Analyzing sports with respect to my five principles of sport and subsequent extension of those principles often exposes failures and inconsistencies in their rules and structures.  By sound structure I’m referring not just to the principles in the aforementioned articles, but also to a structure that encourages and permits the highest availability of competition while still taking into consideration that, after all, not every sport can be the same.  That said, one sport above all seems to be disproportionately poorly constructed while somehow maintaining its immense popularity in the United States: American football.

While the last sentence is quite damning, there are actually some very good points about the structure of football.  However, many of these points are as a result of its more rugby-like past, and rugby, I argue, is one of the few sports which I find almost optimal.  Football seems to have taken its genesis in rugby, and change its rules to squash — not foster — fair, unbiased competition, and for seemingly arbitrary reasons.  Let’s first take a look at some of the better points of football, as while it’s become poorly constructed, it still serves as a sport which conforms to most of the principles of sport.

Football begins beautifully by having 11 players per team on the field at a time.  With 22 players on the field and the field being 360×160 feet, there is plenty of room for play, but generally not so much room that it allows the opposition to give up on a particular play.  This generally ensures that both teams stay motivated on each play regardless of the circumstances.

Another wonderful part of football is that it requires participation of both teams.  That is, you cannot play a game of football by yourself, as the kick-off requires the other team to catch the ball for a return.  Even if that player wasn’t there and the ball was touched by a member of your own team, the opponents would still need to be present to start their plays.

Likewise, since participation of both teams is required, it follows that scoring in football is because of a mistake or generally negative action by the other team.  Touchdowns or points from kicks are rewarded from getting the ball past the opposition and into the end zone (or through the field goals).  These actions require the other team to either miss tackling the player or not getting his or her hand on the ball when it’s being kicked.  The way the scoring is ruled is also generally in football’s favor: while there are obvious problems with how the ball gets placed, a touchdown is scored in a generally unbiased fashion, while field goals are almost always unequivocal.  So we have generally unbiased scoring.

While football has its great points, there are more than several absolute failures which make it, in my opinion, the most ill-constructed popular professional sport in the United States, if not the world.  Some of these have to do with individual rules which could be easily fixed (although certainly there would still be backlash), while others focus on major principles or procedures in the sport.  I’ll try to do explain my criticisms in a chronological order of its place in the game.

Perhaps sadly, the criticism begins immediately: the coin toss.  Already we see absolute pure chance making an impact on the game instead of the two competitors.  According to my principles of sport, the circumstances and outcomes in the game should be completely the result of the two competitors’ actions.  However, at the very beginning of the game we see that choosing sides is nothing more than a child’s game of luck.

We also immediately come upon another criticism: the kick-off.  For the sake of clarity, I’m also going to add into this section any opportunity to kick the ball, which includes, kick-offs, punts, and field goals.  An obvious remnant of its rugby-like past, where the kick is extremely frequent and important, football has continued the kicking game despite it being relegated to 4th downs, field goals, and when its required (kick-offs, for example).  Despite placekickers dominating the highest career point totals in NFL history, the kickers’ duties are few and somewhat infrequent.  Even on a football team the kicker has almost no true non-kicking football skills, and is often ostracized from the team.  The kick, for all intents and purposes, is a vestigial organ that places too much emphasis on a part of the game which is extremely different from the rest of the game and yet has an incredible, adverse impact.  An additional criticism I would place on kicking is the ability to set the ball on the ground for field-goals and the kick-off, as in any other part of the game this would be illegal or considered an incomplete pass or play.  There is absolutely nothing about the kick that should remain in football, ironically making the name “football” an obvious misnomer.

As an aside, should football continue to use a placekicker, the field is perhaps too short.  As placekickers are now able to kick the ball almost the entire length of the field, if not more, receiving the ball at the beginning of the game or after a touchdown has almost become an automatic knee-down and the play sets at the 20 yard line.  Because of the placekicker’s efficiency and expertise and the ability for the defense to run the length of the field and get to the receiver just before or even after the catch is made, this has almost entirely squashed any competition from the receiver being able to gain much more than 20 yard, instead opting to simply catch the ball and take the 20 yard reset.  This seems to be a cop-out of competition attributable to the strength of these placekickers and the size of the field.

The next poorly constructed aspect of football encountered would be the set-up for the offensive line.  Contrary to popular belief, a quarterback cannot simply make a forward pass to any teammate he or she chooses; rather, only to an eligible receiver.  Who is an eligible receiver?  According to the NFL rulebook, “All members of the defensive team are eligible. Eligible receivers on the offensive team are players on either end of line (other than center, guard, or tackle) or players at least one yard behind the line at the snap. A T-formation quarterback is not eligible to receive a forward pass during a play from scrimmage.”  In my extension of the principles of sport, I posit that it’s best that every player have like participation.  In football, however, these defensive players on the offensive line are not eligible to receive a pass in the same way eligible receivers are.  This seems to me to be a great misstep in the rules of football that truly handcuffs the available options for the quarterback and his team.  It would be best if there weren’t any explicit positions and responsibilities, requirements, or limitations for those positions, with exception of the quarterback and the center, who snaps the ball to the quarterback.  A further criticism is that these ineligible receivers may not even pass the line of scrimmage until the ball passes this imaginary line; if all positions were equal, they should be able to drive the defense further back into their own zone.

A small but still important criticism comes at the start of the play for the offensive team.  Should the center slight twitch and make the defensive player cross the line of scrimmage, committing a offside penalty, it is not the defensive player who is penalized, but rather the offensive center.  It seems to me that the responsibility for one’s own actions would mean that the defensive person who went offside, not the center who simply twitched and never picked the ball up off the ground, should be the one who is penalized.

Similarly, I also criticize the false start penalty, which is incurred when an offensive player moves after the formation has been set but before the ball has been snapped.  Players, save the center (who is snapping the ball from the set position), should be able to freely move about their own zone up until and once the center snaps the ball to the quarterback.  I see little reason for limiting the movements of either the offense or defense as long as they stay within their respective zones.

Jumping to the end of the game, perhaps my most important criticism of football comes into play: running out the clock.  Because football is a largely running clock sport (a sport in which the clock continuously runs, such as soccer), a team who is winning with a very short lead can actually run out the clock by simply having the quarterback kneel immediately after the snap, and then drain the play clock of the entire 40 seconds.  With the two-minute warning in the NFL, should the defensive/losing team not have any time-outs, it’s easy for the offensive/winning team to drain the clock without the other team ever having the opportunity to compete for the win.  If there is ever a rule in professional sports which permits a team to use the officials or the structure of the game against its opponent, it’s this rule right here.  In order to permit fair competition, I would propose the NFL go to a stop-clock for the entirety of the game, even if the implication of such a change is shorter quarters.  This would allow full competition at every minute of the game, restoring the clock to an unbiased position unable to be manipulated for one team’s benefit.

Should the game end as a tie and go into overtime, another atrocity against fair competition and equal opportunity arises: a coin toss which decides which team gets to begin the sudden death overtime.  Again relying on the luck of the draw, the team which wins the coin toss typically wins the game, as even a three-point field goal is eligible to win the game.  By making overtime sudden death and reliant on a coin toss, football is essentially taking the other team largely out of the game, and makes winning the game available to a 40-yard field goal as opposed to a touch down.  There are several incredibly easy ways to fix this horrendous rule: keeping the ridiculous coin toss, they could give each team an equal opportunity to score equal points.  That is, if the team who begins with the possession scores a 3-point field goal, the opposing team, on their possession, may now go for a 3-point field goal to continue the overtime or go for a 6-point touchdown, which would win the game for them.  This easily provides equal opportunity for fair competition.

Despite its immense popularity in America, football has some rules and structures that need drastic changes in order to become a more soundly constructed sport.  With a few changes to minor rules and perhaps some very large changes to the structure, I believe football would not only see an increase in fair and equal competition, but see more sustained competition that doesn’t manipulate supposedly objective rules.  These changes would not only contribute to a more competitive sport, but also a more sound sport, in general.