The All Blacks Invade the USA ... Sort Of. What Does the Soldier Field Game Mean for the Future of Rugby in America?

Some thoughts on the "historic" rugby match in Chicago.

The lopsided score is not unusual for rugby matches in which one side is outmatched. Unlike American football, in which it's considered unsportsmanlike to run up the score on an opponent, in rugby it's considered disrespectful to ease up on an opponent, even if you're already up by 50 points. No harm, no foul on that front.

Yet when you're the superior team and you don't put in your best players, that in itself seems disrespectful to me. And that's what New Zealand did. I understand that they didn't want to injure their star players in a game that was meaningless to them, but when you have 60,000 fans looking on and expecting to see the best players in the world, putting in your reserves takes more than a bit of excitement out of the match. Maybe they thought a lot of the American fans would be none the wiser. Maybe they were right. But the fact is that of the 15 men who started for the All Blacks in Chicago, there was really only one marquee name among them -- Sonny Bill Williams, who showed exactly why he's as well known as he is, scoring two tries (that's the rugby equivalent of a touchdown) early on in the match. And this was his first game back with the team in two years.

Richie McCaw and Dan Carter. Heart and soul of the All Blacks.
One MIA in Chicago, the other relegated to backup duty.

But most everyone else, with only a few exceptions, was a second- or third-stringer -- the guys who usually substitute for the All Blacks' star players late in a match. Richie McCaw, All Blacks captain and arguably the best rugby player on the planet, didn't even dress for the game. Star fly-half Dan Carter was a reserve and didn't join the action until the second half was well under way. (I will cut him some slack, though, as he was coming off an injury.)

The fact that Team USA didn't get to face the All Blacks' biggest stars is a particular sticking point. The match was billed as "historic" on the premise that the Eagles would be facing the cream of the rugby world. In the weeks leading up to the game, when people on message boards and elsewhere would ask whether Team USA would be going up against New Zealand's starters and not the scrubs, the answer was always "yes." That was an enormous part of the excitement building up to this match, as the big names in international rugby tend to rest their starters against lower-tier competition like the Eagles. Fans were flying in from as far away as Manitoba expecting to see McCaw and Company get down to business. McCaw did nothing to dispel those notions, making himself very visible around Chicago in the week leading up to the game -- he even got to shoot some pucks in a Blackhawks jersey during intermission of one of their games.

This is the only playing time Cap'n McCaw saw in Chicago.

And then, two days before the match, New Zealand unveils a starting lineup featuring its least experienced team in five years, with McCaw's name nowhere in sight. By that point, Soldier Field had already sold out and the match had secured coverage on national TV. If it had been made clear ahead of time just whom the Eagles would be playing against, there's no way Soldier Field would have sold out, and there's no way the game would have been nationally televised. It was a classic bait and switch.

To that end, it's notable that the Chicago game's primary sponsor, AIG, is also the All Blacks' front-of-jersey sponsor. Something tells me that AIG knew all along that the team it sponsors was not going to field its top-flight players, yet AIG aggressively marketed the game as if they would. 

No one doubts current USA captain Todd Clever's
heart and grit, but the Eagles simply don't
stack up against the world's best.

Anyway, if one of the goals of this match was to grow interest in rugby in the United States, this was really not the way to go about it. On one hand, you have the USA Eagles, a blip on the world rugby radar. And they went up not against the best players in the world, as was advertised, but rather against the best players' backups. And the Eagles still lost the match 74-6.

Think about that for a moment. If you had an upstart American football team, and you went up against a touring group of NFL all-stars, which would be the more humiliating outcome: getting demolished by Peyton Manning or Tom Brady, the best in the game, or getting demolished by, say, Jay Cutler? At least if you lose to Manning or Brady, you can hold your head high and say you truly put forth your best effort while falling to the best in the business. But if Jay Cutler hands you your head on a platter, how is that supposed to make you feel?

Deceptive marketing and all else aside, rugby can succeed in the United States. If soccer can catch on here, as it has with the MLS -- I know the Sounders are a huge draw here in Seattle -- then so can the oval-ball game that evolved from it. And frankly, the time is ripe for an appealing full-contact sport that could attract American football fans, given the scrutiny that the gridiron game has come under recently for its spate of player concussions and disabilities. Rugby is no less entertaining than American ball, but rugby players' injuries tend to consist of cuts and bruises rather than broken bones, blown-out ligaments, and career-ending shots to the head, even though rugby players wear far less protective gear than their American counterparts do.

The Seahawks, taking the head out of the game.

That's because rugby players learn how to wrap a player up and take him safely to the ground during a tackle -- a technique that Pete Carroll has been teaching his Seahawks players, much to his credit. If you're a rugby player, you can't launch your body into an opponent like a missile and pound him into the turf the way you do in the American game. In rugby, dangerous play like that can get you kicked out of the game, or even suspended. The American game could learn something from that approach. There's a difference between aggressive play and reckless play. The American game has taken the latter approach, perhaps to its own detriment.

A much better way to showcase how exciting rugby can be when both teams are evenly matched would be to follow the NFL's approach when it takes the gridiron game overseas. When the NFL plays its annual games in London, they don't assemble a bunch of second-tier players to take on a hopelessly outmatched English gridiron team. They send over two of their teams, with their regular rosters, and let them play a game that counts in the standings, showing the crowd exactly how top-tier American football looks.

Gareth Edwards, playing for the Barbarians in a 1973 match against
the All Blacks. In this match, Edwards scored what many rugby fans
consider the greatest try of all time. Matches of this caliber
are what will grow the game of rugby in new markets.

There are numerous opportunities to do the same thing with rugby. Europe has three top-tier leagues for club-based rugby union, and the Southern Hemisphere (specifically Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa) has another. Any of those leagues could put on a regular-season match here in the USA. There are also three big annual tournaments -- one club-based in Europe, and two based on matching up national all-star teams like the All Blacks. Again, bringing a match Stateside would really give spectators a taste of truly competitive rugby played at the highest level.

There's actually been talk that Super Rugby, the Southern Hemisphere's club-based league, is eyeing expansion into Argentina, Japan, and the United States. That would be a huge step forward in rugby's quest to gain a foothold here. If it happens, expect a team based on the West Coast whose roster is mostly filled with foreign players, much like the NHL has as many Europeans playing on its teams as it does Canadians and Americans. Some of those second-tier players the Eagles went up against in Chicago could end up on a San Diego-based Super Rugby team.

That may not set well with American sports fans who prefer their talent to be home-grown. But right now, we don't have the interest, and therefore the financial resources, to allow our players to go professional. While some of our Eagles players have been able to scratch out a living playing professionally overseas, many of our best players are still amateurs -- guys who hold down day jobs and follow rugby as their largely unpaid passion. In contrast, rugby is so huge in places like New Zealand that their players can make a living, and a fairly handsome one at that, just from playing the game. So the deck is stacked against us. And that's why even New Zealand's backups were able to manhandle the Americans' starters by 68 points in Chicago.

The Webb Ellis Cup, awarded to the
winner of the Rugby World Cup.
So far, only four nations have hoisted
it in victory.

There's also a sharp divide worldwide between rugby's elite and everyone else. Even though rugby union is played in more than 100 countries on six continents, only a small handful of those countries are competitive at the highest level. Consider that ever since the Rugby World Cup began in 1987, only four nations have won -- New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, and England. Those are the elites of the rugby world. The second tier after that would arguably be France, Ireland, and Argentina. Then maybe Italy, Scotland, and Wales. After that is a sharp drop-off. Canada, Fiji, and Samoa make some noise every once in a while, perhaps beating an opponent they're not expected to, but literally everyone else is an also-ran. Rugby is not soccer. It lives in soccer's shadow on the international stage and does not enjoy the international parity that soccer does. That could work against rugby's efforts to widen its appeal in untapped markets.

And it could be even doubly hard here in the United States. Americans are a provincial lot. If we didn't create it, we often want nothing to do with it. American football, when you get down to it, is just a modified version of rugby -- but, by golly, it's our modification. We invented it. It's the uniquely American spin on an internationally established sport. Can American football's great-granddaddy take hold in an environment like that? We even tend to overlook ice hockey, save in a few northern U.S. cities, and hockey has been a North American stronghold for well over a century. Yet many people see it as Canada's game, not our game, and that's probably a big part of why it lingers in fourth place among the "Big Four" sports on the continent.

A rugby sevens mini-scrum.

A fast-paced seven-man version of rugby will become part of the Summer Olympics in 2016, and it's possible that its inclusion will raise rugby's profile in places where it's currently not popular. But it's important to note that rugby sevens is significantly different from the standard 15-man game. Some have also argued that Americans might actually take better to rugby league than to rugby union. There are two main varieties of rugby played on the world stage, and while union is the far more popular game worldwide, league consists of rules and gameplay that would probably be more familiar to fans of American football, including the rough equivalent of a set of downs for each team. But would that be enough? Americans might find it redundant, even more so than they might perceive the union game to be. In other words, rugby could ultimately be seen as just an unnecessary variant of gridiron football, which is probably the same reason most Americans have no interest in cricket. Why bother with cricket when you already have baseball?

On the other hand, there's the MLS, with at least some pockets of enthusiastic support around the country. So it's not as if sports that weren't invented in America have zero chance of penetrating the U.S. market. It's just always going to be a challenge.

And pitting your hopelessly outgunned amateur national team against a group of second-string professionals from the world's premier rugby powerhouse probably is not the best way to go about surmounting that challenge.

The Americans were doomed from the moment the All Blacks performed the pre-game haka.

USA-New Zealand was an enjoyable match, but it's not going to prove to be a "historic" match that ignites Americans' interest in rugby union. Good idea, wrong approach.

The Extra Point and American Football's Great-Granddaddy

packerville.blogspot.com

Even though I'm a Green Bay Packers shareholder (and so is my daughter), I don't watch football anymore. I still like sports well enough, but between the responsibilities that come with work, child, spouse, and household duties, there's just not enough time in my day to justify a cable subscription.

But that didn't stop me from taking an interest in something NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently said about extra points. Specifically, he said the league is thinking about eliminating them.

Why? Because they're too easy to make. "Almost automatic," the commish said. According to his math, the extra point had a 99.6% success rate in the 2013 season.

So why do we even have an extra point attempt after the touchdown? The answer lies in the kicking-oriented days of early rugby, when the extra point wasn't the afterthought of the scoring play, but rather the main event.

Most of us know that American football evolved out of rugby. And in the dawning days of organized rugby, scoring a try -- what Americans call a touchdown -- didn't give the scoring team any points whatsoever. What it did was give the team a chance to take a free kick at the goalposts. The team that scored the most goals -- the equivalent of today's "extra points" -- won. For many years, there were no specific point values assigned for scoring. But in 1886, the Rugby Football Union adopted a system whereby a try would be awarded 1 point, while the goal counted for 3 points.

That's right. The "extra point" was worth three times as much as the touchdown.

barnesandnoble.com

Things started off much the same in American football. As documented in David M. Nelson's Anatomy of a Game, an invaluable resource on football history, when point values were introduced in 1893, the touchdown counted for 2 points, and the goal after the touchdown 4 points. Football was undergoing some radical changes around this time that would value the running game as highly as the kicking game, and accordingly, the touchdown was soon increased to 4 points, while the goal after touchdown fell to 2 points. Field goals, however, remained at 5 points for two decades. So the touchdown and the goal-after combined gave a team one more point than they could achieve with a field goal, but missing the extra point was a really big deal, as it devalued the "unconverted" touchdown to being one point less than a field goal.

It wasn't until the advent of the forward pass that the current scoring system began to take shape. In 1909, three years after the forward pass was legalized, the touchdown was worth 5 points and the extra point 1, while the field goal fell to its current 3. The value of the touchdown increased to 6 points in 1912, giving us the scoring values we still use today, a century later.

The 1919 Packers. Source: packerhistory.net.

But that extra point, even though it had been devalued to 1 lowly point, was still not the chip shot it is today. Following a touchdown, the extra point could be attempted in one of two ways:

1. The try-at-goal. The scoring team could move the ball to any spot on the field in a straight line from where the ball crossed the goal line. A free kick could then be attempted from that point.

2. The punt-out. The scoring player could punt the ball back into the field of play, where his teammates could attempt to fair-catch the ball and from there attempt to kick a try-at-goal. Either team was entitled to catch the ball, though, so this was far from a gimme play for the scoring team.

Australian rules football,
a.k.a. "footy."
Source: kidcyber.com.au.

The punt-out was abolished in 1920, but something similar exists to this day in Australian rules football, whereby any player who catches a kicked ball that's traveled at least 15 meters is then entitled to a free kick in the direction of the opponent's goalposts.

The first option still exists, too, in rugby. After a player scores a try, the ball can be placed at any distance from the goalposts, but it must be in a straight line from where the scoring team touched the ball down in the end zone. (Incidentally, the rugby rule that the ball must touch the ground for the score to count is where we get the term "touchdown," even though touching the ball down in the end zone isn't required in American football.)

Once the punt-out was eliminated, the scoring team was simply permitted to set the ball at any distance in front of the goalposts for the kick. In 1922, the extra-point play as we know it today was finally established, when the ball was put into play from scrimmage at the 5-yard line. It was moved to the 2-yard line in 1929, and that's where it remains today, under NFL rules. (College football sets the ball at the 3-yard line.)

So now that the extra point has lost its place in the spotlight and been reduced to an afterthought, what do we do with it? Should it be eliminated just because it's such an easy point? Or should the NFL consider some alternatives?

Goodell said one proposal being considered is to increase the value of the touchdown to 7 points and then give the scoring team the option to run or pass from scrimmage -- the same as the 2-point conversion play, only with a new twist. If the team is successful, it gets 1 point instead of 2. But if the conversion fails, the team loses a point, and the touchdown reverts to 6 points.

I don't know about you, but that sounds ridiculous to me. Unless the game was on the line in the dying seconds, nobody would ever attempt the conversion and risk taking a point off the board.

So what are some other options we can consider to make the play a little less predictable? Let's look at what some other leagues have tried.

• The short-lived XFL awarded 6 points for a touchdown but prohibited kicked extra points. A successful run or pass on the conversion scored 1 point, but no points were ever taken off the board.
  
  (Incidentally, the NFL experimented with this option in the 1968 preseason, when NFL teams matched up against those from the American Football League. The two leagues would officially merge two years down the road, and this preseason experiment was an attempt to blend the rules of the two leagues. The AFL allowed teams to kick for 1 or run or pass for 2, while the NFL awarded only 1 point for either method -- which meant that nobody in the NFL ever did anything but kick, unless the hold was botched or the play otherwise broke down. The 2-point conversion was added to college football in 1958, and the AFL used it from the beginning, but the NFL didn't add it until 1994.)
• The World Football League of the mid-1970s granted 7 points for a touchdown and also prohibited kicked extra points. The "action point," earned by run or pass, counted for 1 point -- but again, no points were removed for an unsuccessful attempt.
• The Arena Football League gives 6 points to a touchdown and allows teams to either kick the conversion for 1 point or attempt to run or pass for 2 -- same as the current NFL rules. But it also awards 2 points for a successfully dropkicked extra point.

I don't like the idea of meddling with the point system. The beauty of a touchdown is that it's worth exactly as much as two field goals, and then you essentially get a chance to tack on another point (or two) as a bonus. Changing a touchdown to 7 points throws out of balance a scoring system that's served the game well for a century now. There's a reason it hasn't been meddled with, and the one league that did go with a 7-point touchdown didn't last very long.

My proposals, not that anyone asked:

• Go the XFL route. Leave the touchdown at 6 points and require a run or pass for the extra 1 point. No placekicks.
• Eliminate the kick but introduce two distances for the conversion. A successful run or pass from the 2-yard line counts for 1 point, while one taken from farther back -- let's say the 7-yard line -- counts for 2 points.
• Allow conversions by run or pass, but also allow for dropkicked extra points, as the arena game does. Dropkicks are still a huge part of the rugby game, which uses a fatter, more egg-shaped ball than football does, but they fell by the wayside in American football when our ball was slimmed down to facilitate the forward pass. (Rugby never adopted the forward pass.) With the pointier ends of the American football, the bounces are unreliable, and that's why there's been only one successful dropkick for points in the NFL in more than 70 years (here's looking at you, Doug Flutie).
  
  
  
  Under this system, placekicks for the extra point would still be prohibited, but the dropkick could work in tandem with either of the first two options.
• Continue to allow placekicks, but back up the spot of the kick. When you add up the spot from where the ball is currently kicked to the back of the end zone, you get a distance of about 19 yards that the ball has to travel to score an extra point. If the line of scrimmage for the kick was moved from the 2-yard line to, say, the 20, you're talking about a 37-yard kick. Still easy for most NFL kickers, but much less of a sure thing. Or offer the option of an even longer kick for 2 points.

But what I'd really love to see is the adoption of the rugby conversion. Touchdowns scored in the corners of the end zone would make the extra points much more challenging, because the ball would have to be brought out in a straight line from where it crossed the goal line. When that happens in rugby, the poor kickers have to work magic to hook their kicks through the posts, and sometimes they have to walk the ball back a long way just to get a reasonable shot -- but it sure is exciting to see when a kick from an extreme angle is successful. Check this one out.

Football fans would certainly have to get used to a few unfamiliar sights. The rugby conversion can be taken from as far back as the kicker wants, and he kicks the ball alone from a tee, not from scrimmage. His teammates aren't involved in the play, and because the play is a free kick, the defense has to stand in the end zone and can't start to move toward the kicker until he begins his approach to the ball. One huge advantage is that the risk of injury would be nearly eliminated on the play, and that's something the NFL is greatly concerned about these days.

Just one little change like the rugby conversion could alter the entire red-zone strategy of the game. If the scoring football team wanted to take its extra point from as close to the center of the field as possible, it would have to try to punch the ball into the center of the end zone. Defenses, in turn, would clog up the middle and try to force ball carriers to the corners.

The rugby kick today counts for 2 points (versus 5 for the try), and given how hard it can to be to make the conversion, it would seem sensible at first blush to retain that point value for American football. The downside, however, is that if the scoring team makes its touchdown in the center of the field, we'd end up right back where we started with a chip-shot extra point. So maybe the rugby-style conversion would be worth only 1 point in American football, or maybe you award 1 point for a kick taken from inside the hashmarks and 2 points for one taken from outside. There are lots of possibilities. The rugby-style conversion could even be used in conjunction with an option to run or pass for the extra point(s). If a team decides the angle for a kick is too extreme, for example, it could choose to run a play from scrimmage instead. You could even retain the current placekick option, only moved farther back. So maybe you end up with a variety of options for the extra point -- something like this:

• Rugby-style free kick, taken from a straight line from where the touchdown was scored: 2 points outside the hashmarks; 1 point inside
• Run or pass from a scrimmage play at the 2-yard line: 1 point
• Run or pass from a scrimmage play at the 7-yard line: 2 points
• Dropkick from a scrimmage play at the 2-yard line: 2 points
• Placekick from a scrimmage play at the 20-yard line: 1 point
• Placekick from a scrimmage play at the 30-yard line: 2 points

Anyway, instead of getting rid of extra points, as Goodell has proposed, let's consider some of these other options that would retain a historical part of the game but could make it a lot more exciting -- and competitive -- without altering the scoring system.