A low-tech solution to an inexact science:  Who needs the chain gang anyway?

Let me begin by saying this is really just a fun idea, and a novel one at that:  a way to improve the game of football without adding technology.

So take it for what it is:

A low-tech solution to what may or not be a real-life problem, but at the very least is an inexact science masquerading as a measurement technique as precise as a Rolex.

Who really needs the chain gang?

My long-time play-by-play partner at WCTC, Max Scheiner – while a big sports fan – had a propensity for pointing out the silly foibles of all the sports we covered.  Things like noticing how many high schools had pretty much blatantly ripped off a college logo or design.  (I’d bet at least a quarter of them.)

And seemingly every time the chain gang came out for a measurement, he’d say “We have all this technology, and here come a bunch of old guys with a chain to tell us that the football they spotted after pulling it out from one big pile-on of 22 teenagers is a exactly a credit-card width short of a first down.”

Only thing was, Max never had an alternative.  But I’ve been talking about one occasionally for a few years now during our live broadcasts on Central Jersey Sports Radio. 

Here goes nothing, just follow along for a bit:

A regulation football is around 11 inches long and can be up to 11 7/16 inches.  That’s almost one foot.  There are three feet in a yard.  We can all agree on that, right?

So here’s the “radical” idea: 

Paint smaller, thinner hash marks in the middle of the field and on the sideline at each one-foot interval on the field.  They don’t have to be lines. They could be dots. Or even a different color, like yellow.

Either way, there would still be a traditional white hash mark at the 30-yard line, then smaller ones at 30 yards, 1 foot, another at 30 yards, 2 feet, and then the standard white mark at the 31-yard line, and so on.

On first downs, and only first downs, when the football is spotted, the line to which the ball is nearest becomes the line of scrimmage, and the line exactly ten yards forward becomes the line to gain, rather than an imaginary line created by the chains.

If a football is 11 inches long, 99.9% of the time the ball will be closer to one of those one-foot intervals than another.  The line it’s closest to is the line of scrimmage. 

So, let’s say a team starts at its own 25 after a touchback.  They run a rushing play that gains a little over four yards, and on second down, gain seven to just past the 31-yard line. 

The officials spot the ball with the nose just over the 31-yard, 2-foot line.  The line to gain now becomes the 42-yard, two foot line.

Now, the team completes a nearly ten-yard pass play.  The ball is spotted with the nose three inches away from the 42-yard, 2-foot line.  No first down!

If the ball is spotted with the nose over the white paint, it’s a first down.

Simple as that!

No need for the referee to stop the game, call the chain gang, undo the kink in the chain, set up their reference point, etc.  And who knows if they’re an inch off anyway by the time they get to the field, 50 feet away from where they were?

You can still have the chain gang guys hold the line of scrimmage and first down markers.  They’re still relevant, and important for sideline plays, displaying the current down, etc.

Maybe this can’t happen on grass fields. Maybe it would make more sense in college and the pros. But doesn’t it make more sense overall? Spotting the ball is an inexact science anyhow. The center always moves the ball a nudge once he grabs it anyway to prepare for the snap. So what if we round up or down where the line of scrimmage is?

It’ll save time and confusion. A line is a line. White on green. (Or blue, if it’s at Colonia.)

Couldn’t be any simpler.