This happened yesterday to the #Firebats (my american football team). True story.
It was a play-off game for the EFAF Cup (like 2nd division in the European League) against Cineplexx Blue Devils from Hohenems (Austria). Truth is it was an insignificant game because we both lost against Grenoble Centaures (so they get to go to semi-finals).
Anyway, the thing is, the Blue Devils came all the way to Valencia (Spain) but when they arrived, started complaining about the field... a field approved by the EFAF observer the day before and the referees on the same day. Also the same field we've been using for over 10 years and in which bigger and more important teams have played.
After achieving to delay the game for half an hour it's kick-off time. We kick it out of bounds, so first drive, 1st & 10 on the yard 20. The center does the snap to the QB... and knee to the ground. Ok, maybe something else is happening, maybe they're trying to make some kind of statement or something like that. 2nd & 10... and again knee to the ground. This is getting weirder by the minute. Defense be cool, be ready, don't get too confident, we don't know what they are going to do. 3rd & still 10... and just the same. We still don't know what's happening but we're on the 4th now and we have not moved even a yard so it has to be a punt, right? Wrong! Once again the QB just kneels.
Offense time now. We're so tense because we don't know what's going to happen ...but the Blue Devils defense just lines on the side, barely a step inside the field. Of course we score, because nobody is defending anything.
You'll ask 'What happened after this?'. Just the same. Over and over and over again. Ok, not exactly the same. The referees advised the Blue Devils defense they couldn't stand on the side all game long so the next time they just stood there in the middle, doing nothing.
After two more drives the referee stopped the game for a while and gave the Blue Devils 5 minutes to think about what were they doing. It was completely useless. It had been a coaches decision and they stuck to it.
Btw, the four Blue Devil's coaches were from the USA, the head coach and other two from Texas.
During half-time the referee proposed to shorten the two remaining quarters to 8 minutes each without stopping the clock. Everybody accepted, so the 2nd half was just a shorter version of the 1st half.
The final score was 104-0. We won.
(La traducción al español en un rato ;) )