You people don’t even know what a scrum is.
The Green Bay Packers submitted a request to the league to ban the famous Philadelphia “Tush Push,” or for those who do not like referring to the human posterior, the “Brotherly Shove.” This struck many, including me, as counterproductive, until Tex pointed out correctly that the Packers’ use of tight end Tucker Kraft on sneaks does not actually fit the strict definition of the Tush Push, and so would not be impacted. (Seriously, read more here.)
But whether the Kraft play is a Tush Push, or just a Krafty (ha!) variation, the league SHOULD NOT BAN THIS. The Tush Push is, fundamentally, a rugby scrum, or as close to a rugby scrum as the NFL gets outside of fumble recoveries, and we don’t need to drive American Gridiron Football any further away from its origins than we already have. This sport used to mean something. Do you even know what football is all about? Why do people put their bodies on the line to pick up abstract yardage in the first place? Why do we talk about defending our house when we’re just playing a game?
I used to believe that football and soccer shared a common ancestor and while I don’t think the answer is necessarily definitive (and at some point, you can definitely trace all sports back to the concept of “hey, a ball”), I believe the consensus is now that the ancient ancestors of soccer and football grew up together in parallel. This makes sense if you think about it, as once you have “a ball,” you basically have three options: Use your hands on the ball (football, rugby), kick the ball (soccer) and hit the ball with a stick (baseball, cricket, golf, tennis). We do know that football and rugby share a common ancestor, which is probably why football still has some of its wackier rules, like, well, kicking, and especially the fair catch, and the fair catch kick. And a few other things.
Football and rugby also have scrums. In rugby, play restarts after minor infringements with a scrum, while modern offensive line v. defensive line blocking in American football is a modified scrum, although there are so many blocking rules in the NFL, it diverges further every year. This brings us to the Tush Push, the last real remaining scrum. Banning it, instead of learning how to stop it and in fact embracing it, would be embarrassing. Our players already play in Capri pants, we should not subject them to further indignities. And this is precisely how sports slowly diverge from each other over time in the first place! If these NFL trends continue, in a decade or two, the NFL will find themselves competing with “traditional football,” which will feature kickoff returns, tushes being pushed, huge mustachioed coaches, and the ability to tackle quarterbacks. Hip-drop tackles will be common, and points will never be emphasized in the offseason.
Honestly, this is a bridge too far. The NFL tweaks things to spur offense, occasionally for safety, and now you want to ban a classic play that harkens back to ancient times because it works too well? Do you even know how football first got started? Let me tell you how football started. Because it’s awesome. Baseball likes to lie about their origin story with the Abner Doubleday tale. The real story of football is a million times cooler than the lie baseball came up with.
Why We Play
There is not one definitive “original football game” but across England, Ireland, and even France, there are various versions of what is known as “mob football” or “hug football” in some instances going back to the 1100s (or even earlier). And really, “Mob Football” is just an outstanding description of a sport, especially when you learn how accurate it is. All of the regional mob football games have slight differences, but they all have a few things in common:
1. There are generally two neighboring rival towns or parishes, or something similar.
2. An authority figure will put a ball into play somewhere geographically between the two towns or parishes around noonish.
3. Everyone in the towns/parishes is allowed to play simultaneously.
4. The goal is often to touch the ball to a pole or a church or a river in your opponents town.
5. Violence is allowed.
6. Often, anyone moving the ball into a pub gets a free drink.
7. It’s sort of a giant Tush Push that goes on for like 12 hours.
My favorite of the mob football games is the Royal Shrovetide Football Match played over two days on Shrove Tuesday (which is olde English for “The Daye Before Ashe Wednesdaye”) and Ash Wednesday in Derbyshire. The ball in question is larger than a standard football, and filled with Portuguese cork to help it float when it ends up in the river. Because at some point, that sucker is going to end up in the river. The rules are hilarious and (per Wikipedia) here they are, in their entirety.
1. Committing murder or manslaughter is prohibited. Unnecessary violence is frowned upon.
2. The ball may not be carried in a motorised vehicle.
3. The ball may not be hidden in a bag, coat or rucksack, etc.
4. Cemeteries, churchyards and the town memorial gardens are strictly out of bounds.
5. Playing after 10 pm is forbidden.
6. To score a goal the ball must be tapped three times in the area of the goal.
And that’s it. You can kick the ball, pass the ball, throw the ball, and also do those things to your fellow man. The sport is so dangerous that Sean Bean, who is most famous for dying in things, narrates a documentary on the subject.
Northern France had La Soule, a version of mob football that became so violent that, in 1440, the Bishop of Treguier threatened any who played it with excommunication. The town of Workington hosts “Uppies and Downies” in which around 1000 players per team try to “hail the ball” at either the Prince of Wales’ dock for the Downies, or the Workington Hall Parklands for the Uppies. The Atherstone Ball Game, also played on Shrove Tuesday, is more of a mob football individual sport in which the person who possesses the ball at the stroke of 5:00 wins the match. There are two rules: play is restricted to Long Street in Atherstone, and players are not allowed to kill anyone. The New Zealand Herald once described the even as “combining the best aspects of UFC, volleyball, and Gloucester’s famous cheese wheel chase.” The Sedgefield Ball Game is similar (also played on Shrove Tuesday), with the local farmers facing the mechanics.
After the Royal Shrovetide Football Match, my second favorite is Bottle Kicking, from the village of Hallaton, which takes place every Easter Monday, and which may give us the modern shape of the rugby ball/football. Here I would urge you to read the Wikipedia entry in its entirety, as it is a real cracker, but I will of course share the rules:
“There are virtually no rules to the bottle-kicking, except that there is no eye-gouging, no strangling, and no use of weapons. In the early afternoon, the hare pie is spread on the ground at a dip at the top of Hare Pie Bank, which is possibly the site of an ancient temple. Each bottle is then tossed in the air three times, signaling the start of the competition. Each team tries to move the bottles, on a best-of-three basis, across two streams one mile (1.6 km) apart, by any means possible.
The contest is a rough one, with teams fighting to move the bottles over such obstacles as ditches, hedges, and barbed wire. Broken bones are not unheard-of, and emergency services are generally on standby.
After the game, participants and spectators return to the village. Those players who put in an especially good effort (for example, carrying a barrel across the goal stream or holding on to a barrel for quite some time) are helped up onto the top of the ten-foot-tall Buttercross, and the opened bottle is passed up for them to drink from before being passed around the crowd.”
There’s also Caid, the Haxey Hood (which originally involved setting one player on fire), Camping (which eventually had to outlaw the throwing of punches), and who could forget the Shrove Tuesday Football Ceremony of the Purbeck Marblers, which is admittedly more like soccer.
My point is that people once (and in many places still!) participated in what were essentially day-long Tush Pushes in which all but the most severe forms of violence were allowed, attempting to move various wooden and leather balls from one side of town to the other, for nothing more than pride and a pint of the local bitter. Just think how many people they would kill for millions of dollars!
Anyway, you’re the NFL, your guys can last for 30 seconds defending one single yard. No one is even going to get tossed in the river.