Posted on 07/29/2015 12:11:04 PM PDT by Kaslin
In the coming days, a million or more teenage boys will eagerly show up at their high school campuses weeks before regular classes start. They will plan to spend their whole day at school, pay close attention to their instructors, and work as hard as they can.
They will spend time in the classroom and time in the field, and they will all be focused on a single, venerable all-American goal: becoming part of a winning football team.
Football is America's greatest game for boys, not only because of the lessons it teaches but also because of the broad range of young men who can play the game and learn those lessons.
In track and field, one athlete faces off against another -- perhaps a teammate. Even the relay teams have only four runners.
In basketball, each team puts just five men on the court at a time.
In baseball, it is nine -- and perhaps a designated hitter.
But, in football, there are 11 players on the field for every play -- and many different types of plays needing different types of players. There is an offensive team, a defensive team, and multiple special teams to handle punts, kickoffs, field goals and extra points.
And there are variations on all these. A shrewd coach might put different men on the field when his team faces a desperation onside kick rather than an opening kickoff -- or when it is fourth and one, not third and 30.
In the 2013-2014 school year, according to the National Federation of High School Sports Associations, 1,093,234 boys played high school football in the United States.
No other sport came close.
Only 580,321 high school boys participated in track and field that year, and only 541,054 were on a high school basketball team. 482,629 played baseball and 417,419 played soccer.
When you add together all the boys and girls who played high school basketball (974,398) or all the boys and girls who played high school soccer (791,983), they do not equal the more-than-a-million high school boys who played good, old American tackle football.
The first great lesson boys learn playing football is that great things are only achieved after long hours of hard work. Great high school football teams do not just show up on game day and play. Nor do its players first show up in August when it is time for double sessions. Players on great teams work all year round to develop the strength, endurance and skills they need to win in the fall.
A second great lesson boys learn playing football is that they must play as a team to win. The greatest of quarterbacks cannot save his team if the line cannot block. A powerful offense cannot lead a team to victory if the defense cannot stop the opposition. When teammates work diligently together to prefect their skills in practice and then put them to test on the field, they learn to respect each other, trust each other and rely on each other.
More than any other team sport American boys play, football requires and develops physical courage at the same time it encourages fair play. Opposing football players are supposed to hit each other -- airly, safely and according to the rules -- but, nonetheless, with ferocity. Yet they cannot fail to appreciate the difference between a fair hit and a dirty one, nor fail to respect the former and revile the latter.
A fourth great lesson football players learn is that wit matters. You can study another team's offense and defense and sometimes discover a way to outsmart them.
But the greatest lesson football teaches is really a combination of all its other lessons. It is that football -- like a free society -- functions as a true meritocracy.
The team with the greatest natural athletes does not always triumph. Sometimes the team given less at the start wins more in the end.
If they put in the long hours of work, if they trust their teammates and merit their teammates' trust in return, if they are tough and fair, and if they play smart, they just might beat a team that is bigger and faster and stronger than them, but never mastered the underlying virtues of the game.
That is why football is not just a uniquely American game, but also one that reflects the American Dream.
nothing
Now Baseball and Football are different from one another in other kind of interesting ways I think. First of all, Baseball is a 19th century pastoral game. Football is a 20th century technological struggle. Baseball is played on a diamond in the park, the Baseball Park. Football is played on a grid iron in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.
Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life. Football begins in the fall, when everything is dying. In Football, you wear a helmet. In Baseball, you wear a cap. Football is concerned with downs. What down is it? Baseball is concerned with ups. Who’s up? Are you up? I’m not up. He is up. In Football, the specialist comes in to kick. In Baseball, the specialist comes in to relieve someone. In Football, you receive a penalty. In Baseball, you make an error. Whoops!
Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, blocking, piling on, late hitting, unnecessary roughness and personal fouls. Baseball has the sacrifice. Football is played in any kind of weather, rain, sleet, snow, hail, mud, can’t read the numbers on the field, can’t read the yard markers, can’t read the players numbers, the struggle will continue.
In Baseball, if it rains, we don’t come out to play. “I can’t come out to play. It’s raining out.” Baseball has a 7th inning stretch. Football has the two minute warning. Baseball has no time limit. We don’t know when it’s gonna end. We might have extra innings.
Football is rigidly timed and it will end even if we have to go to sudden death. In Baseball, during the game in the stands, there is kind of a picnic feeling. Emotions may run high or low, but there’s not that much unpleasantness. In Football, in the stands, during the game you can be sure that at least 27 times you are perfectly capable of taking the life of a fellow human being, preferably a stranger.
And finally the objectives of the two games are totally different. In Football, the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general. To be on target with his aerial assault riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing his aerial assault with a sustained ground attack, which punches holes in the forward wall of the enemies’ defensive line.
In Baseball, the object is to go home, and to be safe. I hope I’ll be safe at home, safe at home.
-George Carlin
OH MAN that George Carlin skit doesn’t get old LOL!
The last 3/4 of the race (1500m) is done anaerobically.
Lactic acid is the rowers' drug of choice.
IV therapy is often necessary after a race.
I was a football player, and now I have a 13 year old boy. He’s played some soccer, but mostly Little League, and Pee-Wee football. I now know why I became a football player.
Football is relatively FREE compared to any other sport.
You don’t have to play on Select Travel teams to be good in Football. It’s mostly all still done through the schools.
Other sports are not like that.
By the time 7th grade comes around, or 9th grade for baseball if your just playing rec league you will be behind.
we learn it’s ok to beat your wife..it’s ok to raise dogs for fighting, it’s ok to cheat...We’ve learned its ok to play with conscussions, ..we’ve learned its ok to be a thuckin fug and get paid for it..
I didn’t know so many more boys still played football compared to other sports.
Many young men who play football come from families where multi generations of family members have played. In my family, my dad and his brothers played football, my brother and I played, my nephew played and both of my sons played, my youngest being the first in the family to play college football and he was team captain for his final season. My older son was the first to score a touchdown as we’ve all been linemen, battling it out in the trenches, blocking to give team mates the chance to score for our team and tackling to stop the other team from scoring. My sons and daughter haven’t had children yet, but I’m hoping when they do, they encourage their kids to play football! I’ll be in the stands for every game, just as my dad was for my nephew and my sons games, rooting them on and enjoying the greatest of sports, football!
As someone who played baseball, I grudgingly concede that you are right. Today’s baseball is dominated by rich kids, not something that attracts the best athletes to the sport. It is why you have seen Vanderbilt v Virginia in the last two College WS finals. Football’s less money driven system on the youth level has allowed the less moneyed kids a chance to stay competitive in the sport. Let’s be honest, the better athletes have always come from the poorer classes, thus football and basketball for that matter have attracted the better athletes over the other three sports that have surrendered to money at the youth level, baseball, hockey, and soccer.
Your situation seems to be driven more by genetics than anything else. Of course a family of big burly guys is going to gravitate to football.
True, we’re all big guys, but there’s also the “inner warrior” aspect and that plays into it as well. Lot’s of guys who played football end up joining the service, as I did right after I graduated from HS.
Surprising to me, as well, considering the war on boys and the agenda to stop them from doing anything so physical.
On a sad note, I recall being told about a news item by one of my sisters who lives near a small town in Pennsylvania. Seems the local rec council was not able to field a team last season because not enough boys came out for it.
The article she read quoted someone as saying that the main reason was that many boys would rather play video games.
Don’t know about anyone else, but what I learned is don’t play football if you’re short high school freshman who weighs 115 pounds.
Baseball is the only sport where the defense has the ball.
I love it as well!!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.