This week I will be introducing America’s most popular sport, football. In fact. it is so popular that, according to a study done over the last year by playersbio.com, they con
cluded that annual viewership of professional football games in the United States was higher than the next highest eleven sports combined, at 114.3 million viewers. At Penn State, we have the privilege of being a part of one of the largest fan bases in the country. The best example of this amazing fan base was the White Out game that happened over the weekend. Though many people love to watch football, there may also be many that don’t understand the rules.
Football is played with 11 people on the field at a time, though football teams are much bigger than just 11 people. Since there is so much physical contact, it’s common to see players substituting in and out of games in order to give players a break. There is a lot of equipment that goes into playing football, and players are often seen in some type of protective gear from head to toe, the most important part of this gear is the helmet.
The team on offense tries to move the ball by either throwing it or running it. When running the ball, the quarterback will take the ball and hand it to the running back, or run it himself. However, if he decides to throw it, it will go to either a wide receiver, a running back, or a tight end. The wide receivers are the players that start out wide, far away from everyone else. The running backs start in the back, near the quarterback, and the tight ends start on the line, close to the ball. For a better image of this see the diagram below. The main goal of the offense is to get the ball into the end zone and score 7 points. If the offense cannot get the ball into the end zone, they have one of two options, which fall under the “special teams” area of the team which I will explain later.
On defense, the main goal is to attack the ball. You must tackle whoever has the ball in order to stop the play. In my opinion, defense is more challenging than offense because the defender has to react to what the offense is doing.
The aforementioned special teams are the third part of a game of football. As I said before, the offense must decide what to do if they cannot get the ball to the end zone. They can either punt, which gives the ball to the other team or kick a field goal, which scores 3 points. This choice is based on how close to the end zone you are and if you have someone with a leg strong enough to kick a field goal from that distance. I was the kicker on my high school football team, so this is the area I have the most personal experience.
https://playersbio.com/most-popular-sports-in-america/
This is awesome! I have just recently started enjoying football since coming to Penn State and have had no idea what was going on so thank you for teaching me! This post is well worded and organized beautifully. I found it very easy to follow and, as always, learned something new! I also really enjoyed the diagrams you included to support your writing.
Awesome Job! I really enjoyed reading and learning the basic rules of football and how you incorporated images to help break down rules and positions. You also did a great job describing and informing the audience. Overall I think you did a great job, and I really enjoyed reading this piece.
This is great! Your explanations are very in depth and I can tell that you have a passion for this sport. Although you give very in detail explanations, I never find it hard to follow or understand. I liked how you referenced playersbio.com as well as included diagrams to help the audience better understand. Great Job!