The thing I personally despise about football is that it is basically "made for TV". The constant stoppages for commercials make it terrible. I watched a rugby match the day before an away game and it was just so much more exciting because it didn't stop every ten seconds. Football just stops like every ten seconds, if it had a little faster tempo it would be more exciting, and it feels like the reason it's not is so they can cram in more commercials.
> Stadiums and Cities Matter - Even the stadium and climate in a city factor into a football team’s strategy.
The air force academy is a fair bit higher than Denver or even Colorado Springs itself (the cadet area is 7258 feet above sea level). I'd have to check but it's probably one of the highest stadium altitudes for any college.
Physical exertion at those altitudes is significantly more difficult if you're not acclimated to the altitude, ideally living up there but the first week can be tough if you aren't extremely cardio-fit. So Air Force had a built of an inbuilt home-field advantage, and when they went down to lower altitudes we had a bit of an advantage there too (living at altitude and coming back to sea level was wild, I could rock aerobic activity at sea level, you just didn't get out of breath much at all).
The crowd would heckle the away team in the gates, chanting: "the air is rare!"
Didn't stop us from sucking though, the football team was terrible.
In the spirt of the article, maybe it would help to think of football as a turn-based game, rather than a real-time game. Most gamers have a marked preference for one but can still appreciate the other.
That’s the ideal parallel. There’s so much math to the game in the coaching and strategy.
Clemson’s rise in college football has been entirely driven by it too. About 10 years ago we hired an offensive coordinator named Chad Morris who has a math degree. Stories about the detail in his playbooks was crazy. Player acceleration, top speed, directional changes, probability, specific angles. Almost every play had 3 things developing at once on a clock in the QB’s head based largely on his field of vision.
After Morris left, Tony Elliot took over. Elliot has an engineering degree (mechanical I think).
He missed our playoff game against Ohio State this year and the offense didn’t look anything close to what it was. Covid.
There’s just so much going on with every play it’s crazy. Every detail of every player on the field matters for each play. It’s not a sport where one guy can carry your team.
We played against colorado college in college. This is a bit lower than the AFA field but not too much.
We just showed up the day before early and spent the day acclimating. It was like you were on your 2nd or 3rd wind sprint instead of your first. However by that point in football season we were running 80 plays without breaks in practice (the same as a big game but shorter time). It was annoying but not a factor.
Really funny thing was, because we played in hotter shittier weather, we were actually in better shape. And the game was in the low 80s. Colorado team melted, we went strong the whole game. Also helped we smoked them.
Also did an aussie rules tourney at the AFA about 10 years back. Much more running. We all showed up a day early. Just like skiing, it's not great the first day and you're pretty good the 2nd. Third day and everyone was normal. Sure we rotated players slightly more but unless it's soccer with limited subs it doesn't really matter. Or I'm sure what they're having cadets do, aka just running around with gear on long distance.
Most sports are more ATP based (windsprints) than full cardio based, otherwise everyone would just be moving at a constant rate.
I actually dislike a lot of non-american sports because there's no chance to do anything else. The best thing to me even at a game is to go, hang out, relax, talk shit with your friends, and watch the game. Not have the game take up all of your attention. I'm not paid to analyze them, so there's nothing so important about sports that I need to pay attention to them as I would for studying for an exam. Unless it's the playoffs, then sure.
> The best thing to me even at a game is to go, hang out, relax, talk shit with your friends, and watch the game. Not have the game take up all of your attention.
If the sport is actually engaging and doesn't stop every 2 minutes then you'll find it naturally takes up all your attention.
That was the point. If you can't spare any attention for your friends, then watching the game is more like watching a movie together in a theater and less like having a dinner party with background entertainment.
You don't get my point. It is not fulfilling to me to spend that much time passively watching someone else succeed or fail because of my city of birth.
My attention span is also very add. Only things like coding or math can hold my attention.
I played sports highschool, college and 9 years after. Sports are great when you are a competitor. To be good they have to consume a good portion of your life. Which is fine, you are exerting direct control on the world.
As a 45 year old sitting in a pub you have no impact on a team. Nor do you by angrily posting to internet forums or yelling at talk show hosts.
Spending 1-3 days a week 3 hours at a time getting very worked up about a thing you have little control over while gathering a side of mild alcoholism isn't great. Being sulky and short with your loved ones isn't either.
After college I started watching the nfl. My team was very good senior year, mediocre the next, and a fieldgoal away from greatness. The next year they were dog shit. I noticed I was short with my mom on Sundays which was our hangout time because of nfl. She watched sports so she'd have a thing to talk to us about. I had to step back. The team was purposefully rebuilding. I found new topics to talk to my mom about.
I get a lot of home repair, gardening, and side projects done while watching baseball or football in the background.
Sports fandom is best when they enrich your like not when they consume it.
For anyone north of the Murray River who is a bit confused about Aussie Rules, the game is quite aerobic.
The field is a cricket oval at ~200 yards by ~150 yards (~15x the area of a US Football field). There are 18 players on the field per team, for a total of 36. The game is broken up into 20 minute quarters with ~7 min of stoppage time per quarter. With all the breaks, it's about 2.5 hours long. Though it varies by match, you basically are doing windsprints the entire time while the other team is trying to climb on you and knee you in the head. Those guys are in very good shape even for professional athletes.
I enjoyed aussie rules as rugby seems almost as brutal as american football without the protection. Also at the time there was way more neck down contact. I saw multiple neck breaks that way 10 years of football.
Aussie had more glancing contact and seemed weirdly safer. for values of safe.
I would not play it at the level the pros do. They're brutal. Watched 2 games from the G and one from the gabba while I was in oz summer Aug 2019.
This always seemed like an advantage in NFL football to me, not a drawback. Sports like Australian Football and Soccer get boring to watch because there are no breaks. The continous action gets monotonous.
Football has the action broken down in breaks. Most times you have a good idea what the next play will be (for instance, 3rd and 10, its going to be a longer pass) producing suspense.
The other sports are like watching long distance running with extra rules.
This feels like it's spoken from a position of not having watched an AFL game.
It's not at all like soccer because the number of players and size of field make trying to just keep possession and slow the game down a much more difficult thing to do (it is attempted sometimes). AFL also has 4 breaks (for the quarters), unlikes Soccers 1 for the half.
I find all three entertaining to watch, but I don't thing the "breaks" make NFL a "better" experience. :)
That's just because of the TV timeouts and greedy network deals. It wasn't always like that. You may have a better experience if you watch a sport like hockey, where there are only 2 or 3 TV timeouts per period, and all of the games are finished within 2.5 hours.
I love how it's turn-based. Everything is purposeful and strategic with football. Whereas games like hockey and basketball are very fluid, the strategy is more vague. There's a general sense of what you want to do, but it depends on a lot of factors. You could technically have a player deke between every player and score a goal or basket, but that would essentially be impossible in football.
With football, it's a reset every down, and everyone is ready, so the strategy is critical.
This is what the XFL was supposed to fix, but that didn’t end well...
But seriously, it’s even worse in person. I’ve only ever gone to one football game in person and it was almost unbearable. At least on TV you have commercials to see.
Going to football in person is best done when you are in your early 20's, a college student, drunk, and a student of the university whose college football team is playing at home.
Things I can never appreciate. People (predominantly African American) are getting their brains curried for the sake of other people (who are stereotypically if not predominantly white). If it weren't for nostalgia or the fact that too many Americans consider it in their bloods to watch this sport, such a cruel game shouldn't exist in this form.
The racist undertones don't seem to stop there. I watched a game in A&M and it was surreal - a good fraction of the team is black but almost no one in the stadium was. And the quarterback and coach are white, and are commanding a bunch of black kids to smush their brains permanently. Given that at least roman gladiators were paid professionally, college football sounds far closer to slave-driven thunderdome scenarios than even the Colosseum did.
Indeed. There seem to be fairly obvious ways to make the sport safer but that's not popular; perhaps if the demographics of the affected matched the demographics of the audience there might be more empathy!
I don't understand the racism here. Millions of white kids, consisting of every position in football, would kill to get a chance to play professionally. You're acting like only black kids are allowed to be linemen.
No one watching it is racist for doing so, but to deny there's no racist undertone here is just trying to live under a rock. Especially after pointing out the stats.
I'm confused where you get the impression that this poster is acting like 'only black kids are allowed to be linemen'. Outside of quarterback, the offensive line is where you're more likely to see white players.
You'll typically see black players mostly represented in the 'skill' positions (receiver, running back, linebacker, defensive back -- basically any position that relies of speed and quickness). This comes from generations of racist attitudes pushing black players to the 'athletic' positions while keeping white players for the positions that require 'intelligence', 'grit', and 'leadership'.
Also, it's not just the line that suffers brain injury.
I never suggested they're doing it for their fans. They're doing it for the money and fame, or rather the perception of the same, given that the average nfl player doesn't actually make that much over their very short career but pay back dearly with problems all through their life. Basketball players also mostly end up bankrupt after their careers, but at least their brain is intact?
What if they weren't making "millions and millions" of dollars, but instead "a million or two total in their entire career"? Would that change it for you?
Keep in mind, this career takes about 8 years to learn (high school, college), and you're only able to execute at a paying level for 2.5 years, on average before you can never play again for money.
I hope not! I'm probably the person with the least skin in the game tbh - just a visiting Indian student for whom the entire thing looks like a documentary if anything. If there's a reason you think my statements might be biased, I'm all ears! I did point out why the other side (football lovers? White people? Suppose there's some differences!) Might be biased, viz. Growing up with (mostly watching, not playing) this sport all their life. It's understandable to feel offended, so I'm not offended if this offends you or anyone!
I would start by understanding the culture of black athleticism in the USA and how that has literally lead to social change, integration, and continues to drive progress forward.
Not an expert at race relations, can you provide some links? What limited I know, prominent African Americans (cough Obama cough) thought that this sports as a method of social change is actually counterproductive?
It also makes common sense. Are you telling me the system that allows social integration only if you prove yourself in the playground is actually an acceptable system in any level? Especially with a (for lack of better word) blood sport like football or boxing?
I hope this can clear up some things. As others have mentioned, looking at the crowd at a typical public event in the US is likely to only be about ~10% black attendees, which will make the crowd look white. Further, we have wealth stratified by race, where black folks are less likely to be spending on expensive stadium seats for a televised game.
Statistically, football viewership among black Americans is higher than among white Americans. It’s something like 75% of the population for the former, and 55% for the latter.
I used racism to explain a game with clearly biased diversity numbers (most linebackers black, most quarterbacks white, most audience white especially college football). Not trying to explain why frogs are gay because of racism.
So what most linebarckers are black (aren't most players are black anyway?), most quarterbacks are white and most audience white? Why should they be "diverse" in color, what's the point?
The lack of diversity in the coaching ranks is the result of structural racism. The lack of black quarterbacks is a direct result both structural and often overt racism where black quarterbacks are considered to have less intelligence and leadership ability than white quarterbacks.
At the same time, black players are overrepresented in what are called 'skill positions' -- those requiring more speed and athleticism.
To ignore this is either to:
1.) Not really know football culture; or
2.) Be intentionally obtuse
Commentators like Bomani Jones speak often about these subjects, if you'd like to read up on it.
It sounds to me like people are being put in their positions where they are the most effective. Skewing any other way for the sake of having a "equal representation" is simply silly imo. We see the same thing in tech where we want everyone being represented regardless of skills and the business goals and just to have that social justice satisfaction for a brief time.
I'm getting real tired of this rhetoric already..ironically it's parroted largely by non-minorities.
Used to be the claim was sports were racist for not allowing black people to play, now it's racist that they do and that black people succeed at higher rates in sports.
When you're looking to claim racism, it doesn't matter what the underlying situation is, you'll find a way to make it racist.
It's when the sport they play and succeed also causes permanent Brain damage that it becomes hard to ignore. Basketball is also racist slightly (white billionaires owning black teams) but at least their sanity is left intact.
Are you suggesting it’s less racist to have less blacks people and more white people?
Asians have basically no representation in the NFL. In your opinion, should we limit blacks in the NFL to their population percentage so that it’s more fair, and give those spots to more whites and Asians?
The population of Texas is 12.8% black, slightly lower than the US average of 13.4%. For the stands to be mostly black people at a public event (in most areas where they represent a small share of population) would mean that the event was overwhelming of interest to black people and not so much to others. A crowd that looks like the demographics of the region surrounding it is healthy, not a sign of racism.
As for college football, while black athletes are “over represented” for their share of the population, according to the NCAA they are still a bit less than half the number of players. There is no shortage of white people who want to play football and are willing to risk injury to do so.
The over representation of black people in high-level athletics is meritocratic: they get there by being the best.
There is a legitimate question as to why many in the black community pursue sports so seriously, when the odds of a successful career are terribly low compared to more mundane things like accounting or whatever. I am not an expert, but my understanding is this is more a factor of black people disproportionately living with poor performing schools and structural poverty, such that children have see fewer role models that “look like them” outside of sports, which in turn facilitates the perception they have a better chance of success in sports than in other fields, even though that’s generally not true.
>> For the stands to be mostly black people at any public event would mean that the event was overwhelming of interest to black people and not so much to others.
What about a sports game in Detroit, Baltimore, etc? The crowds aren’t a majority black
The OP mentioned going to one football game “at A&M,” which I assume to be Texas A&M, which is what I was responding to. I happen to be familiar with that stadium and it’s environs.
I can’t speak to the issues in Detroit or Baltimore, as I don’t know much about them. However I would guess by your implication that the crowds do not reflect the local population. I said in my comment that reflecting the local population is healthy, so if those places do not reflect the local population I would say that’s a sign of unhealth.
Edit: you make a fair point, and to be clear I’ve edited my post to be more specific about this.
If you're going to say exploiting people to suffer violence with a racial bias is racism, will you at least mention that that perspective points out much more sexism? Any racial bias is smaller than the 100/0 sex difference in who gets hurt.
I highly recommend the Chart Party video series (or really anything Jon Bois has ever done) if you want to get into the intersection of nerdiness and sports.
being a sucker for games that create complexity out of simple rules I do not enjoy American football at all. Granted I haven't grown up with it so I guess that makes it extra unfamiliar, but it seems so damn complicated. Multiple teams, constant pausing, so many rules, field goals, touchdowns etc. The author compares it to video games which I actually agree with, but I never really could get into league or magic for the same reason.
I'm more of a fan of soccer or tennis which both manage to be very simple but are to me much more dynamic
For me almost all sports and esports are painfully boring to observe. I don't feel any attachment to the teams and the gameplay carries out pretty much the same every time. I'd much rather be playing the sport or game.
The exception is for this are things that are very novel. I'll happily watch a video of someone mtb riding down some insane trails or someone playing a video game in a crazy way I haven't seen before. But once its no longer new its no longer interesting to me.
The multiple teams with many different positions means that many different body types are needed, which allows a wide range of people to participate and contribute. Although rugby for instance seems pretty cool, the players are all built like NFL linebackers so it's not something that I could ever play with any ability. Football has a place for small, fast guys and slow, fat guys (and girls) along with the superhumans. The deep and subtle complexity means that at basically any position, intelligence and/or intuition can make up for having less physical ability.
It's also great at teaching teamwork and good sportsmanship. If it weren't for the concussions, it would be the perfect sport for building character in school.
*Experiences will vary with the size of the school and the program there. I'm sure there are plenty of 5A schools where you have to be a superhuman to play at all, but there are plenty of schools where normal people can make the team with some effort, and not a few 1A/2A schools where anyone that can walk makes the team.
In the Australian side one of the most impressive and key players is Nic White at 84kg and 173cm.
Heck, one of the best NZ players of all time, Dan Carter, is 178cm and 94kg.
There are many positions and they require vastly different physiques.
Yes. Does it annoy you that we use our own dialect with its own meaning of certain words? If so, why? There’s some irritated comment like this practically every time (American) football is discussed online.
I guess because Americans hijacked the name of this planet's most popular sport for something that is played mostly with the hands with an object that only distantly resembles a ball. It would be better to call it "Armed Rugby" or something.
We didn’t hijack anything. Go read up on the history of the games. Soccer and American football evolved separately from the same family of proto-football games (as did Rugby and Australian football). These were all called “football” well before the modern rules of either current game had crystallized.
“Football” isn’t even the most popular name for the planet’s most popular sport. It’s probably “futbol”.
In the English speaking world, there are over 328 million Americans who use the term to refer to American football, 37 million Canadians who typically mean either American or Canadian football, and 25 million Aussies who use the word to refer to Australian Football. Brits are a minority of native English speakers.
In most of commonwealth Football is spoken of in the British sense. The American usage of it seems the more insular one, and therefore better deserves to be spoken about with qualification.
If we're arguing "majority makes right": the clear majority of native English speakers are Americans (about 65%).
But I'm not going to say English people should start calling it soccer so I don't get confused. Let everyone speak their native language; there's nothing wrong with it!
Yes, but it seems a tad inconsiderate for presume 'American' usage as the default one is all. I understand the original article may have written with an exclusively 'American' audience in mind, but writers and editors could have avoided that assumption by putting some thought into choosing a more 'international' usage, if only to gently nudge those Americans into a broader worldview, who might have an insular, exceptional view of their country, as goes an often expressed peeve.
Is it inconsiderate to post English-language articles at all, given that the majority of the world's population doesn't understand English, and it's chauvinistic to assume our own language is "the default" ?
Canadians and Australians also use the word “football” to refer to their national forms of football, which are called as such because they are more closely related to rugby, which separated from association football in the mid-19th century.
Ultimately, the word “soccer” is of English origin, broadly understood in England, and refers exclusively to association football. In any international context, the word “football” is ambiguous at best, and it’s chauvinistic for anyone to insist that the term must exclusively apply to their own country’s version of the game.
Australians generally call "soccer" as football. Recently their national soccer administrative body also renamed themselves as the Football Federation of Australia.
It isn't. It was originally Oxford slang derived from "association football":
> The rules of association football were codified in the United Kingdom by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined in the UK to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time, in particular rugby football. The word soccer is an abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in English private schools and universities in the 1880s (sometimes using the variant spelling "socker").[1][2][3][4] The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford-Brown, an Oxford University student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football (see Oxford -er). Clive Toye noted "they took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer."
...
> For nearly a hundred years after it was coined, soccer was an accepted and uncontroversial alternative in Britain to football, often in colloquial and juvenile contexts, but was also widely used in formal speech and in writing about the game.[6] "Soccer" was a term used by the upper class whereas the working and middle class preferred the word "football"; as the upper class lost influence in British society from the 1960s on, "football" supplanted "soccer" as the most commonly used and accepted word. There is evidence that the use of soccer is declining in Britain and is now considered there as an American English term.[6]
In other words, even in England, the word "football" was originally ambiguous enough to also refer to rugby, which is why England coined the term "soccer" to distinguish the two sports. American and Canadian football are both descended from rugby football.
Given that it was posted on the eve of the Super Bowl, and that the title promises to examine a dimension of "football" that hardly exists in futbol aka "soccer", I think your point is disingenuous.
I’d love to watch a rugby team go up against an NFL team. The rules seem compatible enough (at least at the core).
I’ve always wondered why rugby strategy isn’t incorporated into NFL: long lines of backwards passing is legal and would completely mess up your average NFL defence lineup. But it seems it’s considered a “weird trick play”
It’s just a different sport. In American football, the plays are highly orchestrated and many players are travelling near top speed out of pre-arranged formations and in tightly constrained routes. The forward pass is available, has a much higher success rate when thrown at a specialist player and a bigger payoff. Many of the team (the offensive line) aren’t eligible for such passes and therefor have been optimised by body type for blocking. The lateral pass is practiced in high school as part of the “option” offense because the difference between position players in high school is much lower and there may not be huge standout talent at quarterback (the passer) and wide receiver (the specialist recipient). The offense is sometimes run at the college level by schools with a low level of talent, such as those with high academic admissions standards and the military service academy. Running the option also generally involves jeopardising the health of your best player, the quarterback. This matters less in high school and bad programs where the drop off isn’t as significant. At better programs there are just better strategies with lower risks.
Thank you for the in depth reply, great points. But I often see that college/high school level play it as a one or two passes, usually thrown with varying levels of accuracy. It’s nothing like a rugby play.
I take your point it’s a different game, but it also prides itself on unique playbooks. All of the things you pointed out are why a properly practiced rugby style play would not just surprise a defensive line, but they wouldn’t even have the correct types of players to combat it (i.e a heavy defensive line would be terrible)
> "I’ve always wondered why rugby strategy isn’t incorporated into NFL: long lines of backwards passing is legal and would completely mess up your average NFL defence lineup. But it seems it’s considered a 'weird trick play'"
From sideline-to-sideline, a football field is 53 feet across. To pull this off the way it's done in rugby, you'd have to do the following:
1.) Start the play
2.) Sprint to one side of the field
3.) Stop your momentum and then turn to the other side of the field.
4.) Set your feet and then throw a 35-60 yard pass (depending on how far the other player is, and how far behind they are from you)
Meanwhile, the receiver has to:
1.) Act like they're blocking or running a pass route for a moment (otherwise the defensive player responsible for the receiver will just follow the receiver to their spot for the backward reception)
2.) Sprint to the reception point
3.) Wait for a the pass to travel the 35-60 yards
4.) Catch the ball
5.) Hope all this waiting hasn't given the defense an opportunity to get in position to smack them in the mouth once they catch the ball.
It takes typically 10-15 seconds to set up this kind of play (which is an eternity in American football). And it has little chance to succeed.
The rules disadvantage a backward pass. A backward pass is a 'live' ball. So if the receiver doesn't catch the ball and the ball hits the dirt, the team that jumps on the ball gets the ball. This is opposed to a forward pass, where the play ends if the receiver drops the ball.
Also the quarterback typically isn't athletic enough to get to one side of the field quick enough to pull this off. So you usually have a wide receiver or running back -- who are quicker of foot -- do this. But then you're asking them to accurately throw the ball a long way. Which is something they're not used to. And once the quarterback gives the ball to the wide receiver or running back, the pass must be backward or it's an illegal forward pass. So you really, really have to make sure that the receiver is behind the passer. Which is easier said than done in the chaotic environment of a football play when players are 40-50 feet apart from one another.
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That being said, there is a play in American football that's similar to the rugby strategy -- it's called a screen pass. It's not quite as dramatic as throwing the ball across the entire field, but it has the same idea. You're getting the defense to run one way and then throwing the ball across the field to the place the defense just vacated.
Opportunity cost. Both sports need an alternative to just running with the ball, because always using a single tactic would be too easy to defend against.
In rugby, the only option is backwards passing, so that's what they do.
In the NFL, forward passes are a lower risk alternative to backwards passes, so backwards passes are a much less attractive option.
One thing about football is that one play can have a huge impact on the game, but the overwhelming majority of plays do not. This gives you a contest where every new event could be meaningful and is worth watching, but doesn't become chaotic.
Compare this to tennis, where missing an individual shot can lose you the game but each failed attempted has roughly the same impact. Football (and soccer and baseball) are more like chess where one catastrophic play can essentially end the game, no matter what plays preceded or follow it.
This dynamic is about the difference between focus and consistency. Games like football and chess prioritize the focus not to make a disastrous mistake at any point. Games like basketball and scrabble emphasize performing with a high level of consistency and are more forgiving of rare large errors.
I wonder if this plays into the entertainment value in a Skinner box/gacha-game type way. Similarly: many of the most popular video games for streaming (including but not limited to Battle Royales) involve some element of chaos or chance. Never knowing how things will go, or when something really exciting will happen, keeps an audience engaged.
I've always been curious about basketball. It seems to have the same dynamic as big group races, where people are just trying to keep pace with each other until a final sprint. Yet basketball isn't very physically taxing, compared to those types of racing sports (or soccer, etc); it seems like teams could go all out the whole game, and then you wouldn't see as many games won by single digit point margins
Basketball isn't physically taxing the way a marathon is, but I wouldn't say it "isn't very physically taxing". It's far more physically taxing than, say, baseball or maybe even American football. However, basketball is extremely skill-based, to the degree that extremely skilled players can sometimes defeat players with better conditioning. The very best players, like LeBron, have incredible skills combined with incredible conditioning.
Basketball teams play 82 games over about 180 days, so it's a game roughly every 2.5 days not including practice - compared to 38 games over 10 months for the English Premier League which is a game every 7-8 days. I don't know how often racing teams compete but I'm assuming it isn't as frequent. Even a few days makes a large difference for rest and recovery.
Playing at 100% every game would very quickly lead to burnout and injuries, or at least that's the common wisdom. Not sure if it's accurate [1]
One sees every instant as an opportunity for something game-altering to happen, creating tremendous tension. The other believes that it's almost certainly not going to, and so is bored instead of tense.
This isn't quite the same as what you're pointing out, but the appraoch to focus overlaps. In soccer, constant focus is required for 90 straight minutes. In football, you have bouts of intense action, and even though most of them will result in little gain, you don't have to be constantly on edge for hours because every moment has the same potential as every other.
Neither is superior; it's just what the audience chooses to be interested in.
I really was disappointed by the XFL getting nerfed by the pandemic. Some of the new rules for them like an option to score up to three points in a PAT would lead to all sorts of cool game theory analysis.
I really liked this post - but a huge part of the game that the author didn't mention is that there are almost two related games being played at the same time - the meta game by the coaches, and the actual game by the players.
Before each play is run, the coaches decide the personnel package - which players from their team should go onto the field, based on what they predict the opposing team will do. If the offense runs out a jumbo package with a lot of larger, slower players who are good at blocking and the defense runs out a dime package - smaller, faster players to defend against a pass - the offense will likely win on a running play, but lose on a passing play. That is, if the players execute. Personnel mismatches are often exploited for big gains.
Then coaches also typically call the plays, although more experienced players will modify the play on the field based on what they see. NFL playbooks are incredibly complicated with hundreds of plays, which can each be countered with the right defensive play. Coaches are guessing what their opponent will do based on the situation, dynamically adjusting their play calls throughout the game, and setting up deceptions that build throughout - for example, one of the most common deceptions is a "play action" that is fake run passing play, which only works if the team has been consistently calling running plays. Coaches must "invest" in running possibly unsuccessful plays that set up deceptions, and then cash in at the right time. Successful trick plays are often the result of running a play multiple times earlier in the game (or even, earlier in the season!) and then modifying it for a surprise.
Great players will look for clues for what play their opponent is running, to exploit it. Some of the greatest quarterbacks - like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady - are more successful because of their ability to decode the defense before the ball is snapped, modify the play at the line of scrimmage, and know in advance which receiver is most likely to be open, than because of their athletic ability itself.
I think that "nerds" who don't follow football could appreciate the strategic game that coaches are playing just as much as the physical game the players are playing. For people who dislike football because of how it stops and starts, well - between the plays is when the coaches are playing, and it's just as exciting once you start to follow along.
ha! now the "matchup" makes sense to me, thanks for that simple example.
I watched soccer all my life until 2020 I started watching NFL games and it felt like I needed a mini-bootcamp to learn about the game before I start appreciating it (still learning!) beyond the athletic display.
I get turned off by the stop and start aspect though, especially that they jam in the same ads over and over for 2+ hours, so I guess it's a lot more fun to watch in the stadium or simply watch replays w/ ads stripped off.
I'm very much looking forward to watching my first Superbowl today!
If you're watching a game with friends (as you should be), the pauses are a great to interact, grab a new beer, discuss the plays, etc. That all enhances the game-watching experience. It's far harder to do that in a sport that doesn't pause like soccer.
There's tons of good film breakdown on Youtube if you're looking to understand some of the strategies of the game. Peyton Manning has a bunch of good ones like these two:
It's filled with the best athletes colleges can produce for that particular sport. The worst football player on any NFL team is probably better than the best football players from the college that he attended for the previous few years.
One thing people don't realize is that these athletes are running as fast as they possibly can, especially the wide receivers. That means the cornerbacks/defenders are running as fast as they can as well. When there's any sort of separation between the wide receiver and the cornerback, that is extremely dangerous. That separation can't be made up, because they're already running as fast as they can. That means separation is an opportunity to target the wide receiver. When the quarterback throws a football with a window of a few feet to a wide receiver 40 yards away, it's simply beautiful.
There is a perfect balance between offense and defense, and there are always trade offs. Both offense and defense are looking for mismatches. Thus, if you have a wide receiver that is faster than cornerback covering him, then you have a mismatch that will be taken advantage of with impunity. So instead, you need to double-cover him with a safety playing up high. But then that leaves one of their offensive players poorly covered. How do you make up for that? You blitz with an oversized number of defenders so that you give the quarterback less time to find an open man. Or, if you have a mismatch on your defensive line, and they outmatch the protection for the quarterback, then that also gives the quarterback less time to make a play.
So you can counter that by bringing your running back or tight end to provide extra blocking. But then that limits the number of targets you can have.
There's just a long list of pros and cons to this game which makes it utterly fascinating. The players live and breathe all of this stuff.
I learned that Tarek Hill ran the 200m in 20.14s. The french all time record is barely under 20, and the Tareek's score could allow him to reach the French finals every year since 2015.
a fun thing that pedantic nerds can appreciate about football is the obscure, old-fashioned strategies that remain technically legal.
in the early 20th century it was common for a player to take the ball and drop-kick it themselves to score a field goal. this isn't really done any more (due to changed shape of the ball), now one player holds the ball upright and the kicker kicks it.
but you are still allowed to try!. in 2006 the quarterback Doug Flutie did it right before retiring, just because he could.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 218 ms ] thread> Stadiums and Cities Matter - Even the stadium and climate in a city factor into a football team’s strategy.
The air force academy is a fair bit higher than Denver or even Colorado Springs itself (the cadet area is 7258 feet above sea level). I'd have to check but it's probably one of the highest stadium altitudes for any college.
Physical exertion at those altitudes is significantly more difficult if you're not acclimated to the altitude, ideally living up there but the first week can be tough if you aren't extremely cardio-fit. So Air Force had a built of an inbuilt home-field advantage, and when they went down to lower altitudes we had a bit of an advantage there too (living at altitude and coming back to sea level was wild, I could rock aerobic activity at sea level, you just didn't get out of breath much at all).
The crowd would heckle the away team in the gates, chanting: "the air is rare!"
Didn't stop us from sucking though, the football team was terrible.
Clearly, there's a bunch of people who want to watch Chess play.
Clemson’s rise in college football has been entirely driven by it too. About 10 years ago we hired an offensive coordinator named Chad Morris who has a math degree. Stories about the detail in his playbooks was crazy. Player acceleration, top speed, directional changes, probability, specific angles. Almost every play had 3 things developing at once on a clock in the QB’s head based largely on his field of vision.
After Morris left, Tony Elliot took over. Elliot has an engineering degree (mechanical I think).
He missed our playoff game against Ohio State this year and the offense didn’t look anything close to what it was. Covid.
There’s just so much going on with every play it’s crazy. Every detail of every player on the field matters for each play. It’s not a sport where one guy can carry your team.
We just showed up the day before early and spent the day acclimating. It was like you were on your 2nd or 3rd wind sprint instead of your first. However by that point in football season we were running 80 plays without breaks in practice (the same as a big game but shorter time). It was annoying but not a factor.
Really funny thing was, because we played in hotter shittier weather, we were actually in better shape. And the game was in the low 80s. Colorado team melted, we went strong the whole game. Also helped we smoked them.
Also did an aussie rules tourney at the AFA about 10 years back. Much more running. We all showed up a day early. Just like skiing, it's not great the first day and you're pretty good the 2nd. Third day and everyone was normal. Sure we rotated players slightly more but unless it's soccer with limited subs it doesn't really matter. Or I'm sure what they're having cadets do, aka just running around with gear on long distance.
Most sports are more ATP based (windsprints) than full cardio based, otherwise everyone would just be moving at a constant rate.
I actually dislike a lot of non-american sports because there's no chance to do anything else. The best thing to me even at a game is to go, hang out, relax, talk shit with your friends, and watch the game. Not have the game take up all of your attention. I'm not paid to analyze them, so there's nothing so important about sports that I need to pay attention to them as I would for studying for an exam. Unless it's the playoffs, then sure.
If the sport is actually engaging and doesn't stop every 2 minutes then you'll find it naturally takes up all your attention.
Or this is how I choose to enjoy them.
I've done the hive mind thing as well. It's fun but I've got shit to do, relationships to build.
My attention span is also very add. Only things like coding or math can hold my attention.
I played sports highschool, college and 9 years after. Sports are great when you are a competitor. To be good they have to consume a good portion of your life. Which is fine, you are exerting direct control on the world.
As a 45 year old sitting in a pub you have no impact on a team. Nor do you by angrily posting to internet forums or yelling at talk show hosts.
Spending 1-3 days a week 3 hours at a time getting very worked up about a thing you have little control over while gathering a side of mild alcoholism isn't great. Being sulky and short with your loved ones isn't either.
After college I started watching the nfl. My team was very good senior year, mediocre the next, and a fieldgoal away from greatness. The next year they were dog shit. I noticed I was short with my mom on Sundays which was our hangout time because of nfl. She watched sports so she'd have a thing to talk to us about. I had to step back. The team was purposefully rebuilding. I found new topics to talk to my mom about.
I get a lot of home repair, gardening, and side projects done while watching baseball or football in the background.
Sports fandom is best when they enrich your like not when they consume it.
The field is a cricket oval at ~200 yards by ~150 yards (~15x the area of a US Football field). There are 18 players on the field per team, for a total of 36. The game is broken up into 20 minute quarters with ~7 min of stoppage time per quarter. With all the breaks, it's about 2.5 hours long. Though it varies by match, you basically are doing windsprints the entire time while the other team is trying to climb on you and knee you in the head. Those guys are in very good shape even for professional athletes.
Here's a good video on some Aussie Rules highlights from 2018: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaUoDPEyohE
I enjoyed aussie rules as rugby seems almost as brutal as american football without the protection. Also at the time there was way more neck down contact. I saw multiple neck breaks that way 10 years of football.
Aussie had more glancing contact and seemed weirdly safer. for values of safe.
I would not play it at the level the pros do. They're brutal. Watched 2 games from the G and one from the gabba while I was in oz summer Aug 2019.
I'd like to think USAFA athletes were more fit than randos but...
Football has the action broken down in breaks. Most times you have a good idea what the next play will be (for instance, 3rd and 10, its going to be a longer pass) producing suspense.
The other sports are like watching long distance running with extra rules.
It's not at all like soccer because the number of players and size of field make trying to just keep possession and slow the game down a much more difficult thing to do (it is attempted sometimes). AFL also has 4 breaks (for the quarters), unlikes Soccers 1 for the half.
I find all three entertaining to watch, but I don't thing the "breaks" make NFL a "better" experience. :)
With football, it's a reset every down, and everyone is ready, so the strategy is critical.
But seriously, it’s even worse in person. I’ve only ever gone to one football game in person and it was almost unbearable. At least on TV you have commercials to see.
The racist undertones don't seem to stop there. I watched a game in A&M and it was surreal - a good fraction of the team is black but almost no one in the stadium was. And the quarterback and coach are white, and are commanding a bunch of black kids to smush their brains permanently. Given that at least roman gladiators were paid professionally, college football sounds far closer to slave-driven thunderdome scenarios than even the Colosseum did.
Rugby doesn’t seem to have the problem NFL has here.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/opinion/106203965/french...
The racism isn't in the sport per se, it's in the society that makes the (dangerous) sport one of only a handful of options for some groups.
It's tough, because there's no clear, single "bad guy" to hate, but that doesn't make it any less shitty for the people living through it.
You'll typically see black players mostly represented in the 'skill' positions (receiver, running back, linebacker, defensive back -- basically any position that relies of speed and quickness). This comes from generations of racist attitudes pushing black players to the 'athletic' positions while keeping white players for the positions that require 'intelligence', 'grit', and 'leadership'.
Also, it's not just the line that suffers brain injury.
Keep in mind, this career takes about 8 years to learn (high school, college), and you're only able to execute at a paying level for 2.5 years, on average before you can never play again for money.
[1] https://work.chron.com/long-average-career-nfl-player-12643....
[2] https://www.recordonline.com/zz/news/20180128/think-nfl-play...
[3] https://www.sportscasting.com/how-long-is-the-average-nfl-ca...
It also makes common sense. Are you telling me the system that allows social integration only if you prove yourself in the playground is actually an acceptable system in any level? Especially with a (for lack of better word) blood sport like football or boxing?
Sunday Night Football (historically) was the only overlap between the two lists
See also https://www.statista.com/statistics/1098889/interest-level-f...
You can start reading about Jackie Robinson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackie_Robinson).
Statistically, football viewership among black Americans is higher than among white Americans. It’s something like 75% of the population for the former, and 55% for the latter.
At the same time, black players are overrepresented in what are called 'skill positions' -- those requiring more speed and athleticism.
To ignore this is either to: 1.) Not really know football culture; or 2.) Be intentionally obtuse
Commentators like Bomani Jones speak often about these subjects, if you'd like to read up on it.
When you're looking to claim racism, it doesn't matter what the underlying situation is, you'll find a way to make it racist.
Asians have basically no representation in the NFL. In your opinion, should we limit blacks in the NFL to their population percentage so that it’s more fair, and give those spots to more whites and Asians?
Otherwise no, Pacific Islanders are not Asian. They even have their own checkbox in ethnicity polls.
As for college football, while black athletes are “over represented” for their share of the population, according to the NCAA they are still a bit less than half the number of players. There is no shortage of white people who want to play football and are willing to risk injury to do so.
The over representation of black people in high-level athletics is meritocratic: they get there by being the best. There is a legitimate question as to why many in the black community pursue sports so seriously, when the odds of a successful career are terribly low compared to more mundane things like accounting or whatever. I am not an expert, but my understanding is this is more a factor of black people disproportionately living with poor performing schools and structural poverty, such that children have see fewer role models that “look like them” outside of sports, which in turn facilitates the perception they have a better chance of success in sports than in other fields, even though that’s generally not true.
What about a sports game in Detroit, Baltimore, etc? The crowds aren’t a majority black
I can’t speak to the issues in Detroit or Baltimore, as I don’t know much about them. However I would guess by your implication that the crowds do not reflect the local population. I said in my comment that reflecting the local population is healthy, so if those places do not reflect the local population I would say that’s a sign of unhealth.
Edit: you make a fair point, and to be clear I’ve edited my post to be more specific about this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l5C8cGMueY
I'm more of a fan of soccer or tennis which both manage to be very simple but are to me much more dynamic
The exception is for this are things that are very novel. I'll happily watch a video of someone mtb riding down some insane trails or someone playing a video game in a crazy way I haven't seen before. But once its no longer new its no longer interesting to me.
It's also great at teaching teamwork and good sportsmanship. If it weren't for the concussions, it would be the perfect sport for building character in school.
*Experiences will vary with the size of the school and the program there. I'm sure there are plenty of 5A schools where you have to be a superhuman to play at all, but there are plenty of schools where normal people can make the team with some effort, and not a few 1A/2A schools where anyone that can walk makes the team.
In the Australian side one of the most impressive and key players is Nic White at 84kg and 173cm. Heck, one of the best NZ players of all time, Dan Carter, is 178cm and 94kg.
There are many positions and they require vastly different physiques.
These days they're often hanging out on the internet like the rest of us, just on a fantasy football site or something similar.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football
In the English speaking world, there are over 328 million Americans who use the term to refer to American football, 37 million Canadians who typically mean either American or Canadian football, and 25 million Aussies who use the word to refer to Australian Football. Brits are a minority of native English speakers.
But I'm not going to say English people should start calling it soccer so I don't get confused. Let everyone speak their native language; there's nothing wrong with it!
Ultimately, the word “soccer” is of English origin, broadly understood in England, and refers exclusively to association football. In any international context, the word “football” is ambiguous at best, and it’s chauvinistic for anyone to insist that the term must exclusively apply to their own country’s version of the game.
I think "soccer" is an Americanism as well.
It isn't. It was originally Oxford slang derived from "association football":
> The rules of association football were codified in the United Kingdom by the Football Association in 1863, and the name association football was coined in the UK to distinguish the game from the other versions of football played at the time, in particular rugby football. The word soccer is an abbreviation of association (from assoc.) and first appeared in English private schools and universities in the 1880s (sometimes using the variant spelling "socker").[1][2][3][4] The word is sometimes credited to Charles Wreford-Brown, an Oxford University student said to have been fond of shortened forms such as brekkers for breakfast and rugger for rugby football (see Oxford -er). Clive Toye noted "they took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer."
...
> For nearly a hundred years after it was coined, soccer was an accepted and uncontroversial alternative in Britain to football, often in colloquial and juvenile contexts, but was also widely used in formal speech and in writing about the game.[6] "Soccer" was a term used by the upper class whereas the working and middle class preferred the word "football"; as the upper class lost influence in British society from the 1960s on, "football" supplanted "soccer" as the most commonly used and accepted word. There is evidence that the use of soccer is declining in Britain and is now considered there as an American English term.[6]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_for_association_football
In other words, even in England, the word "football" was originally ambiguous enough to also refer to rugby, which is why England coined the term "soccer" to distinguish the two sports. American and Canadian football are both descended from rugby football.
Because the audience of HN is not just Americans and the title of this submission gives no clue it's about the US.
I’ve always wondered why rugby strategy isn’t incorporated into NFL: long lines of backwards passing is legal and would completely mess up your average NFL defence lineup. But it seems it’s considered a “weird trick play”
I take your point it’s a different game, but it also prides itself on unique playbooks. All of the things you pointed out are why a properly practiced rugby style play would not just surprise a defensive line, but they wouldn’t even have the correct types of players to combat it (i.e a heavy defensive line would be terrible)
From sideline-to-sideline, a football field is 53 feet across. To pull this off the way it's done in rugby, you'd have to do the following:
1.) Start the play 2.) Sprint to one side of the field 3.) Stop your momentum and then turn to the other side of the field. 4.) Set your feet and then throw a 35-60 yard pass (depending on how far the other player is, and how far behind they are from you)
Meanwhile, the receiver has to: 1.) Act like they're blocking or running a pass route for a moment (otherwise the defensive player responsible for the receiver will just follow the receiver to their spot for the backward reception) 2.) Sprint to the reception point 3.) Wait for a the pass to travel the 35-60 yards 4.) Catch the ball 5.) Hope all this waiting hasn't given the defense an opportunity to get in position to smack them in the mouth once they catch the ball.
It takes typically 10-15 seconds to set up this kind of play (which is an eternity in American football). And it has little chance to succeed.
The rules disadvantage a backward pass. A backward pass is a 'live' ball. So if the receiver doesn't catch the ball and the ball hits the dirt, the team that jumps on the ball gets the ball. This is opposed to a forward pass, where the play ends if the receiver drops the ball.
Also the quarterback typically isn't athletic enough to get to one side of the field quick enough to pull this off. So you usually have a wide receiver or running back -- who are quicker of foot -- do this. But then you're asking them to accurately throw the ball a long way. Which is something they're not used to. And once the quarterback gives the ball to the wide receiver or running back, the pass must be backward or it's an illegal forward pass. So you really, really have to make sure that the receiver is behind the passer. Which is easier said than done in the chaotic environment of a football play when players are 40-50 feet apart from one another.
---
That being said, there is a play in American football that's similar to the rugby strategy -- it's called a screen pass. It's not quite as dramatic as throwing the ball across the entire field, but it has the same idea. You're getting the defense to run one way and then throwing the ball across the field to the place the defense just vacated.
In rugby, the only option is backwards passing, so that's what they do.
In the NFL, forward passes are a lower risk alternative to backwards passes, so backwards passes are a much less attractive option.
https://www.footballoutsiders.com/info/methods
Compare this to tennis, where missing an individual shot can lose you the game but each failed attempted has roughly the same impact. Football (and soccer and baseball) are more like chess where one catastrophic play can essentially end the game, no matter what plays preceded or follow it.
This dynamic is about the difference between focus and consistency. Games like football and chess prioritize the focus not to make a disastrous mistake at any point. Games like basketball and scrabble emphasize performing with a high level of consistency and are more forgiving of rare large errors.
Playing at 100% every game would very quickly lead to burnout and injuries, or at least that's the common wisdom. Not sure if it's accurate [1]
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/232596711772979...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjp1Zrvn8VQ
One sees every instant as an opportunity for something game-altering to happen, creating tremendous tension. The other believes that it's almost certainly not going to, and so is bored instead of tense.
This isn't quite the same as what you're pointing out, but the appraoch to focus overlaps. In soccer, constant focus is required for 90 straight minutes. In football, you have bouts of intense action, and even though most of them will result in little gain, you don't have to be constantly on edge for hours because every moment has the same potential as every other.
Neither is superior; it's just what the audience chooses to be interested in.
Before each play is run, the coaches decide the personnel package - which players from their team should go onto the field, based on what they predict the opposing team will do. If the offense runs out a jumbo package with a lot of larger, slower players who are good at blocking and the defense runs out a dime package - smaller, faster players to defend against a pass - the offense will likely win on a running play, but lose on a passing play. That is, if the players execute. Personnel mismatches are often exploited for big gains.
Then coaches also typically call the plays, although more experienced players will modify the play on the field based on what they see. NFL playbooks are incredibly complicated with hundreds of plays, which can each be countered with the right defensive play. Coaches are guessing what their opponent will do based on the situation, dynamically adjusting their play calls throughout the game, and setting up deceptions that build throughout - for example, one of the most common deceptions is a "play action" that is fake run passing play, which only works if the team has been consistently calling running plays. Coaches must "invest" in running possibly unsuccessful plays that set up deceptions, and then cash in at the right time. Successful trick plays are often the result of running a play multiple times earlier in the game (or even, earlier in the season!) and then modifying it for a surprise.
Great players will look for clues for what play their opponent is running, to exploit it. Some of the greatest quarterbacks - like Peyton Manning and Tom Brady - are more successful because of their ability to decode the defense before the ball is snapped, modify the play at the line of scrimmage, and know in advance which receiver is most likely to be open, than because of their athletic ability itself.
I think that "nerds" who don't follow football could appreciate the strategic game that coaches are playing just as much as the physical game the players are playing. For people who dislike football because of how it stops and starts, well - between the plays is when the coaches are playing, and it's just as exciting once you start to follow along.
I watched soccer all my life until 2020 I started watching NFL games and it felt like I needed a mini-bootcamp to learn about the game before I start appreciating it (still learning!) beyond the athletic display.
I get turned off by the stop and start aspect though, especially that they jam in the same ads over and over for 2+ hours, so I guess it's a lot more fun to watch in the stadium or simply watch replays w/ ads stripped off.
I'm very much looking forward to watching my first Superbowl today!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSN85vpIkyA
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ynsn2fSeGo
It's filled with the best athletes colleges can produce for that particular sport. The worst football player on any NFL team is probably better than the best football players from the college that he attended for the previous few years.
One thing people don't realize is that these athletes are running as fast as they possibly can, especially the wide receivers. That means the cornerbacks/defenders are running as fast as they can as well. When there's any sort of separation between the wide receiver and the cornerback, that is extremely dangerous. That separation can't be made up, because they're already running as fast as they can. That means separation is an opportunity to target the wide receiver. When the quarterback throws a football with a window of a few feet to a wide receiver 40 yards away, it's simply beautiful.
There is a perfect balance between offense and defense, and there are always trade offs. Both offense and defense are looking for mismatches. Thus, if you have a wide receiver that is faster than cornerback covering him, then you have a mismatch that will be taken advantage of with impunity. So instead, you need to double-cover him with a safety playing up high. But then that leaves one of their offensive players poorly covered. How do you make up for that? You blitz with an oversized number of defenders so that you give the quarterback less time to find an open man. Or, if you have a mismatch on your defensive line, and they outmatch the protection for the quarterback, then that also gives the quarterback less time to make a play.
So you can counter that by bringing your running back or tight end to provide extra blocking. But then that limits the number of targets you can have.
There's just a long list of pros and cons to this game which makes it utterly fascinating. The players live and breathe all of this stuff.
He is not even training for this.
This is impressive to me.
in the early 20th century it was common for a player to take the ball and drop-kick it themselves to score a field goal. this isn't really done any more (due to changed shape of the ball), now one player holds the ball upright and the kicker kicks it.
but you are still allowed to try!. in 2006 the quarterback Doug Flutie did it right before retiring, just because he could.