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June 27, 2008

Force Football - Preparing for the IWFL Championship

At 3pm Central Time, June 28, 2008-- exactly 24 hours from now-- the first round of the IWFL playoffs will commence. The Chicago Force will be meeting their arch-enemies-- the Detroit Demolition-- at Holmgren Field. The winner will go on to compete for the championship of the Eastern Conference.

In situations like this, humans have an overpowering desire to predict how the game is going to end. In politics, this prediction process is accomplished by public opinion polls. Tragically, even the most scientific cross section of the American public is not going to give us any information about how tomorrow's game is going to go, and a cat's psychic powers only predict the past, not the future. As a result, I have to rely on a far darker and more mysterious procedure: statistical analysis.

The Force has two strengths: a large roster (61 players) and a tricky offensive style.

Sixty-one players is a big deal. Most teams field a roster in the low forties. Of the eight teams participating in the playoffs, only the Pittsburgh Passion is larger, with 71 players. Not coincidentally, the Passion is also the only other undefeated team in the Eastern Conference.

Size isn't everything. Yes, the Force has a lot of players, but it also has a lot of good ones. Pam Schaffrath averages 6 tackles per game, and most of the time they're on the far side of the line of scrimmage. Sam Grisafe throws an average of 55 yards per game. In 7 games, she threw 8 touchdown passes. On the running side, Bridget Farhner averages 27 yards per game, Esther Henigan averages 45 yards per game, and Melissa Smith averages 85 yards per game. This is serious stuff.

The other aspect of the Force's winning strategy is trickiness. It is not surprising that when the Force has the ball, Bruce has a difficult time figuring out where the stupid thing is, but even Nate-- who has no major learning disorders-- has trouble following the action. In the home opener against the Detroit Demolition, Sam Grisafe's throwing arm was having an off day and Esther Henigan was injured, so the Force kept giving the ball to Melissa Smith so she could run with it. All the Demolition had to do was throw every player they had at Smith, but they couldn't find her. She ran for 121 yards that day,

In a running game, there are two basic approaches: speed players like Henigan switch directions rapidly so that the defenders are always in the wrong place. Strength players like Smith and Farhner go for the shortest path to the end zone, relying on brute force to keep going. Force rookie Brandi Srda brings a third type of play to the game: she is so small that she can actually squeeze between the defensive players on her way to the goal posts. At least, this is Bruce's theory. In actual fact, all he can be sure of is that she can run toward a line of opposing players and somehow end up on the other side.

So, this is the good news. The bad news is that while the Force has a diverse roster of good players and smart coaching, the Demolition looks like it has been produced by a copy machine that specializes in large, hulking women who all know the same moves. Before the game last April, Nate was coming up with all sorts of theories about why This Time It Will Be Different (e.g. it was our first ever night game at home), but Bruce watched the warm up and felt his heart sink: the Force was trying passing moves and running moves in small groups, while the Demolition stood in a perfect grid pattern going through what looked like some sort of football-based martial arts drill. Still, the Force won, and it did not take a superior life form to understand why.

Last year, when the Force met the Demolition, they weren't playing to win. They were playing not to lose. They played as if doing everything correctly and avoiding mistakes could break their losing streak against this one team they had never been able to solve. But tackle football is not about being careful. There are many pursuits in life where you wear a helmet to protect your head against a worst-case scenario, but in tackle football you wear the helmet because you know you are going to be doing things that are completely insane. You are going to try to drag yourself forward while four people are holding onto your legs. You are going to be running into unknown territory while looking backward. You are going to throw your entire body into the air in the hopes you will be able to stop another person who is doing the craziest thing of all: trying to get past a bunch of athletes who don't care if they get hurt. Part of the reason America has tackle football instead of soccer is that we can afford the more expensive fields and equipment, but the biggest reason is that doing crazy things is what America is all about. After all, no sane group of people would have staged a revolution against the most powerful empire in history and then compounded the error by setting up a whole new form of government.

So, tomorrow the Force goes up against the Demolition, and if we play to win, I think we have a good chance of beating our arch-enemies a second time and moving on to the next round. If that happens, it will be a victory for the American approach to life.

Otherwise, watch out, because I'm going to be very depressed.

Respectfully submitted,

Ferdinand T. Cat

# At Fri 3:00 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (0) | More Force Football | Tags: Brandi Srda Bridget Fahrner championship Chicago Force Detroit Demolition feminism football history Linda Bache Melissa Smith Pam Schaffrath philosophy Pittsburgh Passion Sam Grisafe women

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» A Great Victory for Our Side from Conservative Cat
I now feel it is safe to predict that the Chicago Force won yesterday's game against the Detroit Demolition 8 to 7. I was not at the game myself (and my non-attendance has nothing to do with the fact that... [Read More]

Tracked on June 29, 2008 3:17 PM

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