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: [email protected] [[email protected]] On Behalf Of STANLEY DOORE [[email protected]] 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<mailto:[email protected]> To: U.S. Metric Association<mailto:[email protected]> 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 <http://www.metricationmatters.com/> for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
