Dear Joe, Gabe, and any similarly ignorant parties,

I know you’re worried. You don’t really watch football. SportsCenter just isn’t your thing. You watched ESPN once, but… actually, no. You lied. You never watched ESPN.

Football can be scary. There’s kicking, and hitting, and running. But it has things you like, too — leather, tight pants, tackling — and I think you can learn to love it. You just gotta know what’s going on. Here’s the basics for Saturday.

When we have the ball, we want to get to our “endzone” (laugh… laugh… okay enough laughing, serious time). We get four chances — they’re called “downs” — to move the ball 10 yards. They don’t have to be all at once — we can move the ball 2 yards on the first down, then 5 yards on the second, yada yada yada. Then we’ve made it 10 yards. We move the ball by running, and passing, and not getting tackled. Once those guys in red, the Harvards, tackle us, that chance is over. Next “down.” Once we move the ball 10 yards, we get to start all over with four new chances! That’s called a “first down.”

Sometimes, though, especially when we’ve got the ball, a team will get to the fourth (and last) down, and not have moved the ball at all, or even have moved it backwards! And if we don’t make it 10 yards in that fourth down, the crimsons get the ball. We don’t want that, that’s bad. So for the fourth down, we have a choice: we can risk it, and try and move the ball those last yards, or we can hedge our bets and give them the ball, but only after kicking it as far as we can toward our own endzone — that’s called a “punt” — so they have a first down, but they’re far away from where they want to be. Get it? Because we don’t want them to get to their endzone?

Among other things we don’t want: if you see the red team move the ball alllll the way to the very end of the field, they’ve scored a touchdown. On rare occasion, you might see the blue team do the same thing on the other end. That’s great! CHEER REAL LOUD! Whichever team gets the ball to their endzone gets 6 points! Then they get to try and kick the ball through those big prongs, and if they make that they get another point.

That’s the gist of it, but there are a lot of rules that I just can’t explain to you all at once. Football is a lot like life: things are going to happen, and the whistle is going to blow, and you won’t know whether it’s good or bad. But this Saturday, do what your friends are doing. If they cheer, it’s good. If they cry, they might have bigger issues. It’s just a game, guys.

xo

Chloe

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