It's called soccer here because we already had a football.

The popularity of soccer is growing here in the US. Salt Lake City has a professional soccer team that is playing its first season. I have yet to see a game, but they get large crowds attending.

>Yeah I knew that you guys call it "soccer" - the word's a corruption and abbrev. of "Association football". Some old pundits over here call it that too. It may be a low-scoring game (but, let's face it, gridiron and rugby are only high-scoring because you get several points for a touch down and points for, in rugby, the following "conversion" - over the crossbar, and drop goals) but you've got a neck to call it SLOW. Watching gridiron is like watching the two armies setting up for Gettysburg: having to wait while different teams within a team come on and off, depending on whether they're offensive or defensive, etc. It's like watching paint dry in between the short, violent burts of action.
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>Over here, by the way, there are 2 types of rugby: Union and League (the more professional version), with slightly different formats ( 15 or 13 in a team, e.g) and rules, but both keep moving (league even more so than union).