I picked up an old NFL publication today at a garage sale, for 20 cents. Its from the early 90s and is a basic introduction to the sport and strategy in the NFL. It reads very similarly to the Gameplan playbooks and it made me think this is probably the sort of thing the game designers were reading (in the early 80s) when they started putting together ideas for gameplan.

Anyway I thought perhaps we should have a forum section explaining the basics of american football for those unfamiliar with it.
In the future I will put together a few articles to go in here, to be of help to new players.
Submissions more than welcome from others, or to links if you have them.

NFL.com has a link to the rules of the game including the basic rules for beginners, more advanced explanations to the signals that  the refs give....

http://www.nfl.com/features/rulebook

click on the link and you have a page with four sections to chose from depending on what you are after. Interesting stuff.