Football Letters: 8-3-19

This is a post that will take place once a month in our Saturday morning posts and be a satirical exercise in letter writing. One of my favorite books is The Perks of Being A Wallflower. The entire book is a series of letters written by the main character Charlie about his life during his freshman year of high school as he discovering friendships and lots of life experiences that come with navigating life as a teenager. Here are some excerpts from the opening paragraph:

Dear Friend,

I am writing to you because she said you listen and understand... Please don’t try to figure out who she is because then you might figure out who I am, and I really don’t want you to do that... I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands... I need to know that these people exist.”

The general idea will carry over to our new project here. The idea is a fictional person writing to someone about their experiences and observations about football as if discovering it for the first time. Hopefully it will be a fun way to navigate through the season and visit about once a month. Anyway, check it out...

Dear Friend,

I’m writing to you because I just discovered this new game and I need to share it with someone who will hopefully care and understand what I have to say.

It’s this game called football. Have you heard about it? The first thing you need to know if you mainly touch the ball with your hands. The name is very misleading! I guess there is a few players on each team who get to use their feet to kick the ball but I can’t figure out why it happens yet. All I know is they must be the best players on the team to be the only ones who actually get to use their feet.

Another thing, the ball in football really isn’t a ball (and no it’s not shaped like a foot either). It is more of an oval shape and has points on each end and I don’t know why, but no one seems to question it.

You’re probably wondering where I discovered this weird game. Well, I was walking by the college on my way home earlier this week and the team looked like they were practicing. I learned later they are calling these practices fall camp, but it’s only August so it’s still summer.

I watched them for a bit but it was so confusing to me and hard to really know what was going on. Most games have two different teams who were different colors but they had three colors; white, black, and red. Red had the least amount of players and only one of them could be on the field at one time. They looked like they may have been playing on the same side as the white team. Or the white team kept giving them the ball anyway and he gave it right back. The red player was doing really well because the coach was clapping and talking to him a lot. I don’t know why there are like 12 coaches for three sides either. And it’s impossible to know which teams most of them are on anyway.

I watched for about half an hour overall. There are 11 players on each side. I don’t know why it’s not 10, which is an even number that makes way more sense. One team has the ball and it’s never for the same amount of time. Sometimes they run with it, sometimes they hold it, throw it in the air and then if a player catches it, they run. The other team gets to hit the players with the ball, so they have the easier job. But get this, some players never get to the touch the ball and have to just stay in one spot with the guys on the other team. They kind of wrestle each other and sometimes they are involved with the play but it doesn’t always seem like it. I bet if they spread out and ran there’s a chance they could get the ball.

My plan going forward is to study up and try my best to learn the rules of this game. I’ll be sure to update you. I hope it’s pretty easy to catch on, since I hear that college season is starting at the end of the month.

Anyway, that’s all I understand so far. I’m going to try to go back and watch more practices. I was telling my parents about it and they gave me a schedule so I can go to games this year. It’s really interesting and they are happy I’m getting into this.

I’ll touch base again in about a month after I go to my first game!