Okay, so the other day I was watching the game, and my buddy, who’s new to football, was totally lost looking at the scoreboard on the TV. He was like, “What do all those numbers and abbreviations even mean?” It made me realize that it’s not super obvious if you haven’t been watching for a while. So, I figured I’d break it down, just like I did for him.
First, I grabbed a pen and paper ’cause, you know, I’m old school like that. I turned on a game – any game would do – and started pausing it whenever the scoreboard popped up. I wanted a good, clear shot to work with.
Breaking Down the Scoreboard
I started by drawing a rough rectangle to represent the TV screen. Then, I divided it up to match the sections I saw on the actual scoreboard. Usually, there’s a big area at the top or bottom, or sometimes along the side.
- Team Names: This is the easy part. I wrote down the names of the two teams playing. Usually, they’re abbreviated to three letters, like “NYG” for New York Giants or “DAL” for Dallas Cowboys. I made sure to label which was which.
- Quarters: Next, I noticed these numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4. I jotted those down, explaining to my friend that these represent the quarters of the game. Football games are divided into four quarters, each 15 minutes long. Sometimes, you see “OT,” for overtime.
- Scores: Right next to, or below, the team names, you’ll see the scores for each quarter. I marked these down, showing how the numbers change as the game goes on. The total score is, of course, the big number you’ll see the most.
- Time: There’s that big clock counting down. I made sure to point to this. I show the clock shows how much time is left in the current quarter. When it hits zero, the quarter is over.
- Down and Distance: This one’s a little trickier. You’ll see something like “1st & 10” or “3rd & 2”. I explained this refers to the “down” (which attempt the team is on – they get four tries to move the ball) and how many yards they need to go to get a new set of downs. I show this with a simple arrow on my paper.
- Ball Possession: I added a little football icon on my drawing next to the team that currently has the ball. It’s a small detail, but it helps! The scoreboard always indicates, who has the ball.
- Timeouts:
You can see how many timeouts each team has left, this is important. I marked down 3 timeouts for each team.
After sketching all this out and going through a few examples with different scoreboard layouts, my friend finally got it. It’s really all about recognizing the different sections and understanding what each number represents. It is easy to read the NFL scoreboard on TV, after you practice several times!
