Football is all about math. Players’ rankings, points, yards, penalties — it’s all numbers. Even the music played by the band is full of quarter notes and eighth notes. You can just pull examples from football when you’re using a football theme, or when you have a class that’s excited about football. You can save time, instead, by using what’s already available.
Here’s a roundup of football themed math games and puzzles. We’ve scoured the web and found you all the good stuff. Most are interactive — we’ve told you when they’re not.
Online resources:
- Tackle Math Ball
- basic calculations
- lots of good football math from NCTM
- a hands-on in-class math football game
- math problems based on actual football
- decimals place value
- adding fractions — just like the previous game, but with different problems
- a simple online game for integers — noisy, but you can turn off the sound
- a DIY board game in a PDF file
- CoolMath’s football games
- an extended word problem on yardage — use the numbers from any game to repeat the exercise
- a clever use of a football field thought problem to illustrate Pythagorean theorem
- an advanced mathematical puzzler
Books:
- an enormous PDF file from the Pro Football Hall of Fame with lots of football math.
- Fantasy Football and Mathematics: A Resource Guide for Teachers and Parents, Grades 5 and Up
- Football: The Math of the Game
