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pproximately three months ago, my fellow MIT peers dragged me to my first football game. The whole way there, my friends teased, “What kind of college student hasn’t been to a football game before?” Now that I have had such an enriching experience, though, I must acknowledge the utility of having a fundamental understanding of the sport. Once you can play basic football, you can join a club team or simply have fun throwing the ball with your friends. Or, in my case, I can design virtual reality football games now. I feel more embedded in American culture and at the end of the day, almost everyone can extract much enjoyment from the game in one way or another. From the synthesis of all of my research, I can confidently say that it is not a complex sport. Just by observing one football game and furiously taking notes, I have determined the overarching strategies of the game. From my observations, the best football players consider pre-game rituals as sacred as the game itself. You must first consume large quantities of carbohydrates before the big game. Most often this manifests itself in the form of neon-colored Gatorade. Players may even pour this glowing liquid on their heads or on the heads of others (I struggle to find the strategical advantage of performing such acts). The carbohydrates allow the players to break the organic material into usable energy (most likely in the form of adenosine triphosphate, or ATP). Now that you have supple ATP to run metabolic processes that deliver oxygen to your body, you’re physically prepared to play. But, perhaps for spiritual or superstitious reasons, players congregate in tight circles. I’ve been informed that the youngsters of today call it “squadding up.” Nonetheless, this sweaty mound of flesh and shoulderpads sways from side-to-side, peppered with grunts somewhat akin to the behavior of an Ursus Arctos (a brown bear, for those who do not engage in the use of authentic scientific nomenclature). From a viewer perspective you may appear silly, but you should understand its essential role in the game. The big game starts. Some form of randomization, in which each team has a 0.5 chance of getting picked, decides which team starts with the ball. Twenty-two people total occupy the field of 57,600 square feet. The kickoff forms a beautiful parabola.
You should reduce the quadratic coefficient as much as possible, thus making the ball travel far. Call me crazy, but I wonder if players could more easily catch footballs deflated by one or two psi… Anyways, as the game progresses, you will most likely have possession of the ball at some point. In this case, run. Avoid the colossal, testosterone-ridden bodies attempting to fling themselves at you. Do not panic if someone assaults you during your glorious sprint down the field; this is all part of the game. In the football game that I observed, one of the players fractured his clavicle bone, I believe. You must therefore understand the potential repercussions of playing such a violent sport, and do not expect the other team’s players to spare you. Your team strives to amass more points than the opposing team. Touchdowns count for six points, thus serving as the best way to earn points. Imagine a touchdown like primary active transport in the membrane of a cell. Polar molecules cannot simply diffuse through the phospholipid bilayer of the cell, so the cell must expend great amounts of energy to pump the substance across the membrane. In our case, you cannot easily pass through the phalanx of sweaty men on the opposing team, so you must spend energy and use strategy to break through their defensive wall. Just as the cell can use the newly added molecule for specific functions, you can now use the points for the touchdown to help your team win. If you can think in terms of membrane transport, the game feels so much easier! Then, if you achieve the touchdown, someone on your team can earn an extra point through a field goal. If you have trouble finding the goal posts, they look just like diagrammed transmembrane receptors. I should also mention that most football players jig after completing a touchdown; each player’s celebratory dance differs. It’s almost as if each team has a tribal dance: some “dab” while others spread their arms out and mimic an aircraft swooping through the field. You can develop your own interpretive dance. By this point, you have a rudimentary concept of football. Maybe you use this guide at the NFL tryouts. Maybe you use this guide to construct physics problems. Maybe you use this guide because you feel like a social outcast, longing to relate to American football culture. Or, maybe you use this guide as a PE teacher, ready to give your star student an A+ on her final paper. Blue Review Vol. XXIII