Melben David

Dr. Blair
UWRT 1102- 0016
5 May 2015
The Discourse Community of a Football Player
On November 6, 1869 the first football game was played between Rutgers and
Princeton. This day became the birthday of the most popular sport in America. My journey to
become an expert in the discourse of a football player started with learning and understanding
the rules of the game, progressed to learning the terms and slang of the game, and ultimately
ended up with me being a player of the great sport of football.
In order to be a part of the football discourse community one must understand how the
game is played. The sport is broken down into two parts, offence and defense. When a team is on
offence this means they have the football and there trying to score points. There are three
different sets of football players on the offence the line man, skilled positions, and the
quarterback. Every football buff knows that the most important piece to an NFL offence is the
quarterback. The quarterback is the leader and the play caller of the offence. It is the
quarterbacks job to throw the ball, hand the ball off, call the plays, and make sure that everyone
on the offence is on the same page. The quarterback is also the highest paid player on the team.
The second most important part of an offence is the offensive linemen. The offensive line
consists of five men. The center is in the middle, he hold the ball at the beginning of the play.
When the quarterback tells the center to give him the ball he hikes it to him. On the right of the
center there is the right guard and the right tackle. On the left of the center there is the left guard
and left tackle. The offensive line is the second most important part of the offence because they

protect the quarterback while he is throwing the ball and they block defensive players for anyone
who is running the ball.
The third part of a football offence is the skilled positions. These players are anyone who
is given the ball to score, this excludes the quarterback. Wide receivers are the people who are
usually thrown the ball. The running backs are the people who are handed the ball to run down
the field. The offence has four tries to move the ball 10 yards before the ball is given to the other
teams offence. Usually if the offensive team cannot reach a first down by the first three
attempts, they are forced to punt the ball. Punting the ball on 4th down is important because the
main purpose is to move the ball downfield so that the receiving team does not have good field
position. Some football teams decide to go for it on 4th down. This is risky to do because if the
offensive team does not convert to a first down, it is ruled a turnover and the team on defense
gets the ball wherever the offensive team left off. The offence can score points in 2 ways. They
can have some one run to or catch a ball in the in-zone or they can kick the ball for a field goal.
A field goal is worth three points and is done by the kicker kicking the ball in between the field
goal posts. If the offence cannot move the ball 10 yards in four tires or they do not make the field
goal the ball is given to the other teams offence and your defense takes the field.
A good team needs both a good offense and a good defense. When a team is on defense
that means that they are not in control of the ball. While on defense, the main objective is to stop
the opposing team from scoring. A defensive stop means that the offensive team has not been
able to gain a first down (move the ball 10 yards). There are also three parts to a defense the
defensive line, linebackers, and the defensive backs. The sole job of a defensive lineman is the
attack the person holding the ball. There are either three or four defensive lineman on the field at
all times. The linebackers are also known as the quarterback of the defense they make sure the

whole defense is on the same page just like the quarterback does for the offence. Their jobs vary
depending on what play the coach calls. The final part of the defense is the defensive backs.
Defensive backs are comprised of the safeties and the cornerbacks. The job of a defensive back
is to prevent the wide receiver from catching the ball or tackle the running back if he out runs the
defensive line and linebackers. If everyone on the defense executes their job well the offence has
no hope of scoring any points.
This was the extent of my football knowledge through the early years of my football
journey. I thought I knew everything there was to know about the sport and felt like it was a
relatively simple sport to understand. As I entered into my sophomore year of high school my
feelings toward the sport changed. This was the year I decided to try out for the school football
team and as an athletic kid who was a self-proclaimed expert on the sport I felt like my chances
of getting on the team were very good. My attitude changed very quickly. The first week of
summer practice was the toughest week of my life. In order to be on the team you had to come to
practice every day Monday-Thursday for the whole summer. Each day consisted of an hour of
weight training then another hour of fundies (fundamentals). Fundies consisted of everybody
breaking up into the respective position and learning the fundamentals of their position from
their position coach. During this period of practice I was taught every aspect of the game of
football. By the second day of practice the notion of me being an expert on the sport was wiped
from my mind. We learned so many new things that I decided to check out Football for dummies
by Howie Long from the library.
I learned many new things that summer. I learned what the different names for a
defensive lineman mean. I learned that the weakness to a cover 3 defense is a short pass to the
outsides. I learned what an offensive lineman should do if they have a shade at A gap and the

middle linebacker blitzes. The things I learned were necessary to know if you wanted be a
football player. They were even more essential to know if you wanted to be taken seriously by a
true football addict.
However the most important thing that I learned about football was taught to me every
day at the end of practice. Immediately after fundies we all lined up for an agonizing hour and a
half of conditioning. Our end of practice conditioning was an excruciating four 400 yard sprints,
two timed 200 yard sprints, eight timed 100 yard sprints, and ten timed 40 yard sprints. Every
day sprints were added depending on how the practice went or if someone didnt finish the sprint
in time. The people who constantly didnt finish on time were labeled soft. I quickly realized
that you never wanted to be called soft by anyone. Every day the coaches would run us into the
ground screaming only the tough survive, only the tough will stand on this field wearing a
Ragsdale football jersey. On the last day of practice only 45 of the 100 kids who tried out made
it too the end. The feeling of accomplishment I felt when I received my jersey was like no other
feeling I have ever felt before. I finally felt like I was a true member of the greatest discourse
community in the world.

Work Cited
Long, Howie, and John Czarnecki. Football for Dummies. 3rd ed. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley Pub.,
2007. Print.