As part of the “Buy This Blog” incentive for the DonorsChoose fundraiser, Ewan McNay asks for a post on
the superiority of Commonwealth sports (cricket, football) over the
US-favoured kind (baseball, american football) ;-). Oh, OK, then; I’ll
setle for cricket.
Cricket? You want me to talk up cricket?
The best I can do is this: If you’ve ever been watching a baseball game, and said to yourself “Boy, I wish this could go on all week,” well, then, have I got a game for you…
I can, however, make a case for the superiority of rugby to American football:
Now, don’t get me wrong– I’m a big fan of American football, and will go to some lengths to keep track of my Giants. But I played rugby in college, and there’s nothing like playing a game to give you a lasting appreciation for it. (Playing it voluntarily, that is– PE classes don’t count.)
Rugby has the best features of American football– regular scoring, great athleticism, and shocking violence, but is actually superior to football in a number of respects:
1) Continuous play. Unlike football, in rugby the play doesn’t stop when the ball carrier gets tackled, only on one of a smallish number of rules violations. This means that, for the most part, the game is always in progress, and the players are always in motion. This, in turn, demands a level of fitness that football doesn’t– there’s no place in rugby for 400-pound armored steroid freaks who need a thirty-second rest after ten seconds of game action.
2) Lack of wonkery. Following from that, there is no room in rugby for Ron Jaworski. Because the play is so much more fluid, there isn’t the same emphasis on schemes and coverages and set plays, and thus not much point in the obsessive breaking down of videotape. It’s a purer contest between the players on the field, not a contest to see whose coach can go without sleep the longest to come up with a new and unusual scheme to confuse the opponent.
3) Teamwork. You’ll occasionally hear commenters describe football as the ultimate team sport, but they’re wrong. Football provides ample room for self-centered prima donnas, and you can have guys on the same team who barely even talk to one another. On a big-time football team, the defensive players havae almost no contact with the offensive players, and even if you restrict this to one side of the ball, the constant stopping and restarting means that you can put up with wide receivers who are openly feuding with the rest of the offense.
You can’t have that in rugby. Because the ball is constantly in play, every player on the field is at least potentially part of every play, so they need to be working as a team– and believe me, I’ve played on a side with a massively dysfunctional line, so I know what happens when you don’t have everybody on the same page.
There also isn’t the same incentive for individual stat-padding. In football, because the play stops once the ball carrier is down, there’s an incentive to fight for extra yardage all the time. In rugby, that’s folly– you might pick up an extra couple of yards by dint of individual effort, but you’ll probably end up running away from your support in the process, and lose the ball to the other team. Rugby requires you to always be aware of your teammates, and it’s nearly always better to pass the ball, or even stop and set the ball, than to make the individual play for glory. This is, far and away, the hardest thing to get Americans to understand when they start playing the game.
(There’s probably a political statement here, about the relative popularity of the more individualistic football in America, and the more team-oriented rugby in, well, everywhere else…)
So, there you go: three solid reasons why rugby is a better game than American football. Of course, American football is better suited to television than rugby is– the constant stopping and re-starting allow plenty of time for replays and analysis, while if you take time for replays in rugby, you’re likely to miss a great play. But as a game, rugby is better.
Of course, neither is as good as basketball, which is the best game ever invented. I’d say more about that, but I need to get ready for my lunchtime pick-up game.