NW Democrat-Gazette

On American football

Many of my friends and colleagues over the years have asked me how a foreigner raised with an obsession for cricket and Manchester United could fall so deeply in love with American football. Admittedly, I have always struggled to answer that question. Growing up, football to me was an abstract idea more than a sport. That a sport where you primarily use your hands to pass and catch is called football is something I still quite don’t understand.

What has truly made me fall in love with football are the few seconds that lead up to each snap. These seconds capture the crux of football. It is the time when offensive and defensive players get one last look at each other’s formations, adjust to a different play, identify which players they may be up against in that play, and in their minds go through how they expect the other 10 men on the field on their side to work in lockstep with them.

In most football games these few seconds repeat themselves somewhere between 75 to 100 times, capturing my full attention and imagination each time. These are also the few seconds that give me, a spectator, the chance to be a living room coach, allowing me to predict in my mind (or sometimes shout to others around me) whether the next play is going to be a run or a pass, will the defense blitz or drop into a soft zone, will the field goal go wide right or bang through? An excitement I quite enjoy.

It is the art and science involved in the few seconds before each snap that I cherish the most and what has truly made me fall in love with football.

AMMAD AMIN

Bentonville

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2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-19T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://edition.nwaonline.com/article/284240943522971

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