The First Ten Yards in American Football

The National Football League(NFL) is the primary American football league in the US and functions as a non – profit venture, hence is not subject to taxation. The NFL comprises of 32 member teams divided into 2 conferences – the American Football Conference(AFC) and the National Football Conference(NFC). Each conference is further broken down into 4 conferences – North, South, East and West. The figure below gives a picture of how all the teams are structured into the NFL organization.

Revenue and Valuations

To provide some context to the big bucks involved in American football, the table below shows a comparison of the revenue earned by the richest teams in football (across professional leagues and college football) and soccer. It is clear from the statistics below that not only is there huge financial impetus in the sport, but also that the revenue distribution across the teams is much more uniform than in soccer. Soccer can almost be considered a rich man’s sport inspite of FIFA’s financial fair play regulations.

American Professional Football	Valuation
Dallas Cowboys	$2.1 billion
New England patriots	$1.6 billion
Oakland Raiders ( Lowest valuation in the NFL)	$825 million
American College Football
Alabama Crimson Tide	$123 million
Oregon Ducks	$50 million
Soccer
Real Madrid	$3.3 billion
Manchester United	$3.1 billion
Wigan Athletic (Lowest valuation in the EPL)	$42.8 million

A player’s career in football

America being such a massive sporting nation – you often ponder how much credit should actually be given to the system in place for the success of American sports. The system is designed to provide the best opportunities to succeed through the schools and colleges which then cater to the elite professional league. It’s a sense that is imbibed at the earliest age that, sport is as important as the student’s academic career. The aforementioned system includes the high school system, NCAA (governing body for college sports) and the NFL (governing body for professional football) promoting the game from the grassroots level in the country. This in turn provides plenty of opportunities for these athletes to shine on the national stage and build a reputation which will help them grow their careers as professional athletes. Sport is promoted from early in school and continues until these footballers attend college and then are primed for great careers in the professional leagues.

Young school-level athletes are scouted for colleges as early as middle school and exemplary athletes are even offered scholarships whilst still in school. The prime example being ‘David Sills’, who was offered a scholarship to attend the University of Southern California – one of the best football programs in the country at the precocious age of 13. However, the sole condition being that he successfully graduates high school successfully.

Many such incentives directly result in great professional careers and despite a fair share of failures due to the physicality of the sport and performance anxiety, it must be said that the system plays a great role in promoting sports in the country.Marquee games at school and college level attract the big guns in terms of sponsors and television rights with nationally televised games on primetime by ESPN and the likes. This promotes a sense of accomplishment for the players with the spotlight on them and gives them an added impetus to shine in order to build out successful careers while still sticking to strict academic schedules at school.

High school football is the biggest organized high school sport in the US in terms of popularity ratings as well as in terms of the endorsements. The magnitude of this can be seen in a recent ESPN survey according to which college football ranks as the fourth most lucrative sport in the country behind professional baseball, football and basketball in terms of profit margins and revenue generated.

Objective of the game

Imagine standing on one end of a 120 yard field with a football in your hands and all you are tasked with is to take the ball across the entire 100 yards to score points for your team. Sounds simple doesn’t it?

Well, at the very essence it is this easy. But, as you take the ball to the other side, you can get rammed, tackled, barged into and hit by opponents in order to try and stop you. The ball is to a football player what ‘The One Ring of Sauron’ is to Frodo Baggins in the epic tale – Lord of the Rings. You and your team protect it with your lives – this is what every football player is taught as he makes the long arduous journey through school, college and finally in the Pros as a football player.

However, it does get easier for you to carry the ball across the field as you can do it 10 yards at a time and you even get 4 attempts at crossing each of the 10 yard markers. A total of 40 attempts are allowed to cross the 100 yards. Not too bad right? In addition, you also have a team of 10 on the field with you to protect and help you move across the field. Akin to its cousin – rugby – you need to take the ball across the last 10 yards of the opposite end of the field which represents the opponent’s goal line. Unlike rugby though, this results in 6 points for your team.

Preparing for the next 10 yards

Now that we have lent some context to the sport and explained the basic objective of football, the natural progression would be to talk about the basic rules of the sport along with explaining the different positions in the sport. ‘The next Twenty yards’ will cover all these facets of the game along with providing some numbers on how the commercial aspect of the sport matches up to an Indian’s one true love – ‘CRICKET’.

Meanwhile, you can enjoy a collection of Best Catches from the NFL and also Best Moments: