American football is a unique game, as the game that is know as football for the rest of the world, is soccer to those in the US. There must be eleven players for each team on the field for every play of an American football game. Of course the overall team has many more players available, but only eleven are used on the field. There are a lot of young people who like playing football, so quite often just to make the team you want, can be very hard.
Smaller high schools usually have a different attitude by keeping everyone who tries out for the football team. But larger schools can be very different, and successfully getting chosen to join is not often a given. To understanding the game of football, it is a matter of knowing all of the individual positions.
What position you play in football depends upon your strengths and your agility. If you have a lot of speed, but are slim in build, you will be a running back. You can spot them when the offense lines-up to play because they will be positioned usually behind the quarterback. Always ready for the handoff, this player can run with and also catch the ball. Running backs are sometimes trained to throw the ball when a trick play is called. Differentiated tactics in the game of football often include the running back because of their versatility.
On the offense, there are wide receivers, whose job it is to catch passes, that will be split out near the sidelines. If you spot a player who is fairly tall, looks fast, with powerfully built legs, he is most likely a wide receiver.
Catching a pass, and running as far as possible before being tackled is the purpose of the wide receivers. A wide receiver will also block, when there is a running play. Even when the pass is caught by a different receiver, it is the responsibility of the other receivers to get into position to where they can throw a block.
To win an American football game, the ball has to move down the field, and this is done by two principle ways. We all know that players run with the ball, and that is rather simple. However, the basic term for this called rushing, even though you will hear that term associated with other situations such as, the pass rush. The other way that football teams move the ball down the field is the forward pass.
The line of scrimmage is the imaginary line across the field, and whoever is throwing the forward pass must be behind that line. To get the ball to another player, it can be handed, tossed underhanded, or tossed over handed, and it can be backward, anywhere, or forward, only behind the line of scrimmage.
Football is about many things, and proper planning and preparation each week during the season must be done. High school football is very competitive requiring the players practice every day after school. Winning or losing, the amount of training that these kids go through can sometimes push them to the edge. Some people find that these students will actually use steroids to get stronger so they are more competitive.