A discussion retreived from another place:
>doesn't it figure that Paterno would tie the record by beating my Northwestern, and then beak it by beating your OSU? I do love and admire JoeP, but did he have to do it *that way?
I don't even know what sport we're talking about here, but what does beaking it mean?
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Bingley, the sport is football. Joe Paterno is the 70-something head coach of the Penn State team, and with a victory over Ohio State last Saturday, he broke the all-time record for wins. "Beak" is a typo for "break."
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Oh dear, and beak it sounded so evocative of something or other, too. I thought it might be when one of the players hurls himself face down on the ball in American football to score a try? a goal? whatever they do score in American football anyway.
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I think that you are thinking of a "touchdown," Bingley.
When a team carries the ball (or catches it and retains possession in) the opponent's endzone, the team scores a touchdown, which is worth 6 points.
Other ways to score in football:
Point after touchdown: Upon scoring a touchdown, a team has an opportunity to kick the ball through the upright goalposts. If it does so, it gets another point.
Two-point conversion: Upon scoring a touchdown, a team may, instead of kicking the point after, attempt in a single play to again penetrate the endzone with the ball. If it does so, it gets two more points.
Field goal: a team may, when it has possession of the ball during regular play, attempt to kick the ball through the goalposts. If it does so, it gets three points.
Safety: if a team traps the other team in its own endzone with the ball, the trapping team scores two points.
For more football terms, and more precise definitions, see
http://www.firstbasesports.com/glossaries/ftbglos.htm
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quiz, Sparteye (to which I'm not certain my answer is correct): is it possible for a football game to end with a score of 1-0, and if so, how?
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>a score of 1-0
And would you read that as "one nil"?
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Apparently the Canadian Football League (CFL) has slightly different rules about numbers of downs and scoring which some say make the game more exciting than the American version. I'm not much into football so I'm not sure, but my national pride urged me to post this bit of info anyway. The very little football I have watched was CFL football, during the Grey Cup (our finals, equivalent to the US Superbowl but played a good two months earlier, and often in the snow). Any Canadian football fans on the board want to expand on that? (Rouspeteur/BelM/plutarch?)
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Funny you should mention that, Kieva, since I amost remarked in my prior post that a score of "one" is the only mathematically impossible score in football.
And we would pronounce that score "one-zero" or "one-oh" or "one-nothing," Bingley, but never "one-nil."
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The major differences between American and Canadian (ha! go ahead, everybody, fight about that terminology!) are: (1) the dimensions of the playing field, the Canadian field being larger; (2) the number of players, 11 in American, 12 in Canadian; (3) three downs to advance 10 yards in Canadian, but four downs in American; (4) in Canadian, a team can score one point for a rouge, awarded to a kicking or punting team if an opposing player is trapped in the end zone on a return play.
For more details, see
http://www.cuug.ab.ca/~leblancj/stampeders/compare.html---
Sorry, didn't get time to add in all the poster's names but you are sure to know who you are.
OP
