Salzburg players by making wooden mockups of the players, shoving a steel rod through them, and building a table game where impaled players could shoot the ball past the goalie. And that's how the fine table game Fussball was born.
And now you know the rest of the story.