Reverend Conehead
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When I was a kid, we were taught the metric system and were told that we would use only that when we were adults. My home state at the time (Hawaii) actually did switch over. All of our road signs were kilometre markers, and our service stations dispensed gasoline in liters instead of gallons. I was fine with that and was against it when the state switched back to Imperial. If the country did decide to go metric after all, I would support that, as metric has a lot of advantages over Imperial.
However, I would oppose changing NFL football to metric. There's no advantage to doing so, and there are significant disadvantages. If the NFL converted over, there would be two ways it could be done:
1. Keep the field the same length, but use meters instead of yards. The field would be 91.44 meters long and you would need 9.144 meters for a first down. Each 9.144 first down length would be divided into ten segments of 0.9144 meters. An announcer might say, "He gained 5 segments" instead of "5 yards." Blech. Why?
2. They could change the field to 100 meters long. It would be a little longer and thus harder to get a first down or touchdown, but then current play would not match NFL records. The currently unbreakable record of a 109 yard touchdown would 99.7 meters and would suddenly become a record that can be broken. Records like number of first downs would not match since 10 meters are longer than 10 yards. The size of fields, and thus stadiums, would have to be retrofitted to metric.
Either of these choices would be a lot of trouble with no benefit. In engineering, if you need to build a bridge, for example, there are huge advantages to using metric over Imperial. For calculating physics for a rover mission to Mars, the advantage of metric is massive. However, for playing football, metric offers no advantages over Imperial whatsoever. For engineering and physics, the juice is worth the squeeze. For football, it's not. Going metric in the NFL would be a lot of bother for no benefit.
I'm generally a metric proponent. If they switched all our mile markers to kilometre markers and they switched our gas pumps to liters, I would be totally down with that. But I draw the line when it comes to football. For the NFL (or the NCAA), it's just not worth it. The time to switch to metric would have been when they first created these leagues. Now it's too late and just not worth doing.
However, I would oppose changing NFL football to metric. There's no advantage to doing so, and there are significant disadvantages. If the NFL converted over, there would be two ways it could be done:
1. Keep the field the same length, but use meters instead of yards. The field would be 91.44 meters long and you would need 9.144 meters for a first down. Each 9.144 first down length would be divided into ten segments of 0.9144 meters. An announcer might say, "He gained 5 segments" instead of "5 yards." Blech. Why?
2. They could change the field to 100 meters long. It would be a little longer and thus harder to get a first down or touchdown, but then current play would not match NFL records. The currently unbreakable record of a 109 yard touchdown would 99.7 meters and would suddenly become a record that can be broken. Records like number of first downs would not match since 10 meters are longer than 10 yards. The size of fields, and thus stadiums, would have to be retrofitted to metric.
Either of these choices would be a lot of trouble with no benefit. In engineering, if you need to build a bridge, for example, there are huge advantages to using metric over Imperial. For calculating physics for a rover mission to Mars, the advantage of metric is massive. However, for playing football, metric offers no advantages over Imperial whatsoever. For engineering and physics, the juice is worth the squeeze. For football, it's not. Going metric in the NFL would be a lot of bother for no benefit.
I'm generally a metric proponent. If they switched all our mile markers to kilometre markers and they switched our gas pumps to liters, I would be totally down with that. But I draw the line when it comes to football. For the NFL (or the NCAA), it's just not worth it. The time to switch to metric would have been when they first created these leagues. Now it's too late and just not worth doing.
