Male gorillas are far stronger than humans and very intelligent by animal standards. On the surface, they seem to have the attributes necessary to play gridiron or rugby.
Are they smart enough to learn and play?
Would their difficulty lobbing things or running on two legs be a unsumountable problem?
What position would they be best suited to?
[troll]Are players smart enough to learn to communicate with them?[/troll]
Lets ignore problems of speciesism, insurance issues and animal rights.
I’ve seen a few knuckle dragging linemen. 
Real Gorillas are too intelligent for football. 
“OK, show me where in the rulebook it says a donkey can’t kick field goals! Oh, you can’t find it? Then Francis can play!”
I doubt they could be trained to follow all the rules. You might be able to get them not to have a flag thrown for off sides, but things like face mask and unnecessary roughness would be very difficult. Not to mention being easily distracted by bananas…
I see the smilee but just to clarify, I thought the myth of the stupid gridiron player came from elite players being let into schools they wouldn’t have got in on grades alone. Thus making them relatively stupid compared to the student body, but not at all stupid in absolute terms.
Yes, that’s what I suspect… gridiron/rugby have a lot of rules, and some of them would be hard to teach without a firm common language. One of the smartest and most studied gorillas known today, Koko ignores the social prohibition against groping the breasts of unwilling women. Despite having many experts to disclipline her
As for bananas, just feed them before hand.
Then you’re left with another problem: Gorilla shit all over the field.
That’s a-okay, the British rugby team do it all the time…
Almost too stupid to live, but…
Moved from General Questions to MPSIMS.
samclem, Moderator
It only really becomes a problem when they try the forward pass.
I am reminded of a line you will all know involving someone equally hairy pulling people’s arms out of their sockets when they lose. It may not be so much whether they can play as whether anyone would be silly enough to play against them.
A gorilla is fairly intelligent, and can run as fast as a human, but aren’t they physically incapable of throwing a football the way it’d need to be thrown? I mean they left the trees (other than for sleeping) even earlier than the chimps, and not even chimps can throw like humans.
Yeah, given that the gorilla can literally rip my face off or rip me limb from limb you won’t see me standing across him from the line of scrimmage.
Well, the only positions I can see gorillas playing would be one of the rushing positions on defense. They can certainly do a good bull rush. They wouldn’t have the speed to play off the line. On offense, the only position I can imagine a gorilla playing would be as a ball carrier. Give him the ball and let him rip ahead. He’ll make his old hole. I don’t see a gorilla as being capable of playing QB because of all the ball handling skills required or a receiver because of lack of speed and agility. OTOH if you can train a gorilla to catch a dink pass and run with it, who knows if anyone can take him down before a big gain. Might be fun to see a gorilla league, the GFL!
Gorillas couldn’t play offense; I doubt they would be able to stay set for the snap.
Isn’t that only if their on the line? Set him up in the backfield!
Moved MPSIMS --> the Game Room.
Yeesh, that’s a really harsh comment!
I think the general question is interesting: How complex can the games played by great apes be?
Can a chimp learn to play even a simplified version of checkers, for example?
Can orangutans learn dodgeball?
I honestly don’t think these are stupid or uninteresting questions.
It would not be safe to play against gorillas, they are far too strong. In the excitement of play, the chance of them mangling their human opponents accidentally would be too great.
Yeah, I’m picturing a defensive player doing the math:
“Let their team get a TD, or risk getting packed down tightly into my own helmet by a 500 lb. silverback? 6 points, it is! We’ll block the extra point if their kicker manages to even connect with the ball, and throw a pass over their hairy short defensive line for an answering TD. They’ll never block an extra point kick, so we’ll win on those”.
How about the problem of them being incapable of legally signing a player contract?
Getting beyond that, I’m skeptical that you could train them to be disciplined enough to consistently follow plays, stay onsides, not commit unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, etc.