THE DIMENSIONS OF A FOOTBALL FIELD, OR OFFSEASON BLOVIATING ON LIMITS AND FOOTBALL
by Orson on Jun 10, 2009 12:45 PM EDT
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PrintSet up any game, and it's borders are what give it life and meaning. Not all these spaces are equal or limitless: A cricket pitch is usually a rough circle bordered by stands, but is by definition not limitless. In Grand Cayman, we once watched a cricket game where the players stood in a sandy, scraggly, and technically limitless patch of earth. Technically, by lack of agreement, if a player could heft the ball into the sea, a field would have to get it, as it was still considered in bounds. (The greatest danger anyone faced on this field was hitting one of the humpnecked white Brahmin cows wandering the perimeter.)
Soccer fields can vary in size without a defined limit, as can baseball diamonds, whose irregular shapes often influence the outcome of games themselves. Football and basketball, however, share a defined space. Play them anywhere and the dimensions of the field are the same, a uniform prison for the capture of competition no matter where you are.
This is not said at the cost of soccer or baseball: this isn't a zero-sum game. But it does highlight the fundamental rigor of the game, a restrictive framework consonant with everything else about football.
George Carlin once said baseball was a game of fun, while football was a game of "21st century struggle." Football's rules, protocols, and traditions are rigid, and even absurdly so. Consider the following criminal code of football behavior if you tried to explain it to a total stranger.
You must line up in this fashion; you must not do the following things in the art of blocking someone; a fumble is only a fumble if the prior conditions are met; an alignment may be declared illegal if proper motion is not shown and rules are not followed; defenses may defend using the following techniques and not these listed techniques; a pass must be executed in this manner; snap counts may not be mimicked; kickers must not be touched; certain players are in fact non-contact or regulated-contact targets only for the defense; certain defenses and offenses are illegal; uniform and equipment must conform with league standard; so many people may be on the sideline; behavior by players on the field is regulated, and must conform with league standard even in celebration, as dancing is not allowed.
(The natural affection of lawyers for the game makes so much more sense now. Used to operating quickly in a web of extremely particular legislation and code, lawyers get to watch a simulacrum of what they do, but one where their favored side sometimes quite literally knocks the other side unconscious. All very satisfying after a crap week of legislation, we'd assume. )
Thus the emphasis on efficiency in football. There are rules, and these rules can be leveraged with sometimes hefty amounts of strategic thinking. It's one of the reasons the game can seem so airless and dry at the pro level: given all the time in the world to work on the mathematically optimal ways to play the game year-round with professionals, the game becomes calculus with concussions, and the rare mistake by a pro can determine his entire career. Why? Because compared with college athletes, pro athletes make so few errors. (See: Tony Romo.)
College features more error, yes, but with an additional limitation: the players lifespans are pre-established. They're fixed, and their mortality in the game becomes a matter of fact the minute they sign the scholarship. Add in fewer games than the pros, and the seconds become the clock not only for the game, but for the very scarce time they have to do anything meaningful on the field. The average career of an NFL player may be comparable--three and a half seasons or so--but it's paid with the possibility of extension. A college player knows his expiration date. Which one you find more frightening is a matter of death row debate.
This all comes back to your focal event as a fan, or the instant where you realized the game had some kind of parasitic, infectious grip on you that no amount of treatment would undo. The game's rigid fatality had something to do with our focal event: when Patrick Nix heaved a pass into the back of the endzone against Florida at home and found the waiting fingers of Frank Sanders.
We're in the opposite endzone left looking up at the clock and thinking: this cannot be it. The resounding feeling was pain: irrational but unmistakable pain underscored by the muggy heat and exasperated gasps of a crowd left reeling by what had just happened, the mass equivalent of watching your dog shot in front of you while you sit bound and powerless in a waking nightmare. (If this sounds like every other really important game Terry Dean ever played, then yes, it should.)
No injury time, no second chances: just a minute and change left on the clock bleeding because the rules dictated it and demanded you respond. Every football game dies one second at a time, bounded by a thousand rules, and played out by teams of fragile people working under pressure to be as good as they can possibly be under the circumstances.
Its stricture gives it its drama, its limits force creativity, and its scarcities give it is masochistic cost/benefit payoff. More relevantly, football's economy gives it emotional resonance. If you're watching it, you watch it because you see a neatly packaged simulation of life itself--ruled, defined by a beginning and an end, and often chaotic in spite of all the rules--with two satisfying twists.
First, an actual victor is declared, something very rare in life. Second, you know roughly when it's going to end. Because of this football, for all its violence and terror, will never be as deeply terrifying as life itself. (Even when Terry Dean throws four interceptions in a single game.) Without the clock, without triple zeros set between the bounds of a field precisely 160 feet by 360 feet awaitig you, meaning is debased, and we're not left staring at the death sentence spelled out in incandescent bulbs on the Florida Field scoreboard 15 years ago wondering what the hell just hit us.
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The converse to the tight constraints of the football field of this is that every part of a football field is fully utilized. Talk of the “red zone” notwithstanding, every inch of the field is valuable, and every inch sees a the same intensity of action, unlike, say, baseball, in which the outfield sees much less action than the infield.
In the same way, not only is the college game enhanced by the limitations of a college player’s lifespan, but by the guarantee thereof. Barring injury, Fulmer Cup-type incidents or sprained cerebrums, these players will be together for a certain period of time, with no or limited possibility of movement between teams. Fans are free to get attached to players, without the possibility that they’ll hop ship in the twilight of their careers cough Brett Favre cough. Teams are free to pursue exotic or distinctive styles, like the spread, the run and shoot, or the option. Paradoxically, the tight constraints produce greater variation.
by gosouthgohard on Jun 10, 2009 1:29 PM EDT reply actions
I was at that game in 1994, and words cannot describe the misery. I think the Auburn tight end, whose name I’ve expunged from memory, just caught ANOTHER pass.
by Brian O'Blivion on Jun 10, 2009 1:34 PM EDT reply actions
So, does like, existence precede essence or what?
by Harris on Jun 10, 2009 1:36 PM EDT reply actions
Thanks a lot. Just when I had finally consumed enough alcohol over the past fifteen years to kill the cells in the part of my brain where the memory of that play was stored, you had to go and restore it.
To quote (the other) Poe:
“It’s gonna take a hundred thoughts to make this one go away…”
by CKGator on Jun 10, 2009 1:36 PM EDT reply actions
I’m a Michigan fan, and I was at the Colorado game. I’ll leave it at that.
by Jebus on Jun 10, 2009 1:42 PM EDT reply actions
The memories of that game are coming crashing back…that Frank Sanders play would never have happened if not for a 4th and 10 a couple plays earlier that Nix converted thanks to the Florida DB (I think it was Anthone Fucking Lott) playing 15 yards off the receiver at the snap.
by Brian O'Blivion on Jun 10, 2009 1:43 PM EDT reply actions
Oh, and while I remember some highlights of that particular game, my fondest memory of that occasion was getting kicked out of a Hooters in Jax for bellowing “Fuck Me Runnin’!” when the pass was caught…of course there were other lesser epithets, but that was the one that kept getting repeated by other revellers, pissed off Gators and the police…fuckin’ game…
by sb on Jun 10, 2009 1:44 PM EDT reply actions
As a small child I attended the 1999 PSU v. Minny home game. I’ll never forget the first true taste CFB agony. Great read Orson. There really isn’t a game on the same level as CFB in my mind. It’s flaws and imperfections are what make it great. Not to mention the greater connection one has with a college, especially if you’re not from one of the big NFL cities.
by psuphiman80 on Jun 10, 2009 1:47 PM EDT reply actions
I was at that f*ck!ng game and remember that awful feeling as well. I remember wishing death on Frank Sanders and Pat Nix. I was 14 years old.
by Smitty on Jun 10, 2009 1:50 PM EDT reply actions
Words can describe the feeling you had in 1994…they are “41-14 Florida over Ohio State.” For me personally, that was the hardest loss I have ever had to endure. It still haunts me in my dreams. I was sick for nearly a week – didn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. Probably lost 10lbs that week. That feeling was such a sharp contrast from the feeling of “42-39 Ohio State over Michigan in 1 vs. 2” in the previous game. Had those games been in back to back weeks I would still be in a padded room, in a diaper, making noises with finger and lips.
Thank God for College Football!
by TAFKastOSUB on Jun 10, 2009 1:51 PM EDT reply actions
Great article Orson. Thoroughly enjoyed it.
by Winfield Featherston on Jun 10, 2009 1:55 PM EDT reply actions
94 Auburn loss changed me profoundly. I was so sickened by the game that I immediately went to bed and stayed in a darkened room for 2 days. Introspection led to an epiphany that investing my whole emotional self into how the Gators did was a slow train to mental illness. It was because of this epiphany that I was able to weather The Choke at Doak, Tommy Frazier, 96 FSU (the game that didn’t matter), and 97 Tennessee. The tradeoff is that the high’s of the MNC’s are not as sky high as they would have been. But then those great feelings come crashing down eventually anyway. We can’t keep that church camp bible thumping fervor forever.
Doesn’t mean I don’t get excited watching the replays on Gridiron Greats
by Kerwin4two on Jun 10, 2009 2:08 PM EDT reply actions
Great stuff. I was 9 when that game happened, watching with my father, an Auburn grad who managed to leap about 6 feet off the ground when Sanders caught that pass. I remember that there were 33 seconds left on the clock, and I remember that it was that moment that ruined me for life as another Southern male addicted to the crack that is CFB. I earned my pain stripes in 1996: UGA 56, AU 49, four overtimes, no solid food for a week afterward. Pure agony. And yes Orson, the finality of it was what stung. “Not like this…”
by ronald on Jun 10, 2009 2:09 PM EDT reply actions
Ahh, the Choke at Doak. I was at that debacle in 1994 too, along with the Sugar Bowl loss to FSU that year. What a craptastic trifecta those three games in 1994 were for the college football misery index.
by Brian O'Blivion on Jun 10, 2009 2:12 PM EDT reply actions
Category Five, represent!
Oh and @6 – Eff Kordell Stewart; @9 – Eff Dan Nystrom.
by Cock D on Jun 10, 2009 2:20 PM EDT reply actions
What is this 18" crown stuff?
It’s interesting that some people prefer the inevitable march of time while others prefer the infinite possibilities that one last out in the bottom of the 9th can provide.
by Tim on Jun 10, 2009 2:22 PM EDT reply actions
LSU at Auburn 2006. We lose 7-3 with time running out inside the 10.
The only thing absent in your description was the copious use of any combinations of fuck, shit, and dick-tasting-war-eagle-plainstiger.
by beerbaron on Jun 10, 2009 2:30 PM EDT reply actions
And yet,….
For every moment like that (for Auburn it was the Tiften FG in the last second of the 85 Iron Bowl, or Deon Sanders’ flagrent but uncalled pass interference at the two yard line in the 89 Sugar Bowl), there are others that vault the heavens of emotion:
The first quarter of the 2005 Iron Bowl (21-0, first 5 of 11 sacks of Brodie Croyle)
The kick into the wind to beat #1 Florida in 2001
Wes Byrum’s 2nd kick in 2007
Cadillac William’s 80-yard-first-play-from-scrimmage touchdown to start the 2004 Iron Bowl
Punt Bama Punt
Which is why we watch the game. There could be twenty of the other moments in our lives, but just one of the above will keep us coming back for years.
Sullivan013
by Sullivan013 on Jun 10, 2009 2:32 PM EDT reply actions
A game which claims to be measured in yards – is, in fact, controlled by inches. 4th and inches – and a stop by Ole Miss appears to end UF’s season. Line up a few inches off the line – and a TD pass is called back (for not enough players on the line of scrimmage). Line up in the neutral zone (by a few inches) and a great 3rd down stop becomes a 1st down for the opposing team. A chain link can appear to end a season…or a an inch measured by the length of a Jarvis Moss fingertip can extend it forever in our minds.
For me, the abject dispair of being a Gator came compliments of Buck Belue and Lindsay Scott.
by hobeg8r on Jun 10, 2009 2:41 PM EDT reply actions
@1,
One of the greatest things about college football is that the players leave the game at their best(exception: Reggie Ball). They do not hang around on the backside of their career and make team management and fans squirm everytime they come back for another year that will be just a tad bit more lackluster than their previous. (i.e. Bret Favre, Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and even Joe Montana) While the college fan will miss the graduating senior and wish that he could stay for another season, everybody realizes that it is time to move on and the departure is embraced.
by jacketexan on Jun 10, 2009 2:58 PM EDT reply actions
as bad as the 1994 Auburn game was, for me it will always be the 1999 Alabama overtime loss at the swamp. stupid Shawn Alexander and everything he stands for!
by Charles on Jun 10, 2009 3:04 PM EDT reply actions
I actually kind of wish I could have a moment like #13 that would make me a little more laid back about watching games. The funny thing is that most of the teams I watch I don’t have a huge emotional commitment to, so I don’t get the highs from the championships, but in the last couple of years I have noticed some pretty extreme anxiety over playoff games or college football regular season games, where a loss can be deadly.
I also hate to watch an entire game these days and see the team I’m rooting for lose. I feel like I’ve wasted my time, and would rather spoil the result and watch a recording to enjoy the feats of athleticism later on.
by Tim on Jun 10, 2009 3:28 PM EDT reply actions
Speaking of legal fumbles, last minute miracles, and the death march of time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqLZxquKglc
GT vs. FSU 2009. The fumble in GT’s end zone
by Winfield Featherston on Jun 10, 2009 3:32 PM EDT reply actions
seeing casey claussen direct the band for “rocky top” at Ben Hill Griffin in ’03 left a bad taste in my mouth, but it will be repaid once more in spades when kiffykins gets to feel the heat of a september night in Gainesville.
“The Swamp is where Gators live. We feel comfortable there, but we hope our opponents feel tentative. A swamp is hot and sticky and can be dangerous.”
PS. Ive met Casey Claussen once and he was a real prick
by Smitty on Jun 10, 2009 3:43 PM EDT reply actions
I think if Aristotle had had the opportunity to see football, he would have written something like this (that’s supposed to be a compliment).
by Ron Kane on Jun 10, 2009 4:12 PM EDT reply actions
It wouldn’t have been so awful if Sanders was actually that high in the air. What made it unbearable was seeing Michael “concrete boots” Gilmore not leave the ground to present the slightest challenge.
by pig stabbin z on Jun 10, 2009 4:15 PM EDT reply actions
@23
I always felt guilty for the ’99 Bama loss. I needless talked trash the week prior to a Bama student who was doing a Co-Op that semester like me. She was really nice and did nothing to deserve it.
But as far as the game itself, I don’t blame Alexander, it was Darrell Jackson’s fault for muffing the punt, just get away Darrell, get away. We didn’t really need to field the punt at that point.
I hope that play is replayed over and over for the special teams with a lesson on when fielding a punt is needed or not based on time & score.
by North 2 on Jun 10, 2009 4:34 PM EDT reply actions
Moment that I became infected with the “sickness”:
Arkansas vs. Texas, 1969. I was ten years old, and the combination of highs and crashing lows has never been found in any other sport. As far as I am concerned, on the eighth day God made college football and it was good. I had an ex-girlfriend once who asked me how come I could spend 3hrs. watching a football game and couldn’t spend 3 minutes in a mall with her. Needless to say this sped up her upgrade to “ex.”
“I love it, God help me I do love it so”
by D-Macs LoveChile on Jun 10, 2009 4:43 PM EDT reply actions
well said Orson…
but I’ll top you’re Choke at the Doak with…
62-36 WTF just happened, in Boulder in 2001
by Iggy on Jun 10, 2009 4:45 PM EDT reply actions
My introduction to pain was USC-UCLA in 1982 when Jeff Fisher knocked a badly underthrown ball up in the air and Freeman McNeil came down with it and ran for the winning touchdown. If Fisher had just knocked the ball down instead of going for the interception USC would have won.
Actually Soccer fields do have limits on the size; they have to be between 100 and 150 yards long and 50 to 100 yards wide and the width has to be shorter than the length. It’s a huge amount of variation to be sure and a nearly square field certainly changes the game.
by oc phil on Jun 10, 2009 5:13 PM EDT reply actions
To All Gators fans—A retort.
November 2006: I was in the Swamp for Jarvis “Smoke Weed Eeery Day” Moss’s 3 block performance against my team. I still can’t watch that youtube clip.
At least y’all have highs.
by robert on Jun 10, 2009 6:02 PM EDT reply actions
Sounds to me like someone’s been reading to much Infinite Jest recently!
Did you know DFW basically ripped all of Schitt’s and DeLint’s weird tennis coaching off an obscure 80’s book of tenis journalism known as “Short Circuit”? Sad but true!
by Nick Black on Jun 10, 2009 6:15 PM EDT reply actions
All Cal fans share just one moment: the final play of the Oregon State game in 2007. Jesus fuck.
by AERose on Jun 10, 2009 6:40 PM EDT reply actions
for me it was the the ’99 Orange Bowl.
I was stuck watching it a a family friends yacht in Ocean Reef, which was nice, but they were huge auburn fans.
We had been in their sky box at Jordan-Hare for the Iron Bowl, so I guess they were looking for some pay back and decided to pull for Michigan. The two adults were not bad, and one of the kids was only kind of obnoxious, but the youngest one would openly cheer every time UM did anything good.
Alabama blew two 14 point leads. Nobody could cover David Terrell. Pflugner missed an extra point in OT to end it. I cried, and everyone was shocked because I was much too old to be crying over football games.
That game was the upside down spanish exclamation point at the start of the dark ages of Bama football. NCAA. Franchione. Price. Shula. 30-31 over the next 5 years.
by Kecalf Bailey on Jun 10, 2009 6:50 PM EDT reply actions
When did FreeDarko starting writing about CFB?
by chaimy4life on Jun 10, 2009 7:17 PM EDT reply actions
@37- Terrell was unstoppable that day, and Michigan could NOT stop Alexander. That may have been the most painful win ever- I wanted to puke for the kicker.
by Jebus on Jun 10, 2009 8:13 PM EDT reply actions
Damn Orson. That was a lot of words just to say “Auburn ran a kickass smash route in crunch time”.
by JD on Jun 10, 2009 8:51 PM EDT reply actions
25: Thanks for reminding me. I love the Bowden “dang nabbut!” lip read.
by softbatch on Jun 10, 2009 11:00 PM EDT reply actions
Pain? I have you all beat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24pFsej7qpY
ASU’s secondary just wanted to say “you’re welcome” for your first MNC, Gators. Fucking David Boston.
Great post O.
by Big Jon on Jun 10, 2009 11:33 PM EDT reply actions
@34
On the day of the fabled “Cock Block”:
Ray McDonald blocked the 47 yard attempt in the 3rd Q.
Jarvis Moss then blocked an extra point attempt with 8 minutes and 13 seconds left to play to preserve a 16-10 USCeast lead and give us chance for the win without needing a 2 pt conversion.
Moss then blocked the last second 48 yard attempt to give the Gators the 17-16 victory.
But you have to give credit to Steve Harris and RayMac for taking the line back on the final FG allowing Moss to find it as it was kicked for the fingertip block.
…I know, I just made it worse for some, but that was one of those moments for me. We sat there for a solid 20 minutes after the game, unable and almost unwilling to leave for fear of losing that feeling…
by Boozy McHound on Jun 11, 2009 9:54 AM EDT reply actions
I can remember the details of many last second beatings (usually at the hands of Auburn – see 1989, 1994, 2001, 2006), but for some reason, and I don’t understand why (first legit #1 ranking?), that Sanders catch defines a point in time – things were different before and after, forever.
TFOSU – the 3.5 quarters worth of beat down losses somehow are easier to take, more time to come to terms with the reality of the situation.
At the very least it is good to know that others somehow look at that ’94 Auburn game the same way, which is part of the reason we all show up here and on Saturday.
by Ltrain on Jun 11, 2009 10:28 AM EDT reply actions
SU fan here, and a clock is a merciful end to the agony a lot of times the past few Greggers years. Clock, thank you for ending the pain of watching this shit.
by Boatdrinks on Jun 11, 2009 11:15 AM EDT reply actions
@45 – Agreed. It does raise the question of which is worse, to have hopes raised, and then suddenly annihilated without remorse, or to watch a unceasing decline, never showing true signs of turning around, never even getting the chance to have high hopes dashed. Falling to rock bottom sucks, but being stuck there may be worse.
by Myrmidon on Jun 11, 2009 1:03 PM EDT reply actions
2006. Michigan State-Notre Dame. Valenti’s summary (MAKE PLAYS!) was pretty accurate, but I think a Hemingway quote might be more appropriate:
“To die. In the rain. Alone.” (Well, not quite alone – but it might as well have been because all 70,000 of us were too appalled to speak.)
(A close second: 2004 at Michigan, the day Wolverine fans know as “Braylonfest” and the day Spartan fans know as “WILL SOMEONE @#$%ING COVER THAT BASTARD?!?!?!”)
by SpartanDan on Jun 11, 2009 2:07 PM EDT reply actions
GT-FSU last year.
The fumble occurred right in front of me. As Reid failed to scoop it and pushed it away, the result was going
to be either a soul crushing defeat or an unbelievable miraculous win, solely based on who fell on the ball.
It was my first trip back to Bobby Dodd Stadium in 17 years and it might have been my last if the result had
been different.
by gtne91 on Jun 17, 2009 9:29 PM EDT reply actions
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