Spreading the Gospel... of American Football

It’s a well known fact that what we call football is not the norm around the world. Our version of it draws a lot of criticism for being boring, and even sometimes “pansy”. This coming from people who seemingly play a large scale game of “pong”, or at least that’s what soccer feels like to me. Americans all over the world have to endure persecution for playing a sport not quite rugby, with a name that has nothing to do with the actions taken within the game, or very little. People tell us our sport is dumb and boring while they sit in front of a TV and watch next to nothing happen. Well, I am making ground in getting out the excitement of American Football, and making decent headway thanks to satellite TV, and built up frustration.

This week is a week of rest from the norm for us here on the Logos Hope, so I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to set up an American Football Tournament. The game was 5 on 5 full contact, with a limit of three Americans per team. There were five teams originally signed up, but four teams ended up making it. So everyone got to play each other, and each team got three games. The people ranged from anywhere from the Faroe Islands to France to South Africa. A lot of people didn’t have a great understanding of the rules, but we made do.

The games were a little ugly, being that not many people have played much quarterback in their life, and those that have, myself included, are rusty from a lack of playing for a long time. Aside from that, the games were a blast! Fairly fast paced and hard hitting (I think some people just wanted to get out some frustration) the 10 minute halves flew by. Two teams emerged as the dominant ones, and the final game was between my own team (Sons of Thunder) and the other dominant team, and what a doozie.

Tied at 6-6 going into the second half, nobody seemed to have an edge. Offensive play was sloppy, and defense was tight on both sides. With little room for mistakes, my team started with the ball and struggled to score for the next two possessions. With about 5 minutes left in the game, the ball slipped out of my hand right into the end zone, and the other team recovered. This made the game more interesting, and we were down (after a scoring drive before that) by a count of 6-18 (1-3). The next drive we got the ball and marched to chew up some yards and quickly scored. With about 3 the other team got the ball. Our defense stiffened up and halted them with about a minute thirty to go. The final drive was in the typical “two-minute drill” fashion, rushing to the line after every play. As we neared our goal line, after a few nice plays, we had twenty five seconds left and it was third and goal. I was to run a fade route, which means I run up field. I got a step on my defender, and the quarterback threw it right where it needed to be, and I caught the game-tying touchdown with 20 seconds left. We stopped them two straight plays, but on the last one suffered an injury (the only of the afternoon) to a main player. We decided to play college overtime style, and both of us scored as the sun went down. For now we are tied… Sad isn’t it?