Down for the count...

Alright, so now I know that a football offense uses either a running or passing play to try to advance. Which brings us to a pretty critical question: how do you score?

The snippets of football games I’ve seen when I haven’t been loudly acting out in frustration have featured phrases like “First and ten.” A lot. Today I learned that’s because those numbers describe the primary motion for scoring in football. The first number, which will be “first,” “second,” “third,” or “fourth,” tells everyone what “down” we’re on. A “down,” Mike tells me, is a chance to make it ten yards. You get four chances. If you don’t make it, the other team gets the ball.

We do this ten yards at a time? When the field is 100 yards long? No wonder this game has been excruciating to watch!

That piece of bad news has already tipped me off as to what the second number does: it tells everyone how many yards the team has to go before they reach the ten yard requirement to keep the ball.

Mike tells me that once I understand how the game works, things will move much faster. He really wants me to succeed at this little project. I married a good guy. He really wants to include me in this thing that monopolizes his evenings.

So as long as you make it ten yards in four tries, you get to keep trying to inch your way down to the other team’s endzone to score a touchdown. You can either carry a ball into the endzone, or you can throw it to one of your teammates that is already standing in the endzone. A touchdown is worth six points. After a touchdown is scored, a line of scrimmage forms on the second yard line. The scoring team gets one down (one chance, remember) to either carry the ball back into the endzone for two points (a two-point conversion) or kick a field goal for one point.

I was really starting to wonder what purpose those giant yellow u-shaped things at both ends of the field served. To successfully kick a field goal, ya gotta get the ball in the u.

Mike tells me that I now know basically how the game is played.

I feel a little sheepish. Is this what I was afraid of?

“It can’t be this simple,” I say doubtfully.

“It’s not,” he says. “But I’m gonna have to explain the rest in context.”

Yay. Because I’m a BIG fan of being the dumbest person in the room (which is probably really what this whole project is all about).