dekedangle_rpfanon | #23 — Brown Goes Down

This is the twenty-third post of Deke Dangle RPF Anon, a community for all your ice hockey anon meme needs.

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It's really really not any more confusing than hockey. I think it's just about observation and effort. Like, it gets complicated if you're talking about strategy, but the rules aren't that hard.

ayrt

In hockey, it's easy to understand that the object of the game is just to hit the puck into the net more times than the other team. The particulars are where it can get confusing. With football, even if you understand how scoring is achieved (which a lot of people don't), there's a lot more on the surface that can make it seem confusing. I agree that it's just observation and effort, but with hockey I feel that there's a little more you can enjoy without making much effort at all.

Da

The object is to get the ball over the white goal line on the end of the field. Things can be simplified to that, even.

Get ball to end zone. The rest is commentary. This thread is the kind of learned helplessness that I got into sports fandom to avoid.

Not sure what part of "I watch these two sports but one was easier for me to understand before I had actually learned the rules" is learned helplessness, but ok.

Na

The trend of "I don't know anything about scoring?" that can be rectified by watching when the score changes on the board is really indicative of a general learned helplessness. Sure, it may not catch every single way a point can be scored right away, but you'll catch that a touchdown and field goal earns points.

Being confused about how many points it earns is another thing.

I like watching lots of sports and am the type to get over invested in random stuff I run across on TV (cricket all-stars is on sure I'll try it), but I just find American football kind of confusing despite that and repeat exposures.

NA

Football is just getting the ball over a line (a long, long goal) by throwing and running (and the occasional kick) while the other team tries to get the ball back by hitting people to keep them from running or throwing. Like, I hate football, I'm not going to argue that it's enjoyable or how much energy is needed to find it enjoyable/understandable, but I don't think the basics are much harder to pick up for either sport. How much patience you have for the execution of plays, that's another matter.

DA who doesn't know anything about American football wants to know what the kicking is about. I learned from Ace Ventura that there's a point in football where kicking the ball is really important.

Also I feel like there's got to be more about getting the ball past the line. Doesn't it have to go with a person? Like, you can't just hurl it from the other end of the field?

What does a quarterback do and why are they so important?

SA

Okay, I found and read the explanation up thread and now I have more facts but I feel no better informed.

I have more facts but I feel no better informed.

I think that summarizes learning in general, tbh. You're probably fine. No one's asking anyone to be an expert.

Genuine question: Have you ever watched a football game?

SA
I mean that genuinely. If not, then don't worry about getting it, since a lot of this stuff (like hockey) makes more sense once you see it a few times.

Not an American football game. I probably won't, as I just looked it up and they last three hours but the ball is only in play for eleven minutes on average? I can't imagine what they do for the other three hours. Is this where the cheerleaders happen?

This is where beer and commentary happens, mostly. Also tailgating. The cheerleaders aren't a real big factor, tbh, and are mostly cut out of the tv broadcasts.

I mean, if you haven't watched a game, then it's a bit hard to conceptualize, since it's inherently visual. That said, that number does not sound correct at all in terms of the ball in play. So, the game is 60 min, divided into four quarters, but like hockey, the 60 min takes about twice as long to play because of commercials, a half-time break, resetting the field, etc.

The ball is in play on every play, either through an attempt to throw or carry it, or through a kick. There are no football plays not involving the ball. I'd be curious to know about the definition of 'in play' that site is using.

It's a Wall Street Journal article:

http://www.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704281204575002852055561406

I think it's because the clock continues to run for some time after the play is whistled dead. (This assessment is based purely on reading the article.)

No, they're talking about time in a telecast vs. amount of football shown, which is actually pretty similar to hockey, honestly. You see football, the replay, a close up of a player, some commentary, etc. It's not dissimilar from hockey broadcasts, except the game is noncontinuous. When I saw a hockey game for the first time in person, it felt much like football in terms of being hurry up and stop.

It says the average length of a play is four seconds and the players have a maximum of forty seconds after the whistle before they have to do a thing with the ball. It mentions that using this to run the clock down is an actual strategy employed by teams who have a lead near the end of the game.

Yes, these things are true, but do not contribute as much to the ratio as much as tv breaks, etc. do. Like, if you don't want to watch football, don't watch, but that ratio isn't of the 60 minutes of the game to only 11 minutes of play as you implied - it's of the total broadcast time to amount of time broadcasting play action. You can extend the game doing those things, but it's not generally done to the maximum allowable limit on each time.

"the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes."

The article is definitely saying that there's only 11 minutes of play per 60 minute game. If you think they calculated it wrong or the games they studied are outliers adn should not be counted, fine, but the article says it's 11 minutes of play per game. It's not even expressed as a ratio, so I don't know why you're talking about ratios.

I don't understand. What's happening the other 49 minutes the clock is running?

The article also lists counts of 13 minutes, so clearly the real range is 10-15 minutes / 60 minute game.

#23 — Brown Goes Down

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