It’s Fun to Be a Football

A Funny Football Poem for Kids

4 votes

It’s fun to be a football.
It’s phenomenal to fly.
The feeling is fantastic as
I spiral through the sky.

The quarterback releases me.
I rocket through the air
and soar above the roaring cheers
of everybody there.

The players leap to catch me.
Then they form a human shield
to keep me from the other team
and run me down the field.

They hold me close and rock me
like a baby as they run.
I’m glad that I’m a football.
As a football, life is fun.

It’s honestly incredible
except in one regard…
I really wish the players wouldn’t
kick me quite so hard.

— Kenn Nesbitt

Reading Level: Grade 3
Topics: Sports
Poetic Techniques: Alliteration, Anthropomorphism & Personification, Imagery, Irony, Lyric & Dramatic Poems, Metaphor and Simile
Word Count: 113

About This Poem

Football season has just begun, and some members of my family are already enthusiastically watching the games and hoping their favorite team will make it to the Super Bowl again this year. That’s why I thought this would the perfect time to write a new football poem.

I’ve written many sports poems over the years, including a couple about football, but this is actually my first poem specifically about American football. My earlier football poems could just as easily have been about soccer. This one, though, has a quarterback throwing the ball, sending it spiraling through the air, and players catching it and carrying it down the field.

For this poem, I thought it would be fun to imagine the game from the football’s point of view. Being a football might actually be pretty exciting. You would get to fly through the air while a crowd cheered, have players leap to catch you, and then be cradled and protected as they carried you toward the end zone.

That all sounded pretty wonderful to me, which naturally made me wonder: What would be the worst part about being a football? And that’s how “It’s Fun to Be a Football” came to be. By the way, if you liked that one, here are a few more I think you’ll enjoy:

Worksheet

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