The sport of football involves two crews coming together on the same race course to try to score points. Each crew has an end of the course, and the goal is to take a ball and carry it into the other crew’s end.
Even if you aren’t a fan of match racing, watching football can be an enjoyable experience.
Each crew is made up of 11 members. But just like your spinnaker trimmer sucks at trimming the jib, you have different crew members come out depending on whether you’re on offense or defense.
Let’s start with offense. First, there’s the quarterback, or skipper. And boy, is he a yeller. There’s a guy in the middle who’s like the pit, and his sole job is to give the skipper a ball and then try to keep him alive. He has four other guys help him do this, and quite honestly, their efficiency is a little questionable.
The skipper depends on trimmers to advance the crew’s position on the course. Just like in sailing, the skipper is useless without his trimmers. Just like choosing which jib to put up, the skipper will give the ball to a different trimmer depending on the course conditions. Your trimmers are good at pulling things; these guys are good at running very fast without dropping a ball.
Look – we never said you needed an advanced degree in trigonometry to understand football. But there is beer, so just stay with us.
The trimmer’s job is to hold a ball and run toward the other crew’s end, advancing their position. Unlike sailing, there is no Rule 14 to avoid contact. The other team will try to kill the trimmer mercilessly, and steal the ball back.But there are a multitude of ridiculous rules regarding how they can try to kill your trimmer, so sometimes the trimmer may get an extra three boatlengths for simply sustaining a concussion.
When you think about it, we could probably increase our viewership if we removed Rule 14 and instead encouraged contact until the other competitor sank.
If the trimmer gets into your opponent's end of the course, you get six points. If he gets stopped by the other crew, it's like raising your spinnaker by its clew and you have to do the whole thing over again. Either way, the skipper yells his head off.
Once you get your six points, the squirrel comes out. This guy is called “special teams” because he has just one job to do, but if he screws up you all look like imbeciles.
The squirrel’s job is to take the ball and kick it up high, between these two yellow things that look like bare masts. He gets one point for doing that, not six, just like your squirrel gets one-sixth the respect of the other crew members. He’s understandably upset, but the skipper can just tell him to go below until the next douse if he doesn’t feel like dealing right now.
Sometimes,when your crew can’t advance far enough on the field to put the ball in the other crew’s end, the squirrel will come out and try to kick the ball up high and super far, through the yellow bare mast things. If he does this, it’s only worth three points. Because even at his best, the squirrel only gets half the respect of your trimmers.
So that’s offense. Now, say you’re on defense. Remember, this is match racing. In football, you can’t just take the ball and sail your own boat. You have to fight the other boat off half the time.
Again, you have 11 crew members. But these guys are your heavy weather guys: they are huge. They have one job: grab ahold of the other team’s skipper and throw him onto the ground. He’ll yell like hell, but it’s worth it.
There are also a few smaller guys who would have been trimmers but they can't catch the damn ball for the life of them. So their job is to harass the other team's trimmers, getting all up in their faces. These guys are similar to the guy on your rail who shouts "Protest!" when he really is clueless when it comes to the Rules of Racing. But his heart's in the right place.
Sometimes the defensemen throw the skipper to the ground and then run the ball to the other end and score points. This happens very rarely, though, because these guys are known for their chest circumference and ability to get into college without taking the SATs. They are not known for their speed. Seeing them run the ball into the end zone is like watching a bear eat a popsicle: awkward, but somehow the job gets done.
In the end, whoever wins the most points gets a trophy. It’s not a very big trophy, to be honest.
The most significant way in which football and sailing differ is their spectators. Tens of thousands of people will show up to watch a football game, whereas a sailboat race will only be witnessed by the race committee, and possibly the squirrel's new girlfriend if it turns out the GoPro was working.
If even after reading this article, football means nothing to you, then don't worry. There will be fun commercials for insurance, beer, and potato chips that everybody will want to talk about Monday morning. Additionally, football fans are stress eaters and drinkers. It's not uncommon for them to show up at work on Monday, complaining about eating three pounds of queso and drinking a 12-pack of lite beer. You don't have to resonate with their experience, just sympathize.
There will absolutely come a moment when you’re watching the game that you will think, “I’d rather be out sailing.” This is a normal feeling, and you’re likely not alone in having it. But enjoy your time watching football, and just remember that those know-it-alls around you would be just about as lost as this guy watching sailing.
And next Sunday, you’ll be back out frostbiting.
