The nitty gritty of football
The Super Bowl, like Christmas and Easter, comes just once a year. This means some Americans can comfortably ignore football for about 50 weeks every year, and they only ever need to think about it right now.
As someone who falls into this category, I sometimes find myself confused when it comes time to actually watch the game. This means I need some sort of guide, like “Football for Dummies.”
Cy Whitling
My younger siblings will vouch for my qualifications as a dummy, and I am the first to acknowledge my lack of understanding of football. I think this makes me the perfect candidate to explain football to other dummies, like myself.
First off, football is a team sport, with two teams per game. The Super Bowl is the big finale game for the NFL every year. Apparently, NFL stands for the National Football League, but don’t call it by its full name. All the cool kids call it the NFL.
Like most sports, the teams try to get more points than the other team. I would say, “like all sports,” but for some reason golf just had to go mess things up.
To get the points the players have to get the ball to other end of the field, into their opponent’s “end zone.” They can do this by throwing the ball forward or running with it. For some reason though, a player can’t run forward with the ball and then throw it further forward to another player. That is cheating, and if you do it in a pick-up game, your friends will laugh at you.
Danlin li | Rawr
Here is where it gets tricky. Despite the stereotype of stupid football players, there is a lot of math involved in the game. A touchdown is when a team gets the ball into the other team’s end zone. When a team scores a touchdown, it counts as six points.
Then, once a team has procured the elusive touchdown, they are given another chance to score. They either choose to kick the ball through the huge fork looking thing for one point or they try to put the ball back in the end zone again, for two points.
Remember what I said about the math? Sometimes teams pretend to kick the ball and then they actually take it into the end zone to get two points instead of one. When this happens, yell loudly.
There are also safeties and field goals, but this space is too small to discuss them in all their mystic intricacy. Also, I don’t really understand them and don’t want to lead anyone astray.
All in all, football is a pretty cool sport. There’s lots of big dudes, funny ads and confusing halftime shows. If you get confused watching the game and can’t keep track of what’s happening, just watch your friends out the corner of your eye and yell whenever they do. That always works for me.
Cy Whitling can be reached at [email protected]