Physics Of Football Essay

What sport do most Americans think of when imaging a tough, brutal sport where you have to be big and strong to play? Football, the sport of hitting people over a pigskin ball which leads to multiple concussions and other head trauma. A sport whose players are usually compared to big, bulky, jock who are never usually the person who has the highest GPA in their class. But, what most people don't realize is that Football is almost entirely a game of physics, angles, and probability with only a bit of strength. The sport may seem to be about tackling people and about making those amazing one handed catches but if you understand a couple of topics like Newton’s laws of physics, angles, speed, and acceleration you could be just as good as Tom Brady,
Each of these categories are important and all are effected heavily by physics. Offense: Passing Passing the prettiest part of the game, everyone loves seeing those long throws going all the way down the field and ending with a spectacular catch but what goes into doing these amazing throws and catches? First let’s discuss the quaterback. Let’s a quarterback that isnt the fastest or isnt that the greatest thrower in the world a little like Tony Romo, the starting quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. He isnt fast, nor does he have the greatest arm but he has pin point accuracity, and there are a couple of reasons to figure out why he keeps torching opposing teammates. First we need to address a very important concept called Issac Newton’s First law of Motion it states that an object in motion wants to stay in motion or intertia and that the larger the mass of an object the more it wanted to keep doing what it’s doing. So now recognizing Newton’s first law we can understand that bigger objects are “lazier” kind of like how something really big like a boulder is harder to move because Newton’s law tells us it doesnt want to move. We can relate this to a 400-430 gram (14-15 ounces) NFL football, 400 grams isnt heavy at all