From "Man Behaving Dadly" on Facebook
As it’s Super Bowl Sunday, you might be watching the game and wondering what the hell is going on -
American Football is a complicated sport. So, here are the rules in the simplest possible terms
First of all, the full name of this year’s event is Super Bowl LX - the last part is a special, unique
two-letter code so that people can instantly identify this Super Bowl from other Super Bowls in the
future. It’s similar to how library books have numbers on the spine so readers can distinguish
‘specialist erotica’ from ‘gardening.’ This lettering system was drastically shortened recently after
there were complaints in 2004 that ‘XXXVIII’ was too long for most protective VHS cases.
The game itself is made up of four quarters of fifteen minutes each, but the clock only ticks down when
the ball is in play. Therefore, most games last around 16-18 hours because there is usually five
seconds of play followed by 20 minutes of everyone standing around looking at diagrams on clipboards,
although in some circumstances they can go on far longer. The record for the longest Super Bowl in
history was set in 1985 when the game between the Boston Bishopbashers and the Houston Handshandies
didn’t finish until lunchtime of the following Thursday due to repeated referee delays as none of them
understood what the hell was going on either.
The game starts with one team kicking the ball down the other end of the field, and then the other team
has to catch it and try to run forwards while the opposition tries to kill them. They have five
attempts to make six inches of progress, and if they don’t manage to do so then the game stops and the
pitch is rotated before the team with the ball has three attempts to move twelve inches to the left
with the playing surface at a 30 degree incline.
At any time, a player may choose to throw the ball forwards, much to the amusement of rugby fans. The
record for the longest throw in Super Bowl history was set in 2016 when Morris Slater-Belding of the
Knoxville Knuckleshufflers managed a 1500ft forward pass. He failed a drugs test shortly afterwards.
If a player enters the touchdown zone at any time, his team doesn’t score any points because he needs
to have the ball with him. If he does have the ball and enters the touchdown zone, everyone has to
leave the field and the scoring player then does a knee slide. Wherever he ends up on the field
dictates the number of points that the team scores, so a short knee slide is worth ten points, but if
he makes it all the way to the middle his team gets 50. This is why the field has all of those numbers
on it.
Once all four quarters have been played, the team with the highest number of points has to decide
whether they are happy with their final total or if they want to gamble the lot for a speedboat -
members of the crowd shout their opinion while one of the video walls spins around to reveal a
dartboard. If they decline because they’ve had a smashing day out regardless, then the other team has
the chance instead.
