Unimportant questions about american footboll

Factual Questions
1

  1. When I was young, I heard that in the USA, the home team always had white or light uniforms, and the visitors wore black or dark uniforms. But that doesn’t seem to be the case when watching football. Has it been like this traditionally, or is it like this in hockey for instance, or was this just somebody talking?

  2. Watching at least one football game a week for a couple of years on tv now, I’m still confused when for instance IND meet PIT, and it turns out that PIT is the home team. Why on earth won’t “you” state the home team first? Is this only american football, or is it like this in any sport in USA?

  3. I’ve been playing some football myself, rather skilled receiver by the way, and once or twice the QB in would signal something by lifting his foot before the snap. Now, watching the real deal I notice that the QBs in NFL more often than not lifts one foot before the snap – real high too. Why do they do that? – It can’t mean anything since at least some seem to do it every play.

2

  1. Usually teams have two different jerseys. One is white, for home games. The other is of one of the team colors. This is fairly standard. Even in high schools. Our home uniform was white with orange letters, our away uniform was orange with black letters.

  2. Maybe it’s that a common terminology is IND at PIT.

  3. Two things, but this wasn’t common in my day: 1) it signals a pre-arranged alternate play (based on the defense) 2) the movement might draw someone off-sides. I’m sure others will have a better answer for this.

3

  1. Tradition. In the NFL, home teams wear colors and road teams wear white (except for the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins, who are opposite of this).

  2. Convention. In American sports, the road team is listed first. .

  3. Signaling. It could be a signal to the man in motion or it could be a fake signal to confuse the defense.

4

That was the traditional way it worked. For some years, in both the NFL and collegiate levels, they’ve allowed the home team to decide whether they will wear their colored or white jerseys. The majority of NFL teams choose to wear their colored jerseys at home. This might make more more sense, to allow the home field fans to see their team in their distinctive colors, rather than the more nondescript white uniforms. There are generally a few teams that will choose to wear white at home, though.

5

One thing that is constant in everything I have seen is that when scores are reported, or during the game when the current score is shown on screen, the Home team is always shown last.

6

Another possibility is that in baseball, the home team bats last, making more sence for their name to be on the bottom of the scoreboard. Also, it seems like a polite thing for the host to do, (i.e. mentioning their guest first).

7

  1. Traditonally in the NFL (in the 50’s and 60’s), the home team wore its team colors and the visiting team wore white. I recall this (no cite), but in Cleveand we were told the Browns wore white at home so that each week a different color would come to the stadium. Currently it is a choice of the home team and the visiting team must waer the opposite. Usually it seems the home team chooses to wear its colors. Except when Dallas is coming to town. Dallas is supposedly jinxed by its colored (blue) uniforms so the home team often chooses to wear white.

  2. In baseball the home team bats last so the line score naturally lists the home team second. For example with New York at Chicago we’d have

New York 0 0 4 0 0 0 1 0 0 5
Chicago 0 0 0 1 0 3 2 0 x 6

I assume we in the US are so used to this from baseball we always expect the home team to be listed on the bottom.

  1. This is usually some kind of signal. When the quarterback is “under center” (i.e… standing right behind the center), it might be a signal for a man in motion to start. When the quarter back is in a shotgun position, or if the wide receivers are so far away they might not hear the snap count in a noisy stadium, the snap of the ball is often on a exact delayed count from this foot movement. For example, it’s on a count of 5 after this movement. The trick of course is to have everyone count at the same speed.
8

Thank you!

9

I recall hearing, not sure if it’s accurate, that the light and dark tradition was because of black and white television, to make it easy to distinguish the teams. This may be apocryphal. But now a lot of teams do this, not just Dallas. The Saints seem to wear home whites at times. My Bucs do, most often early in the season when the lighter jerseys are “cooler”. And I’d bet there are others, particularly with warm weather teams.

10

In the CFL, the QB lifts his foot when the stadium is particularly noisy, as OldGuy mentions, because the guys on the end of the line might not hear the QB’s count. It happens more frequently when they’re playing in a domed stadium, since the domes tend to be noisier, but it’s also common in play-off games where the home fans are really into the game and make a lot of noise when the visitors have the ball, to try to throw them off the count.

It’s also quite common at Taylor Field, since the fans for the Saskatchewan Roughriders are particularly noisy. :stuck_out_tongue:

11

Another reason for two sets of jerseys and enforcing a light / dark pairing is that there are only so many basic colors, and some teams wear very similar colored uniforms. If they both wore their colors, for instance, a game between the SF 49ers and the KC Chiefs could be very confusing. Both wear white letters on red jerseys. More so than in some other sports, football players have to be able to distinguish their teammates at a distance.

The light/dark also allows a few players like Vinnie Testaverde to manage. It doesn’t matter that he can’t tell the difference between red jerseys and green ones (Testaverde is red/green colorblind).

12

Early in Testaverde’s career, his team (Tampa Bay) wore some simply darling pastel jerseys at home, and there was a theory that his frequent interceptions were caused by his inability to tell who he was throwing to. He has shown over the many years since that that wasn’t the trouble, though.

13

  1. For college ball, NCAA rule 1-4-3 requires teams to wear constrasting jeseys, and the visiting team must wear white. This has been the rule for years and years and years. The home team may wear white instead, if the arrangement is made “before the season”. A few schools do choose to wear white at home, I think.

  2. Why do you foriegners list the home team first? It makes it real hard to follow soccer or Rugby or what not, because I get confused on who’s who, especially with those jerseys covered in ads instead of mascots and team names.

  3. A foot-lift is usually either a signal for the motion man to go in motion, or to signal the snap count (often, a shotgun snap will be one count after the foot stomp).

14

oh, and for 1), the home team in basketball typically wears white, and the home team in hockey typically wore white until just a few years ago.