Talking Balls

Is football a game? What about a football?

A football is not a game. It is a toy you use to play a game. It's a physical object designed specifically for a game.

Football is a game. It's a set of rules that define winning and losing, permitted actions, violations and penalties. Although there are written laws of association football, the basics are quite flexible. You can twist a lot of variables and still, basically, be playing football. You don't need to play for 45 minutes, or with regulation nets, or 11 a side. You don't need to play offside or fixed goalies or even fouls, if you're very violent or very honest.

You don't even need a football. Playing football with a tennis ball in a park with makeshift goalposts is something you should do at least once in your life. You can also use a can, or a beach ball. Some people can't see a stone on the pavement without taking round a few imaginary defenders.

You dont need to use your football just to play football. There are other games: volleyball is good with a football. Basketball less so, but it works. Tennis, using your feet over a net, is very good. So is golf, against an object across the park with a ball each. There are more outlandish things: hide it in a garden and send kids to find it, throw it at stacks of tins, build a giant pinball set for it.

All this is pretty obvious for a football, but it applies across all games (and toys). Chess is not a set of pieces: a chess set is a toy that lets you play the game Chess. Nor is a disc containing the program *Quake* a game: it is a program for playing the game Quake. Most games have many subtle variants: Quake can be played single- or multi-player, and each level and map is a subtle variant. A deck of playing cards is possibly the most flexible toy ever created - except for a ball.