Metricating American football should be WAY down the list of priorities.
Trying to do it early will just make folks mad. Once the US is nearly
completely metricated, people will wonder about those yards and perhaps be
willing to metricate football (its not like the rest of the world loves it and
is just dying for a metric version).
However, a 90 m field and 9 m of forward progress probably make more sense than
blindly pretending yards are meters. The 90 m field fits existing stadiums and
represents less than 1.6% change in total length, and progress for a 1st down.
I am not convinced that a small change of the magnitude invalidates all
statistics, I think they could be "adjusted." Certainly some other rules need
to be revisited. I would number to the 40 m line, leaving a 10 m zone between
40's (Canadian football has two 50 yard lines). The meter line for kickoff (30
yard line) and taking possession (20 yard line) would have to be reconsidered,
and the chainsmen would need a 9 m chain. Extra point attempts could be
undertaken from the 2 m line.
Pretending meters are yards is about a 9.4% change in total length, and
progress for a first down. Besides not fitting most stadiums, I would argue
that this would change the nature of the game and invalidate statistics far
more than a 1.6% change.
FIFA rounded the rules of the game in an apparently intelligent way. Important
measurements were rounded to the nearest centimeter, and less important
measurements were rounded further. I think a thoughtful approach would allow
any game to be metricated, but not until the folks in charge of the rules or
laws of the game are ready to undertake it.
--- On Mon, 10/12/09, STANLEY DOORE <stan.do...@verizon.net> wrote:
From: STANLEY DOORE <stan.do...@verizon.net>
Subject: [USMA:46001] Re: FIFA Football Fields
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Date: Monday, October 12, 2009, 8:35 AM
#yiv1115022119 P {
MARGIN:0px;}
Most comments here on conversion of American football to metric have
addressed the problem from the rules and game playing standpoint. However,
only one addressed it to a new field length (90 m) standpoint.
Changing field length to a full 100 m would require reconstruction of
stadiums to provide space for a 100 m field. A 90 m field would fit most
current stadiums; however that would require changing rules and void all
previous statistics.
Leaving American football fields size as is (100 yards plus end zones) and
current rules would have the nostalgic but practical advantage for Fred
Flintstone Units (FFU) in this case.
Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: carlet...@comcast.net
To: U.S. Metric Association
Cc: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 12:31 PM
Subject: [USMA:45985] Re: FIFA Football Fields
Metricating US football would weaken the offense, particularly the rush, and
strengthen the defense - the offensive team would have to go about 10% farther
to get first down. However, since teams have both an offense and defense, most
would be equally affected. The likely result would be somewhat lower scoring.
Carleton
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kimbrough Sherman" <a...@loyola.edu>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Sent: Friday, October 9, 2009 10:50:01 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: [USMA:45982] FIFA Football Fields
I don't believe that the use of metric measures will at all alter U.S. Soccer,
but, incidentally, the fixed measures of the field and goals Worldwide
http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/lawsofthegame.html are in former hard English
Yards (Penalty and goal areas) and feet (height of crossbar) and soft
metric. The Penalty Area is specified at 16.5 Meters to accommodate the
original dimension of 18 Yards.
American Football, as Stanley Doore has mentioned does have a real problem with
conversion. The concept of "first downs" would be altered by a ten-Meters
requirement, and if the fields were enlarged to 100 Meters, with two 10 Meter
end zones, there are almost no stadium floors that would accommocate these
fields (more than 11M longer).
In my opinion, American Football should keep the "Yard" as its measure and
children can be instructed that it is a football measure, and left to die a
slow and painless death as people get tired of explaining it in the far future.
American Football is the only U.S. Sport I know that would suffer
(statistically, and logistically) from SI adoption.
From: owner-u...@colostate.edu [owner-u...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of STANLEY
DOORE [stan.do...@verizon.net]
Sent: Friday, October 09, 2009 5:49 AM
To: U.S. Metric Association
Subject: [USMA:45976] Re: Geelong wins national football championship
Congratulations Pat.
It is my understanding that soccer fields do not have a standard size.
This makes it very easy to use metric dimensions entirely. Great!
Not so with US football fields which have a standard size. Performance
statistics are therefore based on the yard. Stadiums also are built with this
in mind.
Soccer fields could be standardized on rigid metric dimensions; however,
wouldn't there be problems when trying to fit a standardized metric field size
into various sized stadiums?
Stan Doore
----- Original Message -----
From: Pat Naughtin
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Saturday, September 26, 2009 4:33 AM
Subject: [USMA:45897] Geelong wins national football championship
Geelong wins national football championship
So what, I hear you chorus. Who cares that Geelong has won the title as the
Australian Rules football championship? However, this bragging is not the
purpose of this email.
The ground that the football game is played on is slightly variable in size but
it has all of its markings in metres. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Australian_football This means that the
sports commentators have continuously available references that they use to
describe each game. The metric influence is continuous, especially the two arcs
marked 50 metres from each goal. This has had the effect of making the
descriptions wholly metric.
I doubt that the transition to metric in Australian Rules Football would have
happened so quickly without the constant metric reference lines on every ground
built into the rules of the game itself. Perhaps there are some thoughts here
for other metrication transitions!
The game, today went for 100 minutes, but if you would like to get a flavor of
the action there is a 10 minute sample at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIOvSv9Q1Gk&feature=fvw Geelong are the only
team to wear horizontal stripes of navy blue and white – watch for the Gary
Ablett goal at 5:15.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has helped
thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the modern metric
system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now save thousands each
year when buying, processing, or selling for their businesses. Pat provides
services and resources for many different trades, crafts, and professions for
commercial, industrial and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and
in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA,
NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA.
See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication information, contact
Pat at pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com or to get the free 'Metrication
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