Mayan Football

Team sports are based on the art of war and the Mayan version combines both to the extreme. It is most extreme because it ends in death for the victor. The captain of the winiing team is sacrificed to the gods as an honor at the end of the game.

Mayan ball was difficult, very fast paced, and bloody in the end. It appeared to have elements of soccer and basketball combined. It used two rubbery balls, a large heavy soccer-type ball and a hand ball, which had to be hoisted through a stone loop high on a stone wall of the grassy playing court.

There are legends that football as we know it began with the Vikings entering the New World for conquest. Things did not go as planned and one of the indigenous people cut the head of a Viking off. The natives started kicking it around and formed a game.

These legends may or may not be based in some fact, but it is certain that the Mayans had their own blood sacrificial version of football a few centuries ago.

The ball players wore a stone belt, shoulder pads, elbow pads, knee pads and other garments. The idea was to use the stone belt and padded parts to play the game.

The ball court is T-shaped. Grass extends through the opening between two stone platforms that sit in front of one another. These platforms slope down and there are a total of six stone macaw headed statues divided between the platforms.

In order to score, players hit the ball against a macaw head. They lost points if the ball hit the ground instead, because the large ball would wake up the evil gods in their spiritual underworld inside the earth.

The King of the tribe would announce the winner after the game was over and the score confirmed. Hundreds and even thousands of people came out to the court to watch these games, especially to witness the bloody sacrifice of the winner at the end.

There would be some sort of small flat-topped pyramid in the center of the court and surrounding grounds and the King would step up to the top. He announced the winning team and captain. Then he climbed down and strode over to a spherical rock. The captain walked over and lay backwards over the rock.

The king picked up an obsidian nick and slit the captain's throat and let the blood drain, finally cutting the head completely off. The blood was offered in a special sacrifice bowl to a statue of the god of choice.