Ladies, if you’ve ever tilted your head, wrinkled your nose, and gone “huh?” while watching a football game, you’re not alone. To the uninitiated, American Football can appear to be a brutish display of overdeveloped testosterone. And for the most part it is, however, it is also a demonstration of strategy, teamwork, athleticism and sportsmanship. I understand if you just don’t get football, but there are a few things you can do in order to be able to watch, and even enjoy the sport with someone you love. Step one is to understand the seemingly esoteric rules of the game.
What are all those lines on the field?
A football field is exactly 100 yards from goal line to goal line. Between the two goal lines are individual yard lines, numbered one through fifty then back to one again. On the far sides of the goal lines are the end zones, where all the scoring takes place. And at the back of each end zone is a a giant y-shaped object called either the goalpost or the uprights.
What, exactly, is the point?
Even though a game takes four hours to watch, teams have only sixty minutes – separated into 15 minute quarters – to score as many points as they can before time runs out. Not surprisingly, the team with the most points at the end of the game wins.
Points are awarded to a team for accomplishing one of several feats. First and most desirable is to advance the football across the opposing team’s goal line. This is called a touchdown and is worth six points. You might have believed it to be worth seven, but actually, it’s six. The seventh point comes only after the touchdown, when a team is given the opportunity to tack on extra points: one point for kicking the ball through the uprights, or two points for advancing the ball across the goal line again.
Points can also be scored by successfully kicking the ball through the uprights without having first scored a touchdown; this is called a field goal and is worth three points. Lastly, a team can earn two points for knocking an opposing player down in his own end zone while that player is in possession of the football, this is called a safety.
How do they decide who goes first?
At the beginning of every game a coin is tossed to decide who gets to attempt to score first. Then, ironically, the ball is given to the other team. That team will kick the ball as far away from their end zone as they possibly can. It is up to the returning team to catch the ball and run it back in the direction from which it was kicked. A returner will carry the ball as far down field as he can before getting knocked to the ground by a defender. Once the returner has been felled, a referee will note the spot of the ball at the time of the tackle and this becomes the line of scrimmage for the first down.
What the heck is a down?
Each time the offense gets the ball they have four chances to advance it forward ten yards from the original line of scrimmage. Each attempt is called a down. The line of scrimmage moves with each down, but the ten-yard mark does not. If the team succeeds in moving at least ten yards, they get four more downs, but if they fail the other team gets to go on offense.
If the offense has tried to move the ball three times but has not advanced the requisite ten yards they usually opt to punt, or kick the ball away. A punt is similar to a kickoff. Notwithstanding a few rule variations, the goal here is the same: get the ball as far away from your end zone as you possibly can.
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article cosurtesy of YahooSports.com
