Prior to this year, the only football games I’ve watched have been Super Bowls. I’ve pretty much picked up the basics of the game: You run and throw the ball until you get to the end zone, and the other team tries to stop you by tackling or intercepting a throw. 

But this year, my friends organized a fantasy league, and I went to my school’s homecoming game to participate in the usual senior year traditions. To really try to understand the hype, I even covered a football game for this very paper. Through all of these experiences, my football-loving friends have explained more of the common rules and practices to me, and well, I think they’re dumb.

Sports should be about entertainment, specifically about amusing their audience. The average NFL football player earns over $1 million per season, and this is largely due to the viewers. Since athletes earn money based on the viewership of a sport, their aim should be to amuse their audience.

Sports like soccer and basketball do this well with simple rules and fast-paced play. Cricket succeeds most of all, with just about every ball resulting in some action. (Baseball of course fails horribly at this, spanning nine never-ending innings, while teams score an average of only four runs.) But football falls somewhere in the middle, with the game itself being almost entertaining, but most of the fun being ruined by the constricting rules and the yearslong use of repetitive strategies. 

Let’s start with the clock. A quarter is supposed to be 15 minutes, so you would think a full game would take about an hour. Let’s be generous and say two hours with ads and halftime. But no, the average football game lasts over three hours, with the longest game in NFL history lasting seven hours and eight minutes. 

The length of the game can be blamed on a few things: The clock stops after many of the plays, each team gets three two-minute timeouts per half, and there just seem to be random instances where the clock is not running. To really be entertaining in a game based on playing time and not something like overs or innings (as in the case of cricket and baseball, respectively), time should run quickly. We can’t sit around waiting for something to happen with all the action interrupted by never-ending breaks, just to enjoy short bursts of exciting play. 

Why would stepping out of bounds, something that is generally considered to be breaking the rules, be rewarded rather than penalized?

Speaking of stopping time, it seems like all one has to do to make the clock stop is step out of bounds. That immediately stops the play but lets the team with the ball keep it. In any respectable sport, if you have the ball and step out of bounds, the other team gets possession and has the chance to score. 

Why would stepping out of bounds, something that is generally considered to be breaking the rules, be rewarded rather than penalized? Because football players need the security of knowing that at the first sign of trouble, they can just step over a line and save themselves without consequences, leaving viewers to suffer the loss of any real display of skill or action.

Imagine this: It’s the fourth down, and you have 10 yards to go until the first down. You don’t think you’re going to make it. So what do you do? Punt the ball as far away as possible? Why admit defeat — try an onside kick instead! Or, you’re on the other team, and the ball was punted basically into the end zone. What do you do? Jump out of the way to automatically get to the 25-yard line? No! Have some faith and courage! Catch that ball and run as fast and as far as you can!

I’m not watching football to see a bunch of losers wimp out and rely on arcane rules to carry them forward. I want to see them run, throw and, most of all, take risks!

I’m not watching football to see a bunch of losers wimp out and rely on arcane rules to carry them forward. I want to see them run, throw and, most of all, take risks!

Next up: the plays. They’re boring and predictable. Football really is a sport that needs to hear the saying “traditions are just peer pressure from your ancestors” and “just because something has always been done that way doesn’t mean it has to be.” Football has a lot of safe and established plays, but the rules allow for some flexibility. Players should take advantage of that and not only shock their opponents, but also keep their audience on the edge of their seats. Snap the ball to a running back every once in a while; shake it up! Don’t let anyone predict the next move.

Finally, the end of the game: This isn’t like basketball where everyone is trying to make one last basket, shooting balls right up to the buzzer. Rather, if the team in the lead has the ball, they may not even bother to play the last 30 seconds. Instead, they choose to take a knee and let the clock run out rather than giving the fans the last 30 seconds of entertainment that we truly deserve. 

They could do something glorious, something epic, something to prove they really love the game. But no, they choose to stop. They stand around watching the clock tick down as the other team accepts their defeat. How sad, to revel in victory or loss rather than enjoy the thrill of the game. 

All of this is to say, football has potential. Change around some rules, do something a little unpredictable, focus more on the actual game than the clock, and we’d really have something. As it stands now, though, I have to agree with the rest of the world that American football is barely a sport, and they don’t even use their feet! To any football players out there reading this, do better. Entertain me! (Or at least make my fantasy team win.)