Why different rulesets?

[Robert Goodman]

Originally Posted by Rich Ives

Hockey was invented in Canada

Wrong.

But anyway, if there were only one code for each game, there'd be only 1 kind of football in the world. You might as well ask why there are separate codes for softball & hardball, when obviously it's the same basic game. Come to think of it, there wouldn't be cricket or stickball either, let alone Finnish and some more exotic versions of baseball.

Maybe what you're asking is, why have rule codes that are so similar to each other as to invite confusion? Like, nobody's going to accidentally slip a football into a baseball game, but someone might accidentally slip a 12" circ. softball into a 16" game, or whistle the ball dead for encroachment as in Fed in a NCAA football game. Is that what you're asking? That they make games distinct enough to avoid gotchas?