God....I love 8-man football

A team in Texas recently played a 4-on-4 game just for the hell of it. Coach said they lost track of the score.

 

The biggest thing with 8- or 9-man football is you really only need one stud to stay in a game.

Lots of breakaway touchdowns.

Strangely, though, a lot of 9-man teams I covered were pretty conservative with the play calling, knowing if they just pounded the ball ahead all night, they'd get their points on missed tackles.

I'd guess there are plenty of teams that chuck and duck, though.

 

In 8-man, in Kansas at least, I think only the center is ineligible. It's pretty much backyard football with pads.

But the best part is the 45-point mercy rule — if one team leads by 45 points or more at any point after the end of the first half, game over.

 

One of the teams out here runs the run-n-shoot.


WR WR LG C RG WR WR


QB

 

And the guards are eligible, right?

I love it.

 

Wow.

Do they count steamboats?

 

There is a Rolla, Mo. That's where D-II Missouri-Rolla is. But there's also a Rolla in Kansas, near the Colorado and Oklahoma borders.

And Chef is correct, eight-man football rules. And the best part about covering the games is that most every town has the humble people you could ever meet. I never hear complaints about coverage at eight-man schools like I do in Podunk.

 

They play it here in California as well and it's a carnival ride. Only the three interior linemen are ineligible and all teams have to do is get someone open in space, find them and it's off-to-the-races time.

The thing about 8-man -- at least here -- is typically the teams are either really, really good or they're really, really bad. There's not a lot of mediocrity.

And that 45-point rule? God Bless it. It spared me many hours of watching squirrel-chasing football.

 

Yeah....the guards are eligible.

In one 11-man game this year.....I kid you not......on 3 or 4 different plays.....this was the formation....


WR WR WR WR LG C RG WR WR WR



QB

And these were all receivers......not some stupid jumbo package where they put a lineman out or something like that.

QB stood 8 yards back and just chucked it.

Worked pretty well too, but the coach didn't have the onions to run it all game long.

 

Is that Canadia for Mississippi's?

 

Precisely.

The QB in our feature radio game goes 19-191 and 4 TD....no one else on the team did shit and they won by 3 scores.

 

Please tell me the 191 is a typo.