A little bit o' American Rugby for you this weekend!

Here's the link to the collegiate Rugby Sevens tournament this weekend being held in Philadelphia, and broadcast on NBC (and NBCSN, if anyone actually has that cable station).

It includes a nice "rugby sevens for dummies" section that I'll reproduce here for you:

Rugby sevens for dummies    
- Where usual rugby matches are made up of 15 players a side and 80 minutes of total playing time, sevens is a much different variation of the sport. 
- While sevens matches are played on a field that is the same size as a normal rugby pitch, teams send only seven players onto the field at a time. The matches are considerably shorter than their conventional counterpart as well, with only two seven-minute halves and a two-minute break for halftime, instead of the usual 10.
- Because of more space and a wide-open pitch, rugby sevens are usually considered to be more exciting, fast-paced and high-scoring than the usual 15 vs. 15 matches. Starting in 2016, the sport will be a part of the Olympics.

The Penn State women and (of course) the Cal-Berkeley men are each two time defending champs and are looking to "three-peat" this weekend.

I'm always fascinated by the format of rugby tournaments - there's a round-robin, four teams in a group preliminary round, just like soccer and most sports of a similar structure, with the first place teams and some wild cards moving on to the championship "knockout" phase (for the men, twenty teams in five groups produce five firsts and three wild cards for the finals; the women have twelve teams and similarly put four in the finals).  

But the key difference in the rugby culture (and a cool difference, I think!) is that everyone moves on to a "knockout" round - while the top eight men's teams play for the cup, the next four compete for the "plate", the next four for the "bowl", and the bottom four for the "shield". Every team that comes is guaranteed a couple more games, so they'll play five or six games in all for their trouble of coming - and that's the joy of the trip, isn't it? To get to play the sport you love? As a bonus, those last couple of games are the most likely to be against teams of your approximate talent and accomplishment level! So if you're only the 18th best team, and Cal wipes you out in the round-robin, don't worry! You'll get a couple of games against the 19th and 17th best teams, teams that are also struggling as you are! For any tournament, this is good, but for a school tournament? This is ideal learning for everyone!