The NFL regular season is finally in full swing. Fans everywhere have now had their first few weekends filled with excitement and outrage as their favorite players get into the starting lineup, get injured or get benched.
Everyone knows what it looks like to play on the field—that’s what the cameras are following, and it’s the whole point of the game. But what does it mean to get benched? What are the sideline sitters really up to for the four-plus hours they’re in the stadium? What else does the sideline do besides provide a temporary home for these resting players?
Obviously, some athletes only work the bench part-time. Teams carry second- and third- string players at nearly every position, allowing for the constant rotation of players from one play to the next. But what about Colin Kapernick’s backup’s backup—Josh Johnson—who has played in three games in as many years? Surely he’s doing something to earn his six-figure-minimum paycheck.
One benchwarmer job is crucial. When a big name comes off the field with a full bladder, there just isn’t enough time to get to the locker room and back—what if they’re needed on the field? The solution is simple. Get the benchwarmers to hold up towels and look uninteresting while the wide receiver relieves himself between snaps.
The consequences of forgetting to shield a peeing player can be dire. San Diego kicker Nick Novak’s missed field goal in a loss to the Broncos was more or less drowned in the flood of questions regarding his use of the sideline as a restroom. Video evidence shows that only one manager was there to hold up a towel, leaving three sides open to the prying media.
Even though Novak admitted to going twice or three times per game, this still leaves a great deal of downtime for the players who aren’t playing. In today’s society, the average man in his 20’s or 30’s would be tempted to spend any down time on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. This is true for many NFL players, evinced by some athletes’ highly entertaining social media feeds—for instance, Aaron Rodgers’ Twitter feed—but the NFL makes it a point to keep players offline.
NFL policy prohibits its players from partaking in social media beginning 90 minutes prior to the game until after post-game media interviews. An exception is for the Pro Bowl, when players are not only allowed but encouraged to tweet during the game using #ProBowl, presumably to get anyone to actually watch the Pro Bowl.
So maybe players in a regular season game aren’t tweeting, but they might be snacking. Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch has enjoyed Skittles—or power pellets, as his mom calls them—on the sideline of every game since his middle school days. The discovery of Lynch’s sideline Skittles easily upstaged Seattle’s 7-9 non-qualifying 2011-2012 season and has since led to his role as Skittles spokesman.
Unique candy-eating superstitions aside, some rituals extend across the league. Athletes will probably always tell you they’d prefer to play with their own—broken in, familiar—game ball instead of a brand new one. Ideally, every quarterback and kicker could break in a ball and use it for the whole game, and yet more than 100 balls are put into play throughout the course of the average NFL contest. So how does a star quarterback like New York Giants’ Eli Manning ensure familiarity for every snap? The answer can be found on sideline.
Somewhere along the bench of every team there is a box containing anywhere from 30-50 specifically tabled game balls, brushed and watered down to fit the quarterback or kicker’s pre-determined needs. To avoid sabotage, the containers aren’t openly labeled, and only the equipment director knows which ball to put into play.
Although at first this doesn’t seem like too great a challenge, for some equipment directors like Manning’s, the right ball isn’t just broken in:
“You want it to feel like it’s been in your house for 10 years, where you’ve been playing Saturday afternoon games with it for a long time,” Manning said in a New York Times report.
Another exciting addition to sideline equipment is the latest form of booth-to-field communication, initially accomplished via Polaroid pictures clipped to clothesline strung from the booth to the field. The explanation was that a Polaroid picture would develop in the time it took for the photo to reach the field from being taken in the booth. This season, Microsoft Tablets will be present on every sideline, providing up-to-date statistics and pictures instantaneously. The tablets are restricted to an NFL-owned, closed wireless network to ensure optimal privacy and are the first technological alternative to drawn-out diagrams and Polaroids.
So after considering third-string benchwarmers, designated bathroom patches, candy shipments, star players snacking on aforementioned candy shipments, a hidden supply of manicured game balls and the latest tablet technology now cluttering the sideline, you still aren’t done assessing the sideline.
A team’s coaches and trainers—totaling between 15 and 20 individuals per team—are required to remain within the designated 32-yard zone for team personnel. After several instances of tripping and on-field interference from coaches, the league has emphasized the role of every team’s “get-back” coach, an employee whose entire job description is to tell personnel to—yes, you guessed it—get back and stay back.
Having only scratched the surface of the sidelines, at this point it seems reasonable to argue that there is more going on outside the lines than on the field itself. At the line of scrimmage, there are 22 men performing the ordinary ritual of a football game, while the sidelines are alive with peeing players and con-artist coaches—I’m looking at you, Mike Tomlin.
So the next time you get bored watching your team get killed, see if you can spot your kicker taking a quick sideline leak or your favorite wide receiver breaking out the chocolate-covered power pretzels.
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