Normal Football v.s. Arena Football

            When you go to see a football game there’s certain things you expect. You expect it to be outside or in a huge dome. You expect the field to have one hundred yards. You expect the team playing will be big. You expect there will not be very many fowl balls. However for Arena Football all these things are false.

            When you go to see the Iowa Hawkeye’s, the Chicago Bears, or the Dallas Cowboys play football you always expect for the game to take place outside on a closed in field. Arena football is very different, last night when the Iowa Titans arena team played against the Green Bay arena team the game took place inside a hockey arena. They had coved the ice with green turf and Hung goal posts from the ceiling on either side. When I arrived and found they would be playing on an indoor field I was completely shocked for I didn’t know that football teams could play inside!

            Another major difference from normal football and arena football is the field size. When you attend a football game you always expect the field to be one hundred yards long. However for arena football the field is only fifty yards long! The field was so short and thin I thought there was no way a football game could ever take place there. The field isn’t the only thing that was shrunk down in size. The goal posts on either side of the field were also much smaller that a goal post you would find on a traditional football field.

            One thing I always expect when going to a football game is a big team! I’m not talking big people on the teams but just the number of people on the side wearing a uniform. For an NFL team fifty-three players is the maximum amount a team can have. So most teams have a big number of players pretty close to that. In arena football however the teams were very small! For arena football there is only allowed to be twenty active players! Another difference is when going to a NFL game you will see eleven people lining up on the field for each play. Unlike the NFL an arena football team only has eight people on the field at one time.

            The last major difference in arena v.s. normal football is the path of which the ball travels. When you attend a football game you expect there to be minimal if any fowl balls. Now when I say fowl balls I mean balls that travel off the field and into the stands. In arena football this is not the case. At the one arena game I attended I saw not one but about five fowl balls! The teams would take a kick and WHAM! It would hit some lucky fan in the face! The teams would make a long pass and WACK! A very fortunate fan would have a new souvenir to bring home to their family. There were so many fowl balls is began to get a bit ridiculous!

            So long story short a normal pro football team is VERY different from an arena football team. And truthfully I don’t know how anyone could prefer arena football over a good NFL game.

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