Football: Expert Guides and Resources

When you’re ready to tackle the role of a volunteer youth football coach, you can benefit from some inside knowledge of what it takes to be a coach that kids love playing for and learning from, and how to make the season one they will remember with a smile. This cheat sheet hits on some all-important elements of coaching youth football.

Flag football is a fast, fun, and inclusive sport that’s exploding in popularity around the world. Whether you’re new to the game or need a quick refresher before you hit the field, this cheat sheet gives you a snapshot of the rules, key positions, scoring, penalties, and strategies you need to know. Keep it handy for practices, games, or game day watching.

If you're looking for a simple guide to American football, our Football For Dummies Cheat Sheet breaks down the essentials. We explain the core objective: scoring points by moving the ball into the opponent's end zone. You'll learn the key football rules, including the roles of offensive positions like the quarterback and defensive positions like the linebacker.

Almost every year, the highest-rated show on network television is the Super Bowl, with whatever the number-two show is running a distant second. Of the ten most-watched shows in the history of television, four of them are Super Bowl games. Clearly, the Super Bowl has become an event that all of America, both casual and hard-core fans alike, focuses on.

After the regular football season, the National Football League (NFL) schedule moves into the playoffs, which decide who advances to the Super Bowl. In regular-season games, teams compete for the best win-loss records, and those teams with the best records advance to the playoffs.The NFL schedules all those regular-season games — 256 in a typical season — to separate the good teams from the bad.

Today, the National Football League (NFL) is divided into two conferences: the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Each conference consists of 16 teams and is divided into four divisions — East, West, North, and South — of four teams each. These division titles don’t necessarily correspond to geographic parts of the country, though.

Although the dimensions of a football field are the same, from high school to the NFL, every stadium seems different. That’s because all across America, the atmosphere inside each stadium, or the architectural character of the stadium itself, tends to be unique to that region. But every field shares some common characteristics.