Sportsball

Sportsball is a uniquely Illuminatian game of strategy, skill, endurance, and athletic prowess. Sportsball is the athletic national pastime of Illuminatia. It is a highly accessible game enjoyed by people of all athletic abilities. Sportsball is easily the most popular sport in Illuminatia.

Sportsball is played on an amateur and a professional level, with amateur clubs situated throughout Illuminatia and professional teams stationed in many of the continent's major cities. Professional clubs are marketed responsibly and generate considerable revenue for their home cities, while utilizing players who are employed for their athletic talent on a part-time basis. This allows athletes the opportunity to enjoy a balanced professional and personal life while pursuing an athletic career in parallel with a professional career in an unrelated discipline. Professional sportsball is organized by the National Sportsball League.

Sportsball, as a game, is played either outdoors on a field or indoors on a large court, pitting at least two opposing teams populated by a varying numbers of players. Gameplay takes place within a vaguely set period of time using running, jumping, skipping, and frolicking maneuvers involving the relocation of a ball or balls which may or may not be round, using physical motions including kicking, throwing, head-butting, bouncing upon, carrying, or striking with a club or other object. Points are scored based upon the movement of the balls in play in relation to various defined thresholds.

It should be noted that sportsball games at a professional level are more often played on a large field outdoors. Sportsball games are also most often played with three or four teams competing on the same field, and with more than one ball, most often of a non-spherical shape. The balls of an irregular non-spherical shape—usually with pyramidal, conical, and prismatic elements—allow the gameplay to be enhanced by the unpredictable behavior of such a ball.

Professional and amateur sportsball teams alike have a tendency to name themselves in a self-deprecatory manner as an enduring reverence to superstition and irony. In much the same way dancers, actors, and other performers of the performing arts of the ancient days of Earth gave a nod to superstition by using the ironic idiom "break a leg" for fear of a wish of "good luck" begetting bad luck, sportsball athletes today in Illuminatia give their teams ironic and self-deprecatory names for fear of being punished for exhibiting arrogance or demonstrating too much of a boastful attitude. As a result, most NSBL sportsball teams will be found to have ironic or comically offensive club names.

Sportsball in general enjoys a much higher mainstream profile and a greater popularity in Illuminatia among athletes and fans than other competitive pursuits, such as competitive corporal defenestration or competitive elimination.

Gambling on the outcome of professional sportsball games is not prohibited in Illuminatia, although bettors risk being held liable for monetary damages if they cannot prove that they have absolutely no direct association that could potentially exert influence upon the outcome of the game subject to the wager made, either with any of the playing teams or entities that support or profit from the activities of those teams. For this reason, sportsball betting is inherently limited to a subset of people lacking business or investment ties to any sportsball clubs or benefitting entities.