Monday Night Football

Alright then - my first live football game ever. Tonight the SF 49ers were playing the Philadelphia Eagles.
Good thing was that it was a warm night, and that the 49ers were expected to win. Were we in
for a surprise...

Half an hour before the game started the stadium was still deserted. Everybody was out on the parking
lot, bbqing, drinking beer and partying. At $7.50 for a beer inside the stadium I can understand why you
stay outside as long as you can.

The place filled up quickly, and as Tony Lindsay sang the national anthem, followed by some firework,
everybody stood up, some sang along. Quite a moving moment.

During the game. The Eagles are attacking, the 49ers are defending. I won't try to explain rules and
tactics here - but it's sure exciting to watch. Ok - I'll give you the basics. Each team consists of two groups -
defenders and attackers. While one team is attacking, their attackers group is on the field, while the opponents
send their defenders. A team stays in control of the attack until it has been stopped four times before carrying
the ball behind the other team's base line. During every attack - which is an attempt to move forward - the
attacking team has to move at least 10 yards to annull previous downs. And here the rules are losing me - maybe
I have even been wrong already... I guess I'll just have to look it up and put in some corrections.

This was towards the end of the third quarter. Just to explain the basics on this board: The upper left
corner shows 1:01, which is the remaining time to be played in the current, third quarter. Each quarter
is 15 minutes long - but as the play-time is being counted and the clock is stopped for every interruption,
a game usually lasts for three hours. 'Down' is the count for how often a team has been stopped on their
way to the opposite side. 'To Go' is the number of yards a team has to go. 'Line' shows which line the
attacking team is on, 'Qtr' shows which quarter we are in. Now, in the upper row you see the score for each
quarter. In this picture you see no points in the first, 21 vs. 7 in the second and 14 vs. 10 in the third quarter.
This sums up to 35 vs.17 in favour of the Eagles. For a touchdown - carrying the ball behind the finish
line of the opponent, a team scores six point. After a touchdown the victorious team can score another point
with a freekick. I told you it's complicated :-D.

What the heck - we yelled at our team for playing so badly and went home in a good mood. Nothing like
watching a game with friends - even if the home team sucked big time. The final score was 38 vs. 17.




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