Passball™

Passball is a team game based on touch football.

(From now on when we say football, we mean "American football," not "soccer.") 

The main idea of Passball is to let every player participate in every part of the game of football - passing, running, catching, and kicking.

The rules of the game can be adapted to suit teams of any size, age, or competition level.

Passball was invented by Charles Caldwell, based on his experience coaching grade school kids in touch and flag football teams for a number of years.

What is obvious at lower age levels is that everyone likes to throw, catch and kick the ball as much as they can - that’s where the fun is.

At its core, Passball is a very simple game: You throw the ball to a teammate and they turn around and throw it to someone else further down the field. Repeat. It is easy to learn. Game play is continuous and everyone is always involved.  

That is not to say, however, that it is non-competitive or that there are no winners or losers. The game has all the elements to make it fun for young children, and challenging for skilled athletes.

Traditional football is not conducive to all players getting more “touches” (not to be confused with touching or flagging a runner with the ball). 

In recreational play you try to let all players try all positions. But unless you are the quarterback you don’t get to throw the ball. You might have one in five passes thrown your way when you are on offense, and quite often some players go whole games without catching a pass.  

Once every few games it may be your turn to kickoff or punt.  For some players it can become a boring game.

Traditional football is also a very inefficient use of time. Typically it takes 30 seconds to call a play in the huddle and set up at the line of scrimmage, no more than 10 seconds to run a play, another 15 to 20 to go back to the huddle and start the process over. A reasonable estimate would be that no more than 20% of the time is actually spend in the physical aspect of playing the game.  

The main objective of passball is to simply give everyone more chances to handle the ball.  

Everybody gets to throw, catch and kick the ball in every game.  

Game play is more continuous, along the lines of basketball, hockey or soccer.  

More of the time is spend actually playing - and the more time that is spent playing, the more passes, catches and kicks there are to spread around. 

There are no running plays, but there is a lot more running.

Fun is the first rule in Passball!