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.
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