It's Over Even When It's Not Over

The Importance of a Game Plan
JOSHUA 8: 1-21

Three weeks ago I went to my first American football game. It was also my first experience of tailgating in the warm sunshine and of eating breakfast burritos, which (accompanied by mimosas) were perhaps the highlight of the day. I was interested to compare the game with rugby football, which I played as a teenager; for instance, in rugby you can kick forward but not pass forward, but in American football it is the opposite. The football game was as long as a rugby or soccer game except that it was actually three times as long because it continually stopped and started. In the stops and starts (I was told) a key role is fulfilled by the plays that the coach has devised and the team has rehearsed. There is a little of this in soccer, and in rugby the three-quarters (roughly equivalent to quarterbacks) may look as if they are running one way but then switch by means of a scissors movement. But tricks or plays are much more important in American football, as are strategies for the different parts of the game as a whole. (I wonder if that is why coaches are paid so much.)...