American Football

No matter you are an athletes or a sport fan, you are goanna going to love it! Do you know what gets American high school boys and girls crazy at Home coming days? Do you know what sport other than basketball and baseball that every American plays? Do you know what professional league of sports attracts millions of Americans other than NBA and MLB? If you don’t, let me tell you the answer; it’s the American Football. And today I am going to explain the basic rules of the game, the role of the players, and some other recreational sports derived from the game.
The American football is the only “football” game in the world that use hands to handle the “football.” In fact, the sport is more similar to rugby than football played everywhere else in the world. The ball used in the game is an oval shape leather ball instead of a black and white checkered ball. Within a set boundary, two teams play against each other to score the most point they could get in a limited time period. In order to score points, the team needs to figure out a way to carry the ball to the end zone of their opponent’s territory. With no doubt, the opposite teams will try their best to offense and defense. Each team has 4 tries to reach a total of ten yards, and each try is called a “down,” so you will have a 1st down, 2nd down, and so… If a team successfully advance more than ten yards within 4 tries, the count of downs refreshes. For example, if the team advance 25 yards at their third down, they get another 4 tries to advance another 10 yards.
The end zones are located at each end of the field and the action of reaching the end zone is called, “touch down.” The offensive team who makes the touch down gets 6 points, and a bonus kick to score 1 more point or make another touch down to score 2 points. No matter the bonus kick or attempt for touch down is success or not, the teams switch offense and defense. Therefore, the entire football game is a series of exciting actions of two teams pushing back and forward, mixed with strategies, strength, and speed.
Ok, so we now know that football players kick the ball, carry the ball, and stop the guy who carries the ball; but who is the one? Therefore, the 11 players of each team have specialized roles and are divided as the offense and the defense. The offense team is consisted by the offensive line, the quarter back, running backs, wild receivers, and tight ends. The five offensive linemen protect the passer, which is the quarter back, and clear the way for runner backs by blocking players of the opponent’s defense team. The quarter back acts as the command of the offense, and passes the ball to runner backs, wild recievers, or runs by himself to make downs. Runner backs are specialized in running with the ball, and wild recievers are exellent in catching passes. Tight ends is a whole function player who is able to block, running with the ball, or catching passes. On the other hand, the defense team is divided to three roles; the defensive linemen, linebackers, and cornerbacks. The defensive linemen will try to occupy the offensive linemen, and free up the linebackers to disrupt the quarter back of the offensive team. Cornerbacks covers the wild receivers and stop passes; they also occasionally rush the quarter back.
With such complicated and highly competetive positions, winning a game does not only requires team works but also great strategies, strength of players, and speed. However, the sport is very physical and requires proper protective aparatus and well trained players. The sport of american spirit is often seem in games less harmful such as non-tackle football, ultimate fresbie, and tag. Non-tackle football means playing football without “tackle,” the person carries the ball is stop whenever they are touched. Ultimate fresbie is a recent popular soprt, which the football is substitued by a fresbie. The difference between football and ultimate fresbie is that everyone catches and passes the fresbie, but once catches the fresbie, the person could not move. The defender can not touch the other players; they can only try to stop players from catching the fresbie or blocking them when passes. Similar to football, the team scores once the fresbie is in the end zone. These two games all requires some sort of props, but this last one game needs nothing but a pair of good running shoes. Tag is a kid’s favorite game; it is similar to the japanese “kicking the tin can” game. Instead kicking the tin can, the “ghost” is guarding a zone; sounds familiar, right? The other players would try to get into the zone without being tagged by the “ghost.” If no one gets tag and safely enter the zone, the round started again, but players who is tagged might become the “ghost” at the next round.
The all time american football is deeply rooted in the american life, despite the US is the only country in the world plays the sport. You can see people tossing footballs next to a barbeque in a park over the weekend, you can see kids playing tags on campus, and teams playing ultimate fresbie at an open field. It is all because the charm of football extends to everyone other than a small group of trained professionals. The simply rules, specialized role of players, and the excitement of offense and defense greatly impacts the active spirit of the american culture that people could have fun at their past time and also sharpen themselves in minds and strenghts. Try playing it, you will love it.