red moon dog seven-eleven

Continuing my complaints against the game of American football, I have found flaws in its rules which would lead to an unavoidable prolonging of play and an inability to decide a winning team. One such situation would occur when one team (we'll call them Team A) has scored a touchdown and is about to attempt an extra point. All the opposing team (Team B) needs to do is to have one or more players line up offsides, blocking the extra point or tackling the kicker. This, of course, is an infraction of the rules (offsides) and would lead Team A to one of two options: either accepting the penalty and retaking the kick, or declining and kicking off without gaining the PAT. Most logical teams would accept the penalty and re-kick, but Team B could continue to line up offsides and prevent the kick repeatedly without any adverse effects. After several dozens attempts at this, Team A would probably just forget about the extra point, decline the penalty, and kick off, so it's not foolproof. That leads me to my second example...

Play clock violations. After a play, the team on offense (Team B in this case) has 40 seconds to pick a new play and snap the ball. If the clock runs down, it's a five yard penalty against Team B for delaying the game. As far as I'm aware, Team A has no ability to either accept or deny this penalty - it's simply automatically assessed. Repeating this enough times will drive Team B back to the one yard line, at which point they can no longer be pushed back by this penalty. They can then continue to let the clock run down over and over without repercussions.

Logically, there's no real reason to do either of these. But if I were a retiring coach and my team was about to lose their last game of the season, I'd definitely consider going out in extremely annoying fashion. And I'd be famous.

About scwtte

Founder, and chief author, of CGHM Networks.