OK, this sounds like a fun idea for a game. . .suppose, as a starting point, that you have a football, and you have a basketball court.
It’s not EXACTLY a basketball court; it’s kind of like a basketball court. Ideally, if we could build the court exactly the way we wanted it, it would be
- a little bit bigger than a basketball court,
- wider on one end than it is on the other, and
- there would be a set of goals on only one end.
It’s not a basketball court at all; that was just a starting point to visualize it, and you’d probably have to use basketball courts to start with, since there would be no courts pre-built for this game. The court is divided into three sections, like a traffic light: a red, yellow and a green section. The red zone is the narrow end of the court. Above the red area are three goals, one on each side. The goals are bigger than basketball goals, maybe 3 to 4 foot in diameter—about the size of a hoola hoop—and they stand up vertically, rather than laying flat like a basketball goal. One goal is 12 feet in the air, one 14 feet in the air, one 16 feet.
There are four players on each team. A referee hands the football to the team on offense, standing at the wide end of the court, away from the end with the goals. As soon as he blows the whistle, and a clock begins to tick, hopefully ticking loudly enough to be heard throughout the building. The clock starts at 10 seconds, and clicks down.
The team on offense has 10 seconds to move the ball into the red zone, by passing the football. Before the player passes the ball—before any player passes the ball--he points to a teammate. Pointing to the teammate is not optional; it’s required. It’s a foul on the offense if he fails to do it.
Once the player points to his teammate, the referee also points to that teammate. That teammate, the designated receiver, is then protected by the rules. He has the right to catch the ball. The defense can’t block him, they can’t hold him, they can’t obstruct him, they can’t try to knock the ball out of his hands. He’s safe.
The defense can, however, try to intercept the pass or knock down the pass, so long as they don’t interfere with the receiver in the process of doing the same. They can harass the passer—so long as they don’t touch him.
As soon as the referee hands the offense the ball, they have ten seconds to pass the ball into the red zone. If they don’t get the ball into the red zone within 10 seconds, the possession fails, zero points.
If they do get the ball into the red zone by the time the 10-second buzzer sounds, the player then immediately sets the ball down at his foot—I’ll explain more about the pivot foot in a moment--and the referee immediately blows a whistle. This starts another clock, a 5-second clock. A teammate rushes to the ball and sets it up for a kick, acting as the holder. The player who had the ball then has five seconds to kick the ball through one of three goals.
If he kicks the ball through the lowest goal, the 12-foot goal, that’s 3 points. If he kicks it through the second goal, that’s 4 points. If he kicks it through the highest goal, that’s 5 points.
But the ball has to go through the goal within five seconds of the start. You don’t have five seconds to get off the kick; you have five seconds INCLUDING the time the ball is in the air. Assuming that the ball is going to be in the air about one to two seconds, you’ve got about three seconds to get the ball in the air.
There are several essential rules that I haven’t explained here, but let me explain first of all why I think this would be a good game. This game design incorporates a number of features that I think would contribute to it:
- It’s fun. It’s fun to try to place kick a football accurately. It’s fun to try to throw a football accurately. In football, everybody kind of wants to be the quarterback, but the reality is, only one guy gets to do it. One guy gets the glamour job, a few other guys get to be receivers and running backs, and a whole lot of people get the grunt work. In this game, everybody has to be a passer—which means that everybody gets to be a passer—and everybody has to be a receiver. Kicking a football is a fun thing, but the reality is that in football, very few people get to be place kickers. You feel kind of stupid being out there, practicing your kicks, because the reality is, we’re not place kickers. This game is intended to give more people an opportunity to do the fun parts of football, while reducing or eliminating the parts of the game that make playing football at anything above the family picnic level so painful and annoying.
- As a spectator sport, the game has a regular flow of tense and dramatic moments. It’s not going to be real easy to get the ball into scoring position within ten seconds, so there’s going to be some tension in trying to accomplish that, although I have intended to stack the rules so that the offense will be able to get the ball into the red zone more often than not. You can do it, but there’s going to be pressure to get it done quickly.Once the ball is in scoring position, though, the real pressure begins. You have enough time to get the ball in the air, and it’s like a free throw in that the defense is not going to be allowed to pester you while you’re doing that. But unlike a free throw, you don’t have time to cross yourself, get your bearings, take your stance and shoot a couple of phantom free throws to get your motion ready. You can’t call time out, because there are no timeouts in the game. You’ve got just seconds to get the ball in the air—and you’re going to miss more often than you hit. As a spectator, there’s that tension of getting the ball in the air quickly, and then there’s a result—a steady flow of results which are occasions to applaud or occasions to groan. Each possession ends one way or the other.
- The game offers abundant options for strategy. Do you try to get yourself in position to go for the 5-point goal, or do you go for the 3? As a defender, do you guard one area of the red zone and defend another one? Do you play the player who is the best passer, the best receiver, the best defender or the best kicker? Do you defend against a pass to the best kicker, or do you defend against a pass to the prime areas to kick from? If you don’t get the ball where you wanted it, do you kick for the same goal anyway, or do you switch? Do you have time to switch? Do you throw hard, flat passes or hang the ball in the air for easier receptions? Do you try to get the ball in position with one pass or three? There are a lot of ways to attack the problem.
Another small advantage is that the game, like baseball, would be very easy to keep a scorecard on, and it would be amenable to keeping statistics. . . .kicking percentage, passing percentages, scoring averages, etc. But I haven’t finished explaining the rules of the contest.
A game consists of, let’s say, 48 possessions for each team, or 12 possessions per quarter. . . .I’m actually not sure what the right number would be, but I would guess that 48 would work. A possession has 15 seconds of clock time for each team, there’s a little time needed to re-set the possession, so I’m guessing that the offensive and defensive possession combined would take about a minute. A few possessions would re-start after a foul, so 48 possessions would probably lead to about 60 minutes of playing time, I would guess.
There are no time outs, and there are no substitutions except at the quarter, so that players have to play offense and defense. A player can come out of the game if he is injured, of course, but the rule should be that if a player has to come out due to injury you have to play one "set"—one offensive or defensive possession—short-handed before the replacement enters the game. That’s done to prevent people from exploiting injuries to get a better place-kicker into the game or something like that.
You cannot run or walk while in possession of the ball—at all. The player who receives the pass may not move with the ball in his possession—even one step. His pivot foot is always the foot he throws with—right-handed thrower, right foot—and that foot cannot move while the player has the ball. You can move the other foot to spin around and find your receiver. You can run to catch the ball, run to get open to catch the ball, but you don’t have a step to get yourself under control after you make the catch. Once you catch the ball, your position is fixed. If you jump to make the catch, you have to land and stick; if you don’t, it’s a foul.
As I mentioned, the designated receiver has the right to catch the ball unmolested. If you touch him, it’s a foul. You can’t block him, grab him, slap the ball away from him. ..nothing like that. The only way it isn’t a foul if there’s contact with the receiver is if the receiver initiates the contact when he has a clear shot at the ball and no need to push anyone out of the way.
The passer does not have to pass the ball to the designated receiver; he can point at one teammate and throw the pass to another. The alternative receiver, however, does not have the same level of protection from the rules; you can interfere with him. You can’t tackle him; you can’t knock the ball away from him—but you don’t have to get out of his way and allow him to catch the ball, either. You can go after the ball along with him.
The essential job of the defense, however, is to try to knock the pass down in the air. If you can knock the ball down it’s a free ball and there are another set of rules that kick in then, and I’ll get to those in a moment. If the defense touches the player who is in the act of passing, that also is a foul.
If the defense commits a foul, that scores one point for the team on offense, and the possession re-starts; the offense gets another shot at it. If the defense fouls again, that’s five more points, six points total for the possession, but the possession ends at that point, since six points are the most you can get off one possession. So. . .you don’t want to foul, because it’s pretty tough to score without a foul, and fouls give the offense free points.
The offense can also commit fouls—for example, if a player takes a step while in possession of the ball, that’s a foul. If the holder places the ball down for the kick more than six inches from where the player’s pivot foot was, that’s a foul. If the passer fails to designate a receiver before the pass, that’s a foul. A foul by the offense ends the possession with no (additional) points being scored (although the team may have one point on the possession from an earlier defensive foul.) If the ball is thrown out of bounds, that’s not a foul but it does end the possession.
If the ball hits the ground in bounds, it’s a free ball. Ordinarily, 90% of the time or more, a free ball will end the offensive team’s chance of scoring on the possession, but not necessarily; it’s just a free ball. If the defense can get to the free ball and pick it up, that ends the possession. If they can kick the ball out of bounds, that ends the possession.
However, if the offensive player can get to the free ball before the defender does, he does have the right to pick up the ball and resume the offense. The offensive player has the right to the ball if he can get to it; the defensive player is not allowed to tackle him, jump on him, jump on the ball while he has his hands on it, or attempt to wrestle the ball away from him. It’s a foul if he does any of these things. However, once a ball hits the floor, the reality is that the offensive set is probably over, because you’re just not going to have time to recover the ball and do anything with it.
Once the ten-second clock ends, if an offensive player has not established possession of the ball in the red zone, the offensive set ends with no score. If the offense does have possession of the ball in the red zone when the buzzer sounds, the defense must immediately exit the court in such a manner that they do not interfere with the offense’s effort to kick the ball through one of the goals. When the ten-second buzzer sounds the referee will immediately point at the player who has possession of the ball and blow his whistle, which will trigger the start of the five-second clock. The player who has possession of the ball will set the ball down beside his pivot foot (he cannot hand it off or pass it to another player), and the teammate will rush up and place the ball down for the kick. He must place the ball within six inches of the spot where the pivot foot was. Only the player who had possession of the ball may try the kick. No one else may kick for him, and under no circumstances can he be replaced to allow another player to kick for him. This is done so that all the players on the team will have to have all of the relevant skills—kicking, passing, receiving and place-holding. Nobody gets to specialize. The kicker doesn’t have to stay planted in the act of kicking. . .he can back off and step into the ball however he wants to—only, of course, he doesn’t have time to go wandering round and taking practice kicks.
The rule that the ball has to go through the goal within 5 seconds, not merely be on its way, it set that way to take control of the situation away from the offense, and thus create tension. If the kicker knows how much time he has to get the kick off, then on a certain level he has the situation under control, and there’s no tension. The fact that he doesn’t know exactly how long he has to get the kick off in time adds to the tension.
The intent of the game is that playing defense in this game is going to be much more athletically demanding than playing offense. The offensive player needs to be able to pass the football, catch it and kick it—but he isn’t going to be doing a lot of running or jumping. The defenders, on the other hand, are going to be running around and jumping all over the place, trying to knock the ball out of the air, guard the passer, and guard the defenders as best they can without making contact with them. Thus, the rule against substitutions within the quarter. We’re trying to force players to be complete players.
I recommend that there should be four players on a team, rather than five, to make the court more open, thus make more room for players to race around the field. Also, I would recommend that there should be some allowable variation in the size of the field. A basketball court is 94 feet by 50 feet. I would recommend that the field for this game should be 100 to 110 feet long, 45 to 55 feet wide at the goal end and 20 feet wider at the "starting" end than at the goal end, and that the red zone could be as short as 30 feet and as long as 40 feet. Philosophically, I think that sports are always better off to allow variation in the size of fields, because it allows for more diversity in strategy. A large field (in all games) favors a fast team. The game is more interesting if you force teams to adjust to different challenges.
That’s my game; I don’t have a name for it. I think you can get a sense of how exciting the game would be if you visualize an announcer broadcasting a possession:
Reynolds to inbound for the Spartans, he has the ball, points to Browning, Browning takes the ball in the green, 7 seconds, looking for a target in the red, Jackson covered by two defenders, 3 seconds, Reynolds races into the red, points to Reynolds, he has it. . .ball down, 4 seconds, he’s going for 4, Javier holding, and it’s. . ..too low, wide to the left, no points.
You really have to hustle to read that aloud in the approximately 16 seconds that a possession takes—but there is much more happening in those 16 seconds than the announcer has time to describe. You’ll have people trying to get open; defenders trying to cover them. The instant the ball is established in the red zone the coach will begin pointing at one of the goals, and teammates will begin scrambling to get in position to hold the ball. You’re going to develop very quickly a vocabulary of names for plays and names for defenses.
You’re going to have a full palette of statistics, measuring a wide array of skills, and also, you’re going to have footballs being kicked constantly into the crowd, which I think would be fun for the spectators. Of course, the spectators wouldn’t be able to keep the footballs; they’d have to give them back, and the officials would have to have three or four footballs ready to avoid delays between the offensive and defensive sets. I think it would be a fun game to play; I think it would be a fun game to watch. Like basketball, it has skills that you can practice on your own; it has skills that you can only practice with teammates. Since size and strength would not be tremendous advantages, it is likely that the game could be played by men or by women. The only real problem is, it’s hard to see how you can get a foothold for the game in the crowded sports environment that we already have.
Bill James
Ft. Myers, Florida
March 25, 2007 |