I have been following the NFL for three full decades. Not nearly as active and detailed as ‘our’ European sports and with some periods in which I slacked off with attention as a student in the sixth hour of the afternoon shift, but in the last ten years, in accordance with the increasing availability and variety of television, more intensively and deeply than ever before. And I have to admit that, probably partly as a result of the considerable overload with everyday football and basketball, it crept under my skin like a tick that is hard to get rid of.
The first thing that caught my teenage attention was the Buffalo Bills’ historic four-game Super Bowl losing streak in the early 1990s, which earned them the title of the biggest losers in American sports history. And opposite them the Dallas Cowboys as the nation’s darlings and ultimate winners with those silver helmets and the big blue star on them. Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith are the first NFL characters I remember with broadcasts on the legendary DSF, along with Deion Sanders, a madman who simultaneously played American football and baseball professionally.
I’ve watched hundreds of NFL games so far, but I still don’t dare to write about him. At least nothing more serious than the status on social networks. I wrote a text that was more cultural than sports, because the topic was familiar and nice to me. But in principle, I prefer reading, listening and learning about American football, rather than talking, writing or interpreting. I decided that, at least in that sport, I would try to maintain the status of an ordinary spectator with a bag of chips instead of a journalist who would seriously *do* it. There are people in Croatia who are far more competent than me on that topic.
What I still don’t understand is — why do so many people, when you mention American football, have some strange aversion or prejudice towards it? Especially those who never gave him a chance. Sometimes it seems to me that many people are afraid that if they dare to be interested in American football, they will betray *our, European football. It’s like you have to choose. And a lot of those who have resistance to that sport sooner or later admit the same thing:
“I don’t understand the rules so I can’t follow, it all seems too long and too complicated.”
Yes, indeed, if you’re going to dig deep into the core, analytics, tactics and strategy, American football is a terribly complex and complicated sport. But if, like most Americans, you’re going to limit yourself to a light version of following and understanding the basic ideas and rules, American football is definitely something you can enjoy if you’re a sports fanatic. With all due respect to both football and basketball which are, and always will be, my *alpha sports and will never in my lifetime be replaced by the NFL, American football is the most exciting and dramatic team sport of today. You may not like it, but you cannot deny it.
Sometimes the American names in Croatian half-hybrids are a bit complicated or irritating to deal with if you want to master the rules of that sport, but that’s just the way it is. A lot of things or terms from American football are simply impossible or stupid to translate literally into any other language, so you just take them for granted, no matter how much of a linguistic purist you are. Once you master them, you will have no problem understanding and following what is actually happening there.
Therefore, for all of you who might give American football/Super Bowl a chance, but don’t know where to even start, for all of you who might want to fill the time around the always spectacular half time show, for all of you who might not be able to follow the (really great) Croatian NFL commentators who are too deep inside to ‘spell’ you some basic things — I offer you a short, basic course for beginners.
So, in American as well as in European football, there are 11 players of each team on the field. Each team has three different sets of players; offense, defense and special teams. Attack and defense are logical, and special teams are players who kick the ball in special situations.
The field is 100 yards long, which is approximately 91 meters, plus another 10 yards on each side of the field called the end zones. This is the area where points are won. The key rule of the game is that a distance of at least 10 yards must be covered in four attempts (downs). If this is successful, a new first attempt is obtained; if it fails, the ball is won by the defending team.
The excitement and endless array of tactical options and decisions lies in the fact that you can win points in several different ways, and not just one, as is the case in ‘our’ football. In American football, you can earn one, two, three or six points.
The pinnacle of American football is the touchdown, a situation in which the attacker runs into the end zone with the ball in his hands or catches it inside it. This is worth six points, after which the same team gets a chance to score an extra point with a goal kick from 15 yards away. There is also another option, in which two additional points can be earned after passing instead of one. The ball is then placed two yards from the end zone, and the team has one attempt to make another layup, which in that case is worth two points.
In addition to passing into the end zone, points can also be earned with a field goal, which is worth three points. The most common situation in which teams decide on this option is if they failed to get 10 yards in three attempts (downs), and they don’t want to risk that they might not succeed in the last fourth, so the opposing team gets the ball in that place and starts its attack. A ‘safe’ three sounds better than a risky attempt to win six points, even if those three are far from safe. Because with them, the distance of the kicker from the goal, as well as the weather conditions on the field, play a significant role. That is why there are flags on the tops of the goals that show the shooter the direction and strength of the wind and force him to adjust his speed when hitting.
The third way to win points is safety. It’s a rare situation where a defense tackles a ballhandler inside his end zone as he prepares to throw the ball or make a run with it. When this happens, the defense gets two points and the ball in their hands to start a new attack.
And that’s it. Now you know everything. There are some other theoretical options for scoring points, but don’t bother with them today. It’s not really *that* complicated, is it? Trust me, along with a bag of chips, this is all you need to know to watch an American football game. Everything that happens during the game is just a variation on the theme of how to (pro)perform some of the above.
There are a bunch of rules and fouls that you’ll pick up as you go, but one of the more important ones is that a defensive player must not hold or knock down an attacker while the latter does not have the ball in his hands. As soon as he gets her, he can do whatever he wants with it. Again, within certain limits — for example, he must never catch him by the helmet, but the point is to put him on the floor as soon as possible or kick him the ball. Each team has three time-outs per half, and time-outs are an especially important tactical tool for coaches at the end of the game when it is important to stop the clock.
Yes, the breaks during the game can be annoyingly long and it can last enough to make you fall asleep and wake up 10 times if you’re watching live in the dead of night, but that’s a part of the story that you can’t avoid in any American sport. Well, there is always a solution to watch the video tomorrow, if you can make sure you don’t know the result. Because it’s hard to find crazier, trickier and more dramatic game endings than those in American football.
Just like American society globally, American football is a sport of narrow specialization where everyone does their limited and strictly defined part of the job, but strives to bring it to perfection in order to fit it into a successful and winning bigger picture. In this set of coordinated definitions, routes and options, improvisation is allowed for the few, but only when all the given schematized movements and tasks are done. This is where the most important man in American football comes into play: the quarterback or quarterback.
This is the character who always gathers the best female in the movies, and in reality spends days and nights with coaches and teammates in order to master theory and practice equally powerfully. The role of the quarterback is without a doubt the most complex role in any team sport because it requires an athlete who is both a geek and a dude and muscular and intelligent and impact-resistant and patient and fast and strictly follows the rules, but also knows how to improvise quickly, knows absolutely everything about each of his teammates, and almost everything about his opponents. It requires a man who is in that sport 24 hours a day to the point of manic and obsessive.
The quarterback is the only one who at all times knows all the offensive schemes and movements of his team, of which there are dozens, sometimes hundreds. All other players in the field generally only know the parts of the actions that concern them. The quarterback is both software and hardware of the team, because in addition to having to calculate in his head and predict what will happen and decide what to do in a fraction of a second, he also has to physically put it into action, avoid several ‘tractors’ rushing towards him and in a fraction of a second throw the perfect ball to the perfect place.
Aside from touchdowns, one of the most exciting moments that will send any TV commentator into an instant decibel explosion and potentially wake your child up in the middle of the night if you’re not prepared to react quickly (happened to me, I’m not kidding) is an interception. As a rule, this is a situation when the quarterback throws the ball to one of his teammates, but the defensive player intercepts it, keeps possession and creates general chaos on the field by rushing deep into the field of an unprepared opponent’s attack or even all the way to the end zone and a touchdown. Another similarly loud moment is when the defensive ‘tractors’ manage to break through the wall of bodies guarding the quarterback and knock him to the ground before he gets rid of the ball (sack). It’s probably the sweetest moment of any defensive player.
We could go on like this for a long time, but we said this would be a lesson for beginners. I don’t want to convince you that American football is something you should put all other sports aside for, but if you have the time and will to try something new — why not? At least at this time between December and February, when European or at least Croatian football enters winter hibernation.
On the night from Sunday to Monday in Santa Clara, the 60th edition of the Super Bowl will be played, the final of the NFL league, which for decades has been far more than just sport for Americans. And by far the most watched and most glamorous sporting event in the USA. If you want to give *football* a chance and feast on all that night will bring, you don’t have to feel bad. It does not mean that you issued *our European one.
