Metricating football (10 m for a first down instead of 10 yd) would give slight advantage to teams that can defend well against the rush or the short pass. For a team good at the long pass, it wouldn't matter.
Carleton -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kimbrough Sherman Sent: Monday, September 29, 2008 10:23 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:41768] Re: Metric American Football Forget metric American football! I cannot foresee problems converting any sport other than football to SI, as Soccer (International Football) has always had difficult metric measures for dimensions created in yards. But American football has two almost impossible barriers to conversion. 1. If we could convert all specifications from yards to meters, it would be hard to compare past performances with 10 yards for a first down to 10 meters or to use 9 meter measures as the qualification for a first down. 2. If "ten yards" became 10 meters, no stadium in the NFL, and probably few stadia in the college ranks could accommodate a 120 meter by 50 meter field. Maintaining yards as a football measure may have to stay for ever, and to my mind, it wouldn't matter. I wouldn't care if horse racing kept their furlongs, as long as the total race length is stated in meters. Moving "quarter mile" posts to 400 meters would be no harder than the conversion of running tracks thirty years ago. Nonetheless, I think that the use of "millimeter" as a term of very short distance is no small event. If this time it doesn't move into the U.S. public consciousness, the next use will. A. Kimbrough Sherman Associate Professor Dept. of Information Systems and Operations Management Loyola College in Maryland 4501 N. Charles Street Baltimore 21210 410.617.2460 Fax.2118 >>> "Ziser, Jesse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 9/27/2008 10:21 PM >>> This does not surprise me. I think people who grew up in the United States and were taught metric alongside WOMBATs sometimes kind of mentally mix the two into one set of units. They see metric units as filling in the gaps. "centimeter" is sometimes (uncommonly) used in conversation to mean "about a half-inch", and millimeters are (more commonly) used for smaller lengths just because the US "system" doesn't provide a small enough unit. Speaking in "32nds of an inch" or some such verbose nonsense just isn't worth consuming the extra joules. I've said it before: I really do believe most Americans know more metric than they think they do. --- James Frysinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > With a bit over 2 min left in the third quarter and just after a > reviewed call on a possible safety, the ball was placed "one millimeter > from the goal line", according to the lead announcer on the ESPN broadcast. > > Ironically, a penalty backed the ball back up into the end zone > resulting in a call of a safety against Indiana and in favor of Michigan > State. > > That's my first observation of metric units being used in American > football. Yep, she said "one millimeter". > > Jim > > -- > James R. Frysinger > 632 Stony Point Mountain Road > Doyle, TN 38559-3030 > > (H) 931.657.3107 > (C) 931.212.0267 > >
