I will take John's statement an additional step, and say that, in my opinion,
discussing the metrication of U.S. football at any time during our quest for
metrication is the surest way to lose support for the metrication goal! U.S.
football is a way of life, and part of that way of life is marked out in 100
very emotional yards. It serves no purpose to change those units, other than to
force standardization into a place that it doesn't need to go. To many of us
in the metrication community, it is a proper extension of measurement
standards, but to the fans, it will be just plain hubris. It will cause more
resentment than it will standardization. Let's just get the nation to go metric
in most other aspects of everyday life, and leave U.S. football alone. If you
were to look up the expression "choose your battles" in some idiomatic
dictionary, you would find the issue of U.S. football metrication.
Paul T.
This subject keeps coming up, and
----- Original Message -----
From: John M. Steele
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Monday, October 12, 2009 9:39 AM
Subject: [USMA:46002] American football fields (was FIFA )
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 <[email protected]> wrote:
From: STANLEY DOORE <[email protected]>
Subject: [USMA:46001] Re: FIFA Football Fields
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
Date: Monday, October 12, 2009, 8:35 AM
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: [email protected]
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" <[email protected]>
To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]>
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: [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
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 [email protected] or to get the free 'Metrication
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