Football: Football without tackling isn’t fun

It’s a rough game, football.

At least it’s supposed to be.

In fact, I’d say football is nothing without a guarantee
that at frequent points in a game, a couple of players are going to
admire the playing surface for an all-too-brief moment at a very
close range thanks to the efforts of a mass of humanity called a
linebacker.

Granted, it’s possible for the game to be played with
rules that limit the possibility of head trauma.

Take a look at UCLA’s intramural football program. The
rules are quite simple: no tackling, no touching, no breathing
and/or appearing to look in the direction of the other team.

It’s a contact-free zone out on that IM field. Players
wear a belt with flags attached to it and play is stopped by the
defense’s pulling the flags off anyone with the ball in
hand.

Seems like something’s missing, doesn’t it?

Something like ““ I don’t know ““ fun.

Now the lack of tackling doesn’t prevent enjoyment of the
game. Just ask your trusty sports columnist who went out onto the
field Thursday to research this problem by playing football for the
first time since high school PE.

The thing about PE was that the teacher told us there could be
no contact ““ but he always said it with dramatic finger
movement in the shape of quotation marks.

“No contact” meant no “contact,” per se.
Which I think was a license to do whatever was needed to stop the
other team so long as no one got killed.

But UCLA’s “no contact” means just that, as I
found last week.

I was expecting my high school brand of touch-free play, so I
ended up getting more than my fair share of penalties called on
me.

After a while, though, I came to realize that it took a lot more
effort to play the game without automatically trying to take out
the opposing team. The game suddenly required more running and
mental acuity than brute strength.

So I got to wondering what effect disallowing contact would have
in NCAA football. Naturally, I had to take a “research
trip” to Berkeley last weekend to figure this out.

At first glance, I was pretty sure that the nearly 70,000 people
who showed up to see the UCLA-California bout would sooner start up
another free-speech movement than make the trek to a game in which
contact was a no-no.

And I was fully set on asking a few Cal fans what they thought
of this idea to make football a game of brains more than brawn. But
then I was afraid to talk to anyone lest I be sucked into a cult or
made an honorary hippie and have to sell macrame plant hangers on a
street corner.

So instead, I resigned myself to trying to picture what play
would be like without any tackling.

For the life of me, I couldn’t do it.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find a way to
remove the physicality of football without taking away a large
chunk of the sport’s appeal.

And that problem, so I seem to be realizing more and more, is
something UCLA Recreation definitely should address.

What harm would it do to allow some pushing and shoving on the
IM field? I’m not for allowing full-blown tackling without
pads and helmets. But the fact remains that football is a physical
sport. To ask someone to stand idly on the line as a mere speed
bump on the defense’s way to the quarterback is a joke.

And add to that the need for referees to stop play constantly to
call frivolous penalties and ask if the affected team wants to
accept or decline the penalty, and likely move the teams however
many yards the penalty calls for and start play all over again.

By the time the game’s over, I’m sure something like
a full fourth of the time allotted for play is eaten up in petty
calls.

So what’s wrong with letting people play the game they
want to play? Give IM teams the chance to have a little fun without
having a whistle blown every three seconds.

Who’s it going to hurt, really? Wait. Don’t answer
that.

Looper’s IM team went 4-0 in stopping extra-point
attempts. Too bad it couldn’t stop the four touchdowns to
keep from losing 24-0. E-mail him at
[email protected].