The High School Football Touchdown

It's more than just the goal of high school football. It's the reason we watch the sport to begin with. The touch down is so pervasive that we use it in all walks of life to describe a sudden and powerful victory of sorts. Maybe it's the spacing that makes it so great to watch. It happens more often than the soccer goal but not as easy as the made basketball shot. Not too big...not too small...Just Right! Let's look at the high school touch down and we pay homage to it in our fantasy football league action.

The offense has moved the ball down from the 27 yard line. It's been a slow, steady slog with the star tail back grinding out the yards behind the offensive line. Down to the 15 yard and it's 3rd down. You can kick but that still leaves you down 2 points with only 2 minutes left in the game. Huddle breaks and the players take their place. THe defense looks jumpy and the crowd the line. Multiple blitzers...coming from everywhere. The snap breaks the silence and defensive players stream at the QB in a risky gamble on 3rd down. QB drops back away from pursuit...back 5 yards...back 8 yards...back 10 yards...going the wrong way. The Tight End slides off the line and waives for the ball. Right before the sack, the QB catches the Tight End while shuffling back. We releases the pass right before feeling the helmet in crease of his shoulder. The Tight End snatches the pass from the air and it's wide open. The gamble failed and the Tight End runs over the free safety to fall into the end zone. Touch Down! The crowd goes crazy. This is high school football, folks.

Part of what make football great is that it was completely original and unique compared to other sports. The term touch down is a perfect example. That term did not apply to anything other than the game of football. Essentially, the touch down is a successful march up the football field by the offense (and less frequently, the defense) towards the end zone. The team scores 6 points for each touchdown and is allowed to kick a field goal for an extra point. The extra point is usually made so we think of the touch down as inherently being 7 points. It takes a whole offense working together to pull off this feat but there are definitely a cast of characters that get more recognition than others. The Quarterback, being the offense's leader and primary passer, gets a fair amount of credit. The running back, wide receivers, and tight ends also figure into the touchdown recognition mix in descending order. It partially depends on where the talent is for any particular team. If you have a young Adrian Peterson, guess what, your school might run more and you expect him to get 7 points many times. This figures into our fantasy league selection.

The touch town in prepsportfantasy.com's fantasy league is a weighted stat. This means you get 7 fantasy points for every touchdown one of your player scores. This can add up quickly so you want to concentrate on the real scorers in a given league. Again, it will fluctuate depending on where the talent lies within a team but you can usually see which players get the most touchdowns. QB's are going to a lot of touchdowns and they also get the yards on top of that but at the high school football level, the running game is going to be king on average. This may push you more towards using your top picks for dominant running backs instead of dominant receivers and maybe even strong quarterbacks.

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