The Basics of Football

Football is a sport mainly played in the United States and some in Canada. There have been efforts to take it over seas by the NFL, but they have not been successful. Football is a game played with an oblong ball made of brown leather. It has white laces in the center to grip.

The game has a field of 100 yards. There are two teams playing the game with 11 players of each team playing at a time. The offense plays separate from the defense. They are two separate things and then there are different special teams that play for kickoffs, kickoff returns, punts, punt returns, and field goals and field goal block teams.

The kick off is set at a certain yard line depending on whether it's youth or high school, college, or pro. The ball is kicked and the return team sets their team in a pattern to block for the returner to try to run it for a touchdown. The defense will try to tackle him as far back as possible as well as strip the ball away from the returner. The kicker can kick it out of the end zone on the opposite end for a touch back or if it is in the end zone and the returner does not think he can return the kick he may down it and it will come out to the twenty or twenty five.

The punt game is similar to the kick off, but the punter receives the ball from a hike from a center instead of off a tee. This means it is easier to block and harder for the punter to handle. The punter seems to have a tougher job. He also has directional punts and usually tries to place it in certain spots or maybe not trying to kick it to certain return men to avoid a touchdown as this is more frequent than off of kickoffs.

Field goals are hard because they come from a center as well; they also have to be handled by a holder who places the ball instead of off of a tee for the kicker. This makes for a lot of blocks and many things that can go wrong. The process of the field goal sometimes gets drawn out if it is at the end of the game because the coaches will try to freeze the kicker of the team that is kicking the kicker. They call the time out so that he gets nervous having to think about what he has coming up. The main rule that gets called against the blocking team is that they can't jump on top of their other players. They also cannot run into the kicker.

The actual playing of the game is 11 versus 11. So are the special teams I just mentioned. The offense has 4 downs to get ten yards. They can pass or throw the ball through the air or run the ball by handing off to a back or quarterback sneak. The defense has lineman, linebackers, cornerbacks and safeties to stop them. The game is evolving into a throw first game, but the run is always a good way to go for short yardage. Linemen are usually bigger and the guys in the back are smaller and faster. Quarterbacks come in a lot of different builds and athletic abilities, but for the most part are the most intelligent people and best leaders on the field.

The American game of football has two primary fan bases and they are college and professional football. The NCAA football is the college football. They pit schools against other schools. The schools that seem to fair the best right now with the biggest dynasties seem to come from the SEC, which is a conference in the NCAA. The NCAA is split into several conferences who compete for not only conference championships, but also National Championships. This year the National Championship actually had two of these SEC teams in it instead of one from another conference, this is how dominant this conference is. It was a good game that was a hard nosed one. It had LSU vs. Alabama and Alabama won. Alabama has arguably the best coach in all of football in Nick Saban. He is definitely the best recruiter. The college game is evolving into a passing high speed game, but these two teams slow it down and pound games out while playing great defense.

The NFL is the league for the professionals. It is a very competitive league and from season to season you don't know who will be good. The Patriots, Packers, Ravens, Giants, and a very few others seem to be good every year, but after that its up in the air. The games are exciting because the athletes on the field are just so talented. There are a lot of big hits, long runs and throws, and spectacular plays.

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