IS2000, Fall Term, 2003-1

Sheela Ghosal writes: Unfortunately, my knowledge of football is very limited, but anyway, the rule I'm going to do is the following (I think):
```
>       2-point conversion play after touchdown (based on the following 3conditions):
>
>       1.  Your team scored a touchdown.
>       2.  Your team is down by 2 after a touchdown
>       3.  It is the 4th quarter.
```
OK, football folks, does this seem like a good general rule? Are there other conditions in which a 2-point conversion is a good idea? Another student asked to write a rule about this and I'm not sure whether there are other conditions that would recommend it. It seems to me that its not only when you are down by 2, but any time in which the extra point could be critical. For instance, if you are down by 4, the extra point could bring you to the point where you could tie with a field goal. What do folks think about this rule? Sheela, do you think you could generalize the rule a bit?
A student asked about the idea of a rule for calling audibles. Interesting question. Here was my response including requests for help on this from the experts.
I'm not sure an audible is a good idea because it is essentially different from the other things that we are looking at. That is, all the plays we are looking at involve tying a play to a set of circumstances. What "audible" means is just that the defense seems to be in a set that doesn't favor the play that had been selected so the QB goes to a back up play. So we don't have anything specific to say about the circumstances for the audible. But now that I'm saying that it occurs to me that maybe what you might mean or what might actually occur in the game is that each time a play is decided on, a second play is also called as what to do in the case of an audible. If that is the case (help me you experts I never got past sand lot football....) then what that means is that although the decision to audible per se is not something that fits in our framework, that deciding on what backup plays to call in each set of circumstances clearly is. This means that calling an audible is not a single rule in our framework, but there is the potential for a whole set of rules (written by several people) for choosing the backup plays under different circumstances. I would imagine that there are a relatively set of such back ups, perhaps a couple of running plays a couple of passing, and certainly a play or two to do if the defense is blitzing (although that gets back to the idea of the audible itself).

Heath Asbury sent in the following rule:

Play: Spike the ball to stop the clock.
Conditions:
1.When the offensive team is behind.
2.It is late in the second or fourth quarter.
3.No time outs remain.
4.The offensive team just completed a running play or a pass completion where
the ball was downed in bounds.
5.It is not fourth down.
6.The team is not ready to run another play.

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