Back to Some Economic Basics: Football vs. Rugby

|Peter Boettke|

Today is Sunday in the Fall, and in the US that means professional football from noon until midnight will be watched in millions of households across the country.  And in the fall throughout the country one can watch HS football on Friday nights, and college football on Saturdays.  So popular is the game that the professionals play not just on Sunday, but also on Monday and sometimes on Thursday night as well.  Baseball may be our pastime historically, but football is the nation's passion.

When I visited NZ a few years ago, I saw my first rugby match.  NZ is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited, and the people are among the friendliest I have every experienced in my travels.  I became intrigued by rugby and the countries passion for its rugby leagues and especially its national team.

But as anyone of my students can tell you, I also came back from NZ convinced that there was a great sportometrics study possible in the comparison of football and rugby.  It is a moral hazard story related to spinal cord injuries from the respective sports.  The idea is that in US football because of the investment in high tech equipment to prevent injuries (helmets, etc.) the players will actually engage in riskier behavior, and thus we might expect to see more spinal cord injuries related to tackling.

Peter Klein now reports the incentives do indeed matter in all walks of life and football is no exception.  He doesn't discuss the comparison, so I think an energetic and enterprising graduate student can pursue the football v rugby study if they wanted.  Follow the links Peter provides for some other entertaining examples.

P.S.: Dick Wagner often points to a political economy application of the football vs. rugby example as well.  US football began as rugby, and through rule changes evolved to the game it is today --- very different from rugby.  US social democracy, similarly, began as a constitutional democracy, and through rules changes evolved to the game it is today.  Can you trace the definitive path of rule evolution? Can we identify precisely when rugby became football; constitutional democracy became social democracy?

Comments

[Richard Ebeling]

When, a long time ago, I taught for two years in Ireland, I would watch rugby on television almost every weekend.

I considered it a much more "manly" sport than "sissy" American football.

In American football, they first gather in a circle and pat each other on the butt; then when a player running with the ball is knocked down or lets go of the ball the play ends.

In rugby (with the players wearing no protection) the other players pile on top of the fellow with the ball, and as long as he is not dead the ball is in play.

Am I missing something??

Richard Ebeling

[Nick]

Pete,

This debate is currently occuring in England, as the English rugby team is sufferig from a spate of injuries (and this is blamed for recent poor performances). The theory is that over the years plays have got bigger and bigger, and that often now tackling is undertaken by two opposing players (as is often the case in American Football and Rugby League) and that is causing more injuries. However, there is reluctance among rugby to adopt American Football style protection.

Having been a rugby fan for many years, and seen some American Football, I don't think football players engage in riskier play. Indeed, the kinds of places that rugby put their (unprotected) heads would make most footballers wince. Culturally, they are very different sports - if any rugby player was thought to be trying to avoid pain (for example avoiding/missing tackles) it would be very much frowned upon, if that player was the "star" of the team. The same is not the case in American football, where stars can be protected.

England play NZ next week. Perhaps you could try to catch it?

Best regards,

Nick

[Servius]

People used to get killed playing football in America.

A note from 1909, "A few days ago it was a midshipman in the navy who died of a fractured vertebrae, and this morning is is a cadet at West Point whose death is reported of a twisted spine."

http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/006488.php

[charles rowley]

As a former rugby full back, I suspect that a major factor is the unwillingness/inability of American football players to stay on the field for the full game. To do so, one has to be fit and one cannot be fat. There is no oxygen tank waiting for a 400 lb rugby player following a 20 second trot on the field (remember Big Daddy?). As a consequence, rugby players do not get crushed by over-weights who would be dead if they had to play throughout the duration of a game, especially in the absence of all the TV and other standstill breaks that are built into the American game.

[Michael]

The game was decentralized, when two teams played they had to state the rules. Some of the more interesting college programs came up with rules that were then imitated. "Frontier-style" Americans were highly innovative, which in some cases led to more exciting, albeit dangerous rule adaptations.

The biggest change is the forward-pass. In Rugby any movement of the ball forward is a "knock" (turning the ball over) and players down field are off-sides. The first step it to see where this rule came from. The older schools like Harvard and Princeton might provide the best records of when the rules changed.

The next break-through will be in the ramp up of safety related rules. Out of necessity to protect the players safety equipment changes the speed of the game and the strength of the players that would be useful.

Two more considerations: 1) when did the number of players change from 15 (rugby) to 11 (football). Surely this was a concession to field the greater number of teams with superior athletes? 2) When did the speed of the game changes -- rugby is fast and requires better sprinters (albeit ones that can run for 80 minutes with only a five minute break) and football can tolerate much stronger and slower players. The problem (risk of injury) with modern rugby is that even the sprinters are huge.

[Frederick Davies]

"US social democracy, similarly, began as a constitutional democracy..."

I thought the USA started as a Federal Republic, not a Constitutional Democracy. After all, it is the States, not the people, who elect the President; and originally, it was the States who elected the Senators.

Before you try to find the Constitutional/Social point of shift, you should first try to find the Federal/Unitary and Republic/Democrary points of change. My bet for the different points would be:

Federal to Unitary: American Civil War.
Republic to Democracy: when women got the vote.
Constitutional to Social: FDR.

[Rafe Champion]

Pete, you need to come to Australia and see some Australian rules for high flying action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_hqosNvv5E

Among the oddities of the game is the Eton Wall game, played by eccentric local rules. The goal at one end is a door in the wall, at the other end, a tree!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_wall_game

On injuries, thirty years ago there were no fulltime professional rugby league players in Australia(despite the game being professional, unlike union which was supposed to be amateur, like the Olympics). Nor was there any video replay, so the scrimages were mayhem. Practically all of the forwards (offensive and defensive lines in your game) were professional pugilists and standover men.

[Aaron Aardvark]

There was an article earlier this week in the Wall St. Journal about football helmets and whether eliminating them would decrease injuries. The main comparison was not to rugby but Australian Rules Football.

I played rugby for a couple years in college and the idea of "hitting" an opposing player made little sense. In rugby you want the ball and you want to capture it as efficiently and with little damage to yourself as possible. Since you are wearing virtually no protective equipment, a hard tackle on another player will often hurt you as much as it hurts him. In the two years I played we, including some players who were not as fit as Prof. Rowley suggests, rarely got hurt - just sprains, cuts, and those kinds of minor injuries.

Rugby also had an interesting code of conduct that was a variation of a "tit for tat" strategy. If you commited a bad foul on another player - e.g., a "clothesline" tackle - that player, and only that player, could choose to reciprocate in kind or could choose not to. This informal rule, to me, cut down bad fouls, especially intentional ones.

And I should also mention the tradition of the after game party. The host team would provide beer and food for the visiting team. Any ill-will generated on the field was eliminated by talkng and drinking (and singing) with your opponent.

I think there are many interesting poltical economy lessons to be learned from rugby.

[geoffrey]

This is an interesting conversation and one near and dear to my heart. I played football for years before college and then played rugby in college and got certification by USA Rugby to coach. I'd like to make a few comments on some of things I've seen here but also the comments by Larry White and Omar Al-Ubaydli over on Pete's cross-post on facebook.

Dr. Rowley is right about fitness. Having been one of those 400-lb (not quite) football players who tried to play rugby, it was a harsh transition. I remember the first week of practice when the pre-practice fitness runs got longer and longer but practice got no shorter. So the physical element is important.

Michael points out the forward pass and the knock as being important developments as well, and he's right. Not only is a player ahead of the ball no longer by definition offside, but he is a desirable target for the pass. The knock-on rule allowed for lateral passes, even if they were sloppily handled, to be advanced and not resulting in a dead play. In terms of these two rules, the biggest effect I see is the rule that kills the play and stops the clock for an incomplete forward pass.

Both Michael here and Larry White emphasize the forward pass (White also mentioning League ball, which, while still rugby like Union, is radically different from the latter). Nevertheless, the biggest rule difference between the two sports, American football (or gridiron as some of my Commonwealth friends call it) and rugby (League or Union), is blocking.

To my knowledge, even in League rules (and most certainly in modern Union), obstruction is still a penalty, and obstruction need not involve any physical contact at all, merely impeded progress. Compare this with American football, where on any given play at least 5 people will be dedicated almost singularly to impeding the progress of defense toward the ball carrier. This creates obvious incentives for ponderously large (both in height and mass), incredibly strong, and uncannily fast and agile players. Pete is fond of citing Ray Lewis, and it is a fine example.

By changing rules about offside, legal passes, the incentives for a productive kicking game, and (to my mind, most importantly) obstruction and physical blocking, rugby and American football have taken substantially different paths of evolution. These rules (particularly blocking), I believe, pre-date much of the safety rule changes and certainly all the modern equipment football players wear. The safety changes and equipment upgrades are a response to these rule changes and the change in the players. My explanation is that several rule changes took rugby where there is a limited but important division of labor toward American football with an all-encompassing and essential division of labor. Adam Smith explained this eventually incomprehensible difference between football players and ruggers back in 1776. As he said, "The difference of natural talents in different men is, in reality, much less than we are aware of; and the very different genius which appears to distinguish men of different professions, when grown up to maturity, is not upon many occasions so much the cause, as the effect of the division of labour." (WoN I.ii.4) The difference between a rugby fullback (a la Rowley) and a pulling guard is akin to the difference between a philosopher and a street porter.

[Avram]

As someone who has played both American Football and Rugby as a teen I can safely say that, at least to me, the moral hazard is very real.

I broke my arm in my first season playing gridiron but had three years of rugby behind that unscathed.

And yes I agree it would be a very fun thing to write a paper about

[Andy Cleary]

I played both football and rugby for more than 10 years apiece. To me by far the biggest single influence on the collisions that occur in the respective sports is the "wrap" rule in rugby: when you tackle someone, you must wrap your arms around them, or else it's a penalty. In contrast, in American football, you will regularly see tacklers make no effort to put their arms around the player and instead make themselves into high-speed ballistic missiles, flying into the ball carrier shoulders or even head first not in an effort to tackle them but to jar them as hard as possible. Subtly, one reason that happens in football is that fumbles and turnovers are such a high causal factor in football victory, and so there is a lot of incentive in causing fumbles via violent collision. In rugby, since the ballcarrier must release the ball as they get tackled anyway, there is no incentive to jarring the ball out of their hands.

While the difference is associated with the rules, it's also very much associated with the equipment: when you're encased armor, you can actually *become* a ballistic missile. I used to tackle *trees* when I was in my football equipment for practice, without harm to myself. To me, it's pretty ridiculous. Even with all of the padding, if football instituted a wrap rule on tackling, I think you'd see a lot less violent collisions, something I for one would greatly welcome (well, to tell the truth, I don't watch football any longer, since I find both the 5 seconds and then wait for 45 seconds boring plus I find TV coverage of football so very poor since it tends to focus completely on the quarterback and you can't see the majority of the players that are actually on the field).

If one does run the statistics on football vs rugby injuries, one thing to note is that a good deal of rugby's worst injuries come during the scrum, something for which there is no football equivalent, and so it doesn't really make sense to include scrum injuries when comparing the two sports (that's not to excuse injuries in scrums; rugby can and should continue to work hard to minimize or eliminate them). In my anecdotal experience, once scrummaging injuries are taken out, rugby has a lot of niggly injuries, but a surprisingly small amount of serious injuries (though I broke me leg and dislocated my ankle, 6 weeks after I fractured my cheekbone, so I may not be the greatest example. Then again, American rugby players tend to get injured more than those who didn't play football because we have a hard time unlearning American football techniques like tackling with your head in front of the runner instead of behind him as they do in rugby).

[Avram]

Rugby league doesn't have a wrap rule and allows you to go in with the shoulder. It leads to more interesting hits than in Union but I don't think they're anywhere near as dangerous as the ones you see across the pacific.

[Augie]

There is an old saying that American football is not a contact sport it is a collision sport. Recent NFL rule changes reveal that football’s “safety” helmets and pads are weapons used with malicious intent. As players get bigger, faster and stronger, the collisions are more violent. Unfortunately, bigger stronger players are still susceptible to concussions while helmets cannot prevent the brain from jiggling around after a collision.

From what I have seen, rugby players are fundamentally better tacklers. They do a better job of wrapping up and dragging down their opponents. American football players look for the big hit by launching themselves helmet or shoulder pads first at their opponents. The “safety” equipment encourages poor tackling technique and high-speed collisions by allowing players to feel invincible and fly around fearlessly. However, do not discount the forward pass and new rules designed to increase passing. Bad things can happen when a 230-pound man stands in the pocket to complete a pass while a 300-pound man runs at him full speed. I would guess that rugby players see their share of knee and shoulder injuries, but significantly fewer concussions.

BTW, “The Manly Art” by Elliott Gorn provides an interesting analysis on the progressive movement’s affect on sports. Gorn focuses on the evolution of bare-knuckle fighting to modern day boxing. He argues that progressive elites “civilized” prize fighting by making it more scientific and regimented. They also added boxing gloves to make the sport more humane. Ironically, boxing gloves protect the boxer’s hands from injury opening up the head as a legitimate target. Modern boxers probably suffer more head trauma than old time bare-knuckle fighters did. I think we can draw parallels between the evolution of boxing and American football.

[David Z]

Speaking from experience (having played football growing up, and 4 years of collegiate rugby here in the States) the two sports are more different than they are similar. In particular, the sort of hit one gives (or receives) in the two sports, most of the time, could not be more different. There is no forward pass in rugby (no receivers laying out over the middle taking a shoulder to the sternum from a linebacker) and there is no blocking in rugby, so the sort of over-the-top head-to-head full speed hits, common in American Football, are exceedingly rare in rugby. Additionally, since there is no "down and distance" to gain in rugby, there is less emphasis on stopping the ball carrier at a particular point on the field (other than the goal line). There are other intricacies, but controlling for these dynamic differences (someone else also brought up the rugby scrum, no US Football equivalent) would be near impossible.

[Rafe Champion]

Injuries in the rugby league scrum have been eliminated because the scrum is no longer a competition. This was no doubt prompted by some serious spinal injuries and also widespread quiche eating among modern rugby administrators. They also wanted to speed up the game by eliminating the delays when scrums collapse and the irritating technical penalities that could be awarded when the scrum is not contested according to the rules. Nowadays the two packs just lean on each other in a relatively friendly manner and the ball is fed into the second row. About once a year the ball is won "against the feed". Also about once a year one pack decides to push and the others fall over in suprise, but they usually get a penalty to compensate for the indignity. The hooker is no longer a "rake" or ball winner. There have been suggestions to eliminate the scrum altogether and just hand the ball to the team that is about to feed the scrum. But they want keep the recognizable pattern of the game and they also want to open up some space for the backs to run the ball.

[Mario Rizzo]

For those of us who know nothing about sports this thread is worse than mathematical economics.

[max]

It seems that European football is catching up! Nowadays, we have 5 hours of soccer on saturday and sunday and every two weeks the whole week (monday to thrusday) is full with European leagues in soccer. So, I dare to say that we have quite a lot of fancy sport our selves =)

[Andy Cleary]

Well now that's not a very well-rounded attitude, Mario! ;-)

[Murraymises]

Expanding on Dick Wagner's comment about rule evolution, the NBA has the game it has today because of significant rule changes, particularly the 24 second clock and team foul rules. These effectively ended the age of foul'em and hold the ball to run down the clock -who can forget the game before those rule changes that ended with a final score of 19-18?

[Chrissy]

I think I understand the basics of football , but i definately do not know all there is to know about football. At least I didn't until I read, Mark Oristano's book titled A Sportscaster's Guide to Watching Football. It’s full of great stories about NFL stars like Emmitt Smith & Earl Campbell, for those who are already fans.
http://www.guidetowatchingfootball.com/

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American football is a game played between two teams and consists of 11 players in each of the two teams, with unlimited substitutions. American football is agame of intense physical play with complex strategy to score points by advancing the ball to the opponent team’s end-zone.

Rugby is best described as a blend of the contact of American football, the running of soccer, and the transition of basketball. It is a game played between two teams with 15 players in each, played on a rectangular field, with the object being to run with an oval ball across the opponent’s goal line or kick it through the upper portion of the goal posts.