American Football, Rules and Policies

Last July I did a post comparing football and soccer and in that post I referenced an article I had read and lost that compared the two.  Good news - I found the article today and it's not really all that much like what I thought it was in the prior post.

The article is called American Football by Chris Schlecht and it is a fascinating short history of my favorite spectator sport.  Schlecht traces the development of football from what it was to what we have today and it reads like early church doctrinal development with heresies, and councils convened to address heresy, leading to new statements of faith.

In 1880 Walter Camp convinced the Intercollegiate Football Association to ditch rugby's way of starting play, the scrum, in favor of starting a play at a line of scrimmage.  The next year at the Princeton-Yale game, Princeton held the ball at the line of scrimmage for the entire first half without advancing it.  This is because a tie would allow them to retain the league title.  There was no rule against doing this so they did it.  Walter Camp and others were greatly bothered by this insult to the spirit of the game so they made new rules instituting a series of downs and other things that would require a team to move the ball.

Schlecht then goes on to tell how football basically developed through a battle of libertines vs. Pharisees.  It's really quite amusing in some ways but Schlecht makes some interesting observations about American culture from this.

Of the rules developed after the 1881 Princeton-Yale game, Schlecht says:

Football's evolution displays the American way of fighting sin. We combat sin with rules. Camp lauded fair play, good sportsmanship, and honor on the playing field.² But when he faced real-life problems, he fought back with law.

As the game developed it became increasingly more brutal. So, more rules were made:

Everyone knew that injury-inducing collisions and handle-bearing trousers were inconsistent with the game's ideals. But there was no written rule against it; who could complain? This is the American way. Rather than confronting offenses as being truly ugly, Camp proposed more rules.

Schlecht summarizes:

     The dawn of American football is a story of antinomian libertines versus legalistic Pharisees. Libertine players sought an imbalance in the playing field either by exploiting loopholes in the rules or by violating them outright. Against the libertines, Camp and his pharisaical standard-bearers preserved ideals through legislation. The rules multiplied. Written rules were the obsession of both sides: libertines could defend their actions on the grounds that there was no rule against what they did, and Pharisees answered with more rules to close loopholes. The result was a rule book that by 1912 had grown into an unwieldy Talmud of sixty-five pages. Progressive and fundamentalist politics followed the same ugly tendencies. Their program for virtue was to pass laws—laws against alcoholic beverages, child labor, monopolies, divorce, truancy, illiteracy, jay-walking, pollution. We Americans see rules as our savior.

I actually had to crack up in part while reading this as it reminded me of a few things in my own life.

When the kids were younger it seemed like it happened regularly that, on the occasion of some act of malfeasance, either my wife or I would announce, "ok, new rule . . . " and the new rule was always that you couldn't do what you just did that ticked us off.  The trouble was, we could never remember all the new rules.  I am sure we made new rules contradicting old rules and at times we couldn't remember what those old rules were.

I also remember going to a seminar with the church staff at a former church.  This was a big national thing with some of the big Christian celebrities.  One breakout session was on church policies.  My pastor went to it and the presenter proudly spoke of how their church had streamlined things to the point that they only had nineteen written policies.  My pastor cracked up - the church had been in existence for 20 years, had grown to 600-700 and we didn't have a single written policy and we had done fine for all these years.  In fact, that was one of the things that helped the church grow so well - if someone wanted to do something they had few hoops to jump through, so a good deal of creativity was allowed to flourish.

I actually think we need to have some rules and policies just to keep us consistent.  As a pastor, when speaking on behalf of the church I hate the thought of telling someone something today that contradicts something I or the church said to someone else in the past.

But having said that, I appreciate what Schlecht is saying and he is right on - we Americans tend to act as if we can solve any problem with another rule.

A few weeks ago I heard John Ashcroft speak and, though I had some qualms about the way he invoked the name of Jesus, he said something that was profound, that relates to this discussion of rules.  He sought to discourage the audience from relying too much on governance for curing society's ills.  He said that governance cannot elicit that which is highest and best in any of us, it can only proscribe minimally acceptable behaviors.  It can tell us not to kill, it cannot tell us to save a life.  It can tell us not to steal, it cannot command us to be productive.  He said that governance operates on the basis of proscription and imposition and this can never elicit the best out of us.

In other words, rules can never produce virtue. Rules have a place, but a lesser place in terms of the time and attention we devote to them.  Only grace and faith in Christ can produce virtue.

Comments

[Barrie]

Ah! I have an opening to praise Australian Rules Football as the Greatest Code of All.
I got to enjoy the American Code too, and we play several kinds of rugby in Australia, as well as soccer football. We are in the World Cup!
Of all these, Aussie Rules is by far the most athletic and varied to watch because feet and hands are used all the time and the rules are simple [no offside rule] it's like Gaelic Football which has a round ball that makes it too easy.
There are at least 50 separate scoring events in any AR match to keep the spectators yelling, and it lasts 2 hours.
Aussie rules is *older* than any other codes except Rugby. Soccer was even organised into a league later than AR.
AR has *no* protective clothing at all - even soccer uses shin guards. All the players can do everything on the field [no goalie].

The greatest fault of soccer is the lack of scoring - so much repetitive athletic work for so little result.
Grid Iron is just that - rigid and over-regulated, but it can be exciting.
Go Aussie Rules!

[robert p]

The TRUE game is RUGBY UNION you heretics. As played by the glorious New Zealand ALL BLACKS, masters of all they survey (except for a few moments not worth mentioning during '91, '95, '99, '03 :ob ).

Aussie Rules?!?! I didn't think there were any rules in that aerial ping-pong punting pastime.

American Football?!?! Well it's American all right, but scarcely qualifies as a "sport", more like a marketing ploy with hardly any actual play. And they wear Helmets! How lame!

All Black Rugby is unmatched for its swift tactical changes, its fierce defence, its beautiful backline manouvres, its amazing ball-handling skills. From Wikipedia: "The All Blacks are currently the only team to have a positive win record against every nation they have played in over 100 years of competition. They have won 296 of the 404 matches played, a win percentage of 73.27% (see table). By this measure the All Blacks are the most successful international rugby union team in history."

Rugby also has a history of political skulduggery, mainly in the ancient halls of the English "Rugby Football Union" and the "International Rugby Board". The Great Schism split rugby union and Rugby League in 1895, over the issue of player payments. Since then bizarre cults such as Gridiron and Aussie "rules" have sprouted like fungus. The Union traditionalists have also suffered through rewriting the received wisdom (kinda like Vatican II), for example changing the scoring system, and constant reinterpretations of the "tackled-ball" rule. One of the things that adds spice to the game is how far a team can bend the letter of the law and the referee's personal view of the rules.

But Christians don't act like that do they? Who needs loopholes when there is Grace!! ;o)

[Catez]

Rugby doesn't start with a scrum. It starts with a kickoff. Scrums happen during the game and are quite organised. Then there's the ruck and maul. That's like a spontaneous scrum gone wild.
And this sums up the problem with American society - not playing rugby.

Aussie Rules is ok - I've been to matches. But not a patch on the Men In Black.

And soccer - woohoo, World Cup is about to begin.

Um, I think I missed the point a bit... Sorry. I was just thinking how it's so liberating to not have players hidden under mountains of protective gear with a bunch of rules and fear of lawsuits. Like just getting out there and playing football - ruck on!

[Barrie]

'its amazing ball-handling skills'.

Ah, Robert p, you reveal your Achilles Heel.
Rugby's not really foot-ball, is it? And in Aussie Rules the amazing ballhandling is all done at full speed, in all directions, and high in the air after 70 metres.
'Aerial Pingpong' is a very, very old misnomer - can't anyone come up with a better insult in 120 years?
The great thing about AR is it is still evolving - fewer errors means fewer penalties [free kicks, stops] so the game has more fluid action and individual brilliance.