Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2022 November 11

= November 11 =

Why are there eleven players?
Why do so many team sports have teams with eleven players? Why was the number set to eleven in football (most different codes), bandy, cricket, field hockey, and originally in handball too? Bandy långe (talk) 19:52, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * " . . . football (most different codes)"? Rugby Union football has fifteen (or seven); Rugby League football has thirteen; Australian rules football has eighteen. Even Association football can also have seven or five. Beware of selection bias.
 * As to why eleven: I suspect that in each of the different sports you mention, eleven was found by informal experiment to work better than other numbers, but perhaps someone else has better information.
 * I have seen a suggestion that it was to duplicate the team size of the older, and popular, game of Cricket, and it's true that (for example) some Association football teams in the UK (Tottenham Hotspur and Leyton Orient, for example) were founded by cricket players who wanted to pursue a winter sport to keep them fit, but I doubt if this would have influenced the team numbers. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 5.64.163.219 (talk) 20:25, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * There may be some truth in that, but Australian rules football. explicitly designed as a game to keep cricketers active and fit in winter, and hence played on oval shaped cricket grounds, has, as already mentioned above, eighteen players. That was, of course, a development entirely independent of the development of the English based games. HiLo48 (talk) 22:51, 11 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Melbourne Cricket Ground is 2.4 hectares and Sydney Cricket Ground is 1.86 (were early Aussie footy fields that big?) with only 2 more defenders than baseball which is only ~1 hectare at top flight, presumably cause you want to make the bare-handed catching dismissals hard cause 5 day games are awesome, while baseball wants to make catching dismissals relatively easy (they even have a giant mitten) and runs hard. Maybe they tried 11-man Aussie football at first and defending was too hard? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:25, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

What's this guy talking about? There aren't any major sports with 11 players on a team -- 9 in baseball, 6 in hockey, 12 in football. (Grin) --174.89.144.126 (talk) 21:09, 11 November 2022 (UTC)


 * You beat me to it IP. I was going to note the CFL but your mention is far more clever than mine would have been :-) MarnetteD&#124;Talk 02:05, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Measured by the global number of fans, these are minor sports compared to association football. --Lambiam 09:33, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * True. Those other sports pale next to soccer, whose riots are legendary. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 13:11, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Baseball would pale next to cricket in popularity also 202.56.51.192 (talk) 17:31, 15 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Football, American football, field hockey, and bandy all have 11 players per team. They may all be considered major sports, even if you don’t follow them. If you cannot be nice and don’t even have an answer to give, why do you bother writing here at all? Bandy långe (talk) 14:45, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * The user's writing in small print signals that it's a joke. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:47, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * No, small print indicates it’s a side note. If you joke, you put a smiley after your text. Bandy långe (talk) 14:49, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * That would reduce ambiguity, but on the ref desks the small print often indicates a joke, with or without smiley. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:53, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I’m not here for jokes, for amibguity, or often, I just came here to see if anyone could provide a plausible answer to my question. I didn’t know the reference desk was more if a social hangout than a place to get facts. Bandy långe (talk) 16:15, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Have you gotten your question answered? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:37, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * No. Just got some speculations. Bandy långe (talk) 21:51, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Why Are Football Teams Made Up Of 11 Players On Each Side? covers the speculations noted above, but as far as I can tell, nobody knows for sure. Alansplodge (talk) 22:10, 12 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I wonder if the British or English military ever had a unit with 11 men with or without counting the commander. In modern USA a fireteam has about 4 men, a squad (squadron) has about 9 men (one dude to lead) and a platoon has a few squads. I don't know when they started having small units though. The smallest unit was larger than now when they shot mass musket volleys right? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 03:30, 13 November 2022 (UTC)
 * Good idea, but I'm afraid it doesn't stand up. At the turn of the 20th century, a British Army section (military unit) was 13-15 men. It was 9 by 1918 but was increased to 11 in 1939. We'd been playing cricket and football for quite a while by then. Alansplodge (talk) 13:58, 13 November 2022 (UTC)


 * See coincidence and confirmation bias. Most of these sports arrived at "11" through independent processes often unrelated to others.  If you look at "History of XXX" where "XXX" is the name of a sport, you can learn how each sport arrived at its number of players.  While the OP notes Football, Bandy, Cricket, and Field Hockey, among football, only Association Football and American football are 11-a-side, Canadian football, both codes of Rugby, Gaelic Football, Australian Football, Futsal; NONE of which are 11-a-side.  I mean, we have what, maybe 5 or 6 sports using 11-a-side?  That's not that many, 6/n, where n = all the sports in history, is a pretty small fraction of all sports, not even worth noticing.  -- Jayron 32 19:23, 14 November 2022 (UTC)