Yeah, the sight of the Poms' noses getting ground in the dirt again would be really cool in 3D.

I've never been a big football fan but occasionally would tune in to watch the chargers after the traitors left L.A. But the chargers have been pretty much shit the last couple years, so can't really blame even the US correspondents for El Reg to not bother with this. To be honest even the hard core football junkies where I work couldn't give a damn about this match up either. Meh... Meh I say, that is all.

That's cute how you put quotes around 'Football'. Not really necessary, since you already prefaced it with 'American'. Can't we just all get along?

All Blacks - Pah! Watch the Wallabies in full flight that'll get you better value for your 3D experience.

Then again even the All Blacks could beat the pommies.

>and the son of Art Modell, the Raven's owner from 1996 to 2004

Even the dreaded Wiki can supply better info than that ! Art Modell owned a team called the Browns and the name was changed after they left Cleveland, which means he owned the team slightly longer than suggested.

I love FOOTBALL (as played over the pond) but even I cant find much enthusiasm for the game mentioned, the Bolts should have no trouble with the lame Raiders.

3D pr0n will drive the takeup, as with VHS vs Betamax.

On a technical note, what exactly is required for a TV to handle a 3D signal? If it's just a stereoscopic broadcast, then surely a a normal 2D TV will just play one of the streams as normal, and a 3D TV will just play two of them, linked by some little tag in the channel guide?

And as the early adopters go out to buy their new fangled 3D idiot boxes, perhaps someone will put two 2D TVs side by side, each showing one of the 2 3D streams, and cross their eyes a bit?

Lets hope this doesn't catch on over here - its bad enough seeing Rooneys ugly mug in Hi-Def, but in 3-D as well??

It doesn't bare thinking about...

Oh yeah - could someone please tell our Septic cousins that the name "football" has been taken, and to pick their own bloody name for that useless "sport" of theirs?

"the game will still be merely a dispiriting contest between the thoroughly embarrassing Oakland Raiders and the nearly equally woeful San Diego Chargers.

When there's a 3D broadcast of the English rugby team against the All Blacks at Twickenham, The Reg may pay more attention."

Why? Because then only 50% of the teams on display will be shit?

;)

Wasn't there a demo like this for one of the last season 6 nations games, England v Scotland I think?

@CTG I hope by Poms you mean the English side and certainly not the Welsh

3D HD porn? Eugh.

Couple of points -

1) 'football' is not a trademark; Association Football, Rugby Football, and American Football are all developments of the original mass-brawl 'football' contests that used to (and in some areas, most famously at Haxey, still do) pit village against village or pub against pub. In the root games the 'ball' is very rarely kicked, more shoved slowly in one way or the other by weight of numbers.

Insisting on denying the use of the word 'football' to any form other than the Association Football version is like insisting that only X Factor contestants can be called singers.

2) American football coverage leads in all sorts of innovative television coverage techniques. To name but one, that camera that swoops over the pitch giving a birds-eye view of Walcott tearing down the wing, or Ronaldo pretending he's just been shot for the fifteen time this afternoon? Gridiron's had that for years. Maybe this 3D thing is going to prove to be a gimmick, but I've lost count of the number of innovations I've seen on the gridiron coverage and then start appearing on UK football coverage about a year later.

3) Yeah, the Chargers are still poo though. Mind you I'm a 49ers fan so I've no room to talk at the moment :)

The sight of men on padding, standing around chatting for 90% of the game, all in 3D, how exciting...

...is that the version of Rugby where they're too puny/scared to play without full body armour, and have to stop every few seconds because they're getting tired?

Pathetic.

What the governing body of English rugby union called? The Rugby "Football" Union. Here's a ladder to help you get off that high horse.

@ TheOtherMe

Don't confuse the Welsh with the English, the Wallabies beat England and lost to Wales.

El Reg, get a life.

"Football". What else would you call a game where the outcomes of games are decided by the quality of the defensive and offensive "Kicking"?

Rather similar, wouldn't you say, to the "Rugby Football" of which you speak (but conveniently omit the "Football")?

Or did you think that "Association Football" is the only sport with a right to be called "Football", and other names should be found for the "Rugby Football League", "Rubgy Football Union", "American Football", "Gaelic Football", "Australian Rules Football", "Heady-Football", "Elephant Football" ...

"When there's a 3D broadcast of the English rugby team against the All Blacks at Twickenham, The Reg may pay more attention"

Presumably because, in that case, only one of the teams is embarrassingly poor?

American handball is rubbish, no match for the glorious game of football played by the rest of the world.

Yes there was MR AC:

http://www.hdtv-news.co.uk/2008/03/14/bbc-tests-3d-hdtv-broadcast-of-six-nations-rugby/

Of course, those of use with a proper education will already know that "football" really describes the game played to the rules of the Rugby Football Union as opposed to the upstart game of "Association Football" :-)

I hope you realise that putting football in quotes doesn't make you look edgy or cool - it's really quite sad and pathetic. It's American Football - no, it's not the same football we play, but it's football nontheless.

As a fully grown (but not really matured) adult, I have to say I really didn't buy into this whole kung-fu panda thing from them. But I've just seen the trailer to that Monsters v Aliens thing, and I'm sure I could get into that movie! What with its 1950s US Alien paranoia combined with a smidgeon of Godzilla or 'the blob' type light hearted disaster/horror movie action. Sounds fun!

Whats that you say about 3D? Yeah yeah keep em coming.

Come on forget the difference between handball and kicking it around with your feet, where is the technology?

Is it using red and blue glasses blur-o-vision, alternate frame switching glasses flicker-o-vision, or side by side picture cross-eyed-squint-o-vision?

Say what you like about Association Football, but it does serve its purpose of keeping the lower classes sufficiently distracted from starting a revolution.

I never realised there were so many easily-offended Americans reading the Register.

Reg, I like this angle. Can we also start referring to al-Qaeda as "terrorists", and keep the real term just for the obviously more legitimate IRA, ETA, LRA et al?

Could only have been invented at a private school. "Oh look, Ellis has picked up the ball and invented a new game - how spiffing".

Try that at a state comprehensive - "What the f*ck are you doing picking up the ball you stupid f*cking t**t"

I've always taken a rather jaded perspective on the whole grammar-nazism I've encountered on the Reg - but now I realize that something as simple as two tiny little marks - in this case a " - can really bring out a profound emotional response in people. Two bad it requires pressing two keys to type, shift + ' or I might start "quoting" all my "posts" for "effect" :p

@Christopher P. Martin: In a word - yes. See Stu's quite accurate summation in the post above yours for further confirmation.

air quotes for the win

I have to say, as a Brit living in the ex-colonies who is routinely forced to hear a niche sport called football, and real football called soccer, I did like your sarcasm (yes, those people with a sense of humour failure further up the thread should look up sarcasm). It was neither big nor clever, just downright funny.

"Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, who appeared at this August's Intel Developer Forum to announce that all future Dreamworks animated flicks would be produced in 3D..."

Well, given that they can't actually make good movies, I guess they've got to have SOMETHING to one-up Pixar. Watching the quality of Dreamworks vs. Pixar flicks would be kind of funny if it weren't so lopsided as to actually make me embarrassed for Dreamworks...

Really, American Football in 3D?

4 hours of dull interspersed with occasional 45 second bouts of panicked running around?

Sounds a lot like my sex life and that's no fun to watch in 3D either.

was invented because Yale and Harvard each played different versions of football - one Rugby, one Association - and they couldn't agree which one to play for the Varsity matches, so they compromised by combining the two. So american football is a bastard (incestuous even, as Rugby is the son of Association football)

The name "Soccer" was invented because an American journalist miss-heard Association football referred to as "Assoca" (That abreviation has died happily.) as opposed to "Rugger" and reported it as "Soca" or Soccer. Every one else in the world refers to Association football as Football/Fussball/ Futball but for one country.

Let them carry on in their ignorance, but please don't let that mis-heard, mis-spelled abomination catch on in the real world.

In Football one kicks a ball with the foot - the etymology is evident. Carrying an ovoid while dressed as Judge Dredd doesn't count.

i love it how they demote football yet we came up with the 3d techonology. we dont have to worry about looking at people with bad teeth here. i like to see the brits come up with something techonologivcally advanced? we got sports covered. i cant remember the last time we had a international rugby game played here... as an exibition and actually sold out tickets , miami vs new york in london, hmm.. and whos this columnist? or should i say "colon ist ". and for those that say oh we didnt realise americans would get upset you dont need quotes to distinguish what football it is we sure as hell konw the raiders dont play the u.k. !

oh yeah and Go Dolphins!

Historical explanations that contradict wikipedia and google??? Is that allowed?

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

http://www.soccer-fans-info.com/origin-of-the-word-soccer.html

Just imagine ball those cheerleaders in glorious 3D.

Yummy

... at least "Football" with its warped meaning stays in the US.

However, "America" in the English language no longer refers to the *continent*, but to a specific country composed of ex-colonies. ;) Oh, and the US education system teaches about 6 continents in the world, ignoring the fact that the Olympic rings represent the world continents, and it only has 5.

Maybe"football" is a stupid name, but come on, like the UK doesn't have a bunch of old words that just stuck, and don't really make sense? Sure it should be called American "Rugby" or even just "the Game" as the Superbowl is still the most watched event on TV in the world. I for one nominate American footbal to be henceforth called "SmashBall" as it is much more descriptive.

oh and @ Christopher P. Martin :

I would love to see ANY Brit on one of your rugby teams take a hit from a steroid blasted 350 pound linebacker and get up afterwards... what a naive comment, all your players would be dead 5 minutes into the game without the pads. Did you see what they did to Joe Thesimans leg? - (maybe you could find it on net, I can still feel that one from just watching.)

Americans should get over the quotes though, this is a UK rag, and of course they have to right to call it out, the rest of the world has a different meaning for that word already. "soccer" what a dumb word, that sport surely deserves the title football, as they actually play with their feet.

@Nordrick Framelhammer YES!!! The true heart of a "football", oops I mean Smashball game, the cheerleaders, HD and 3D, sign me up!

(Reg, how could you pick on a sport without wich there would be no "Debbie does Dallas?" - arguably one of the most seen films in history?)

Actually, it was about fifteen, twenty years ago, when quarterbacks started wearing kevlar vests and linemen started wearing those plexiglas visors under their face cages to keep their eyes from being gouged, that I thought they'd progressed to the point where they should just play Rollerball instead.

Re: US "footballer" vs UK rugby player: Honestly, man, how many 350-pound guys have been in the NFL who weren't one-off freaks of some kind -- like the perversely-legendary William "Fridge" Perry, who iirc was actually flirting with 400? The biggest linemen I've seen level off around the 300lb neighborhood, but, hell; if you're a rugby player in no gear being plowed by one of those guys, the missing 50 pounds doesn't matter that much.

Re: Joe Theismann: indeed, ironically, iirc, vs. Chicago, in one of The Fridge's earlier appearances, Joe received what many of us Washington fans knew as "the best break the 'Skins ever had". I don't think it was the Fridge who actually did it to him, though (It's a convoluted-enough saga for most Americans -- especially Washington fans -- that I won't even attempt to explain this to the Brits on here).

Re: Cheerleaders: Whoa, damn' straight on _that_ one. Didn't somebody further up the thread mention that pr0n was the one thing that'd drive 3DTV adoption?

Personally, I can't wait for the first time they run a sideline play, and the receiver is chased out of bounds, is unable to stop and crashes into one of the 3D sideline cameras. Damn', I'll bet that'll be even more awesome than the fight scene in "House Of Wax" where Charles Bronson picks up a chair and throws it at the bad guy, and the bad guy ducks and the chair appears to fly out of the screen and the people in the center of the first four or five rows are all lunging out of the way.

The only problem I can see is if the camera does one of those crowd shots, and focuses on one of those gangs of drunken idiots who show up at games shirtless with letters written on themselves that spell out stuff like "HELLO NBC" -- even in December, even in Green Bay in December -- in an attempt to get on TV. Can you imagine crap like _that_ in 3D? Hell, catching sight of those doorknobs in HD is bad enough.

"Every one else in the world refers to Association football as Football/Fussball/ Futball but for one country."

Sorry, you lose the internets. In NZ and Australia, "football" tends to refer to Rugby Union/League or Australian Rules (dependent on which you're in (and which region)). Soccer is still used to refer to Association Football (although not exclusively, I grant - ex-pats tend to use "Football" for Association Football and "Rugby" or "Aussie Rules" otherwise - whereas those born and bred tend to use "Soccer" and "Football" instead)

"All Blacks - Pah! Watch the Wallabies in full flight that'll get you better value for your 3D experience."

Not if they're playing Wales, you won't.

Cymru am byth!

"I would love to see ANY Brit on one of your rugby teams take a hit from a steroid blasted 350 pound linebacker and get up afterwards..."

Your monster would have to catch him first. If he could do so before he ran out of breath - I'll be nice and say one minute - then yes, I conceed a rugby player would be injured. Of course he'd be back in play in the second half.

"It's only a flesh wound!"