Homecoming Football Game

    October 2nd 2010, homecoming football game organized by UW-Eau Claire was held in Carson park which is few miles away from UWEC. I was assigned to watch this football match as this it is one of the activity for my ESL class. However, this "football" game is different from what we define in Malaysia. We said "football" which is the meaning of "soccer" in the United States and soccer is more popular compared to football in Malaysia. So, this is the first time I attended and expoesd to a football game.
     I saw many of our University student wearing UWEC t-shirt and painted their face to support our UWEC team. Some of them even wearing blue and yellow colour suits and girls with gold legging! The park was crowded an hour before the game starts and many alumni came to watch this game too. As I can see, most of the Americans were fanatic in football games. Everyone shouted loudly to cheer their team and I found some cheerleaders standing in front of the seat to perform and cheer their teams.  Basically this game's duration is 60 minutes which was divided in to 4 quaters, 15 minutes each. There is a 15 minute half time break after a 30 match. I found that the game was exciting and I stood there throughout the game.
    American football consist of 11 players each team on the field and they have a lot of substitutes. I was surprised to see that there were more than 30 players include the substitutes!The field was marked with a line in every five yards from the middle field which is marked " 50 yards" and the number reduced to 0 as the line approach to the side of the field. One of the team is offence and another is defense.
    The rules are simple, The team that takes possession of the ball which is offense have 4 attempt which is to advence the ball at least 10 yards towards the defense zone.When the offense succeeds in gaining at least 10 yards, it gets a first down. If the offense team succeed to gain starts a new set of four downs to gain yet another 10 yards or to score. However if they failes to gain 10 yardsin four downs, the oppse team will possess the ball and become offense instead of defense side. Thre are many ways to score, such as 6 points for touchdown, 3 points for field goal and 2 points for safety.The most interesting part in the game was during the overtime when both team's score is the draw and UW-Eau Claire team had to try their best to score. At last, UWEC beated UW steven point with 20-13.
     As a foreigner and stranger to football, I personally feels that American football is an interesting game and I started to love football! This is why Americans love football a lot too!