BS: American football in Britain?

Subject: BS: American football in Britain?
From: GUEST,brianbanjos
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 07:06 AM

I am posting this question here since in lurking this forum I know there is a strong U.K. contingent. I heard on our National Public Radio that the National Football League is likely to have a team in London. Apparently NFL football has proven popular in Britain.

I am a casual American football fan. If I am out at a pub or visiting someone who has a game on I will watch it and enjoy it. But I don't seek it out on my own.

In the U.S. football has more or less surpassed baseball as the national sport. I am a sports hold out for baseball.

While American football will likely never take over soccer in terms of global popularity I am curious on the thoughts of brits on American football. Is it really a phenomenon in the U.K.? Do you watch and enjoy it? Or is establishing a team in London wishful thinking like promoting soccer in the U.S. where it still has a long long way to go.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: gnu
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 07:14 AM

Wait for it.......... >;-)

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 07:26 AM

It'll take two years to explain and understand eligible receiver rules, so don't expect it for a while.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: johncharles
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 07:30 AM

I enjoy watching the NFL games. channel 4 has some good coverage.
https://www.facebook.com/C4NFL
john

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 09:03 AM

It was a brief fad about 20 years ago. There are still teams around, but it's hardly going to match the mass appeal of curling or competitive leek growing.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: GUEST,#
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 09:07 AM

LOL

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Musket
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 10:00 AM

To be fair, American culture is so strong, especially downloading films and TV straight from America rather than more expensive UK DVDs, that especially younger people have a rather transatlantic view.

I have mentioned before, the emergency phone number 999 has had to have 911 added as many younger people thought 911 was the emergency line!

So I would expect American football to have a bit of a following. Same as baseball, although we do tend to still call it rounders and a girl's school sport event, same as hockey and netball.

Wembley stadium does host a few games, and from what I read a while back, has a decent sized following, not just UK, but a lot of the rest of Europe pops over for the game.

Is it otherwise popular? Well, considering no TV channel feels it popular enough to bother buying into, leaving Murdoch to show it on the minority subscription end of Sky, and tjen only because his Fox franchise needs to try new markets...

I am genuinely surprised it doesnt take off. Although real football is wall to wall coverage, so not much chance of minority sport to take off. It confuses somewhat as a game and when in The States I genuinely have tried to get into it, even going to a game or two.

Conversely, in 2008 when I was in LA, pictures of David Beckham on every street corner!

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: gnu
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 10:19 AM

Didn't catch much about the game at Wembley stadium a week or two ago but I believe they had a sellout last year. I was impressed.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: theleveller
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 06:41 PM

American football is just that - American. So there is no top level international competition as there is in football, cricket, rugby union or rugby league. That limits its appeal; after all how can it compete with a superb, exciting and fast-moving game like the Wales v Australia rugby match I watched this afternoon.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 06:57 PM

All forms of foopball. Played and watched by morons. ANOTHER bunch of invasive morons we DO NOT NEED.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: GUEST,Rahere
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 07:02 PM

What worries me is the effect on global warming. If there are 40 000 travelling fans per team each weekend shuttling one way or another across the ditch and back again, that's a sizeable addition to the airlines business and the rate we destroy our planet.
As we can't even afford to support our petrol heads, what chance this, particularly given the plan has already flopped twice?

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: GUEST,Steve Shaw once mesmerised
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 08:09 PM

Well I watched it on telly once and worked out the rules: gorgeous young women wearing gaudy things and with legs right up to their bottoms must jump up and down noisily on the touchline. The men who play the game must wear massive padding in order to look twice as big as they really are. Everyone stands around for ten minutes, then they form two lines. One man throws an oval ball that won't roll properly along the two lines. This is the cue for mass violence to break out for about two minutes. Once the violence subsides, everyone stands around for ten minutes...

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Bill D
Date: 08 Nov 14 - 10:22 PM

That's much easier than the rules for cricket.

American football is hard to avoid over here....sadly. It is inherently a dangerous game, even with all the padding. It takes a lot of athletic ability to do most of what they do, but after my high-school years, I slowly tired of the entire system... partly because of the sleazy, money-laden support of supposed 'student athletic scholarships'.

Watch it for amusement if you must, but resist any widespread attempt to get it into schools.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: michaelr
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:00 AM

Sissies, the lot. Lose the helmets and the padding, and play rugby like real men.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:23 AM

What always amuses me is the American habit of calling the knockout contest for their baseball, The World Series, when nobody else in the entire world plays it! Do they labour under some similar delusion with regard to their football, I wonder?

Whereas the FIFA World Cup, now...

≈M≈

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:24 AM

Isn't it because it was originally sponsored by 'The World' newspaper?

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Musket
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:47 AM

I like the idea of a parochial newspaper calling itself "The World." It's a bit like the man interviewed in the street about Shakespeare. "I guess there can't be six his equal in the whole of Boston!" Fairs fair, it was apparently a compliment.

Bill. Whilst the rules of cricket are such that they preclude nations with low attention spans, the main difference between rules of cricket and rules of American football is that the rules of cricket describe a game, a sport in fact.

(When Channel 5 first came on air, they could only afford rights to baseball games from an American franchise. They put up billboard posters of a baseball player with the caption "the future of cricket." After three months, advertisers wouldn't touch it and it was quietly dropped.)

In the meantime, a comic on, I think it was Mock the Week, pointed out that the Glasgow branch of JD Sport last year sold 200 baseball bats but no balls.

Made me chuckle anyway.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: theleveller
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 03:35 AM

Musket, LOL. Reminds me of an instruction from my team captain when I played rugby,"sod the ball, get on with the bloody game".

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 10:18 AM

I think it is a bit like watching a committee meeting.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 10:41 AM

I like the idea of a parochial newspaper calling itself "The World."

Seems to me there is still a newspaper called Le Monde. Do people complain? Parochial is probably in the eye of the beholder. If you're talking about Pulitzer's little paper, it was very influential in its day.

I don't watch football, I don't enjoy it and am not interested in all of the time wasted and product hype around it. The unfortunate elevation of many sports heroes into supposed role models is also a problem, since the majority of them are under-educated young men who make it to the spotlight as stars, and the big names are living lives of excess awash in money. (This is a crass generalization - there are others who are paid crap for their participation, and there are some who do good, but alas, I can't name any of them.) The inevitable drunken late night car crash or rape story, or the holier-than-thou putz who wants to be considered a moral compass is all too absurd to put on the sports page, let alone the headlines above the fold on the front page. Americans collectively seem to be suffering brain injuries when it comes to football. We aren't all pleased with this outcome.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Musket
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 10:53 AM

Le Monde has a rather parochial outlook too. Unless you are a garlic eating surrender monkey with a string of onions over your Breton jumper.

😋

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: GUEST,HiLo
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 10:54 AM

MGM Lion re the World series...The "World" series has twice been won by teams outside of the US. The game is widely played in Many countries including Japan, Cuba , Mexico, Canada and other countries in the western hemisphere.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 12:16 PM

Ah Musket... even after I made my point against American football, you felt obliged to pile on with specious assertions regarding not only its status as a game or sport, but against some warped concept of Americans as well. Sorry, but it IS a game and a sport... a foolish one, but totally qualified by definition.... and 'attention span' is as foolish a way to categorize a nation...ANY nation.

I suspect the 'game' involved ...for you... is the tedious attempt to put down almost anything American using some odd notion of humor (note degenerate colonial spelling). Forgive me if I fail to see the attraction of that hobby.... but it resembles basic trolling as a way to elicit responses from some selected group.

If I played that game, I assure you there are topics to choose from in the UK.

Gotta run... I have rocks that need banging.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Musket
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 01:33 PM

Well bang the buggers a bit harder then...

A game that stops for advert breaks may be a game but at that level loses the "sport" defintion.

As I said, I have tried to get into it. I worked in The States on and off for a long time and with wall to wall American idea of sport or reruns of Friends (which I have never watched) on the hotel telly, it was either get into it or spend your time wanking.

On balance.......

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Nov 14 - 02:00 PM

Hafta agree about the advert breaks. But almost everything here runs on them...even NPR has been forced to take outside funding in order to stay afloat. At least with baseball & American football there are natural pauses every 10 min. or so... and one can always go get another beer.. or empty the last one... during ads. When I watch 'soccer', I either sit in pain or say, "Hey..nothing has happened for 42 minutes, I'll go on to the bathroom!" Then BOOM -2 goals in 5 minutes!

"either get into it or spend your time wanking." I seldom have stayed in hotels...but don't they have special channels for that?

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Musket
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 02:50 AM

What do you mean "nothing happens"?

Football happens!

You can't bristle at the idea of low attention span one minute and judge football by goals scored the next.... Your average game gets two goals, or approximately five seconds out of ninety minutes plus the team running round dancing or whatever they want to do for about another thirty seconds (often added as extra time by the ref.)

Years ago when USA hosted the World Cup, the broadcasting rights negotiations included asking FIFA to consider a larger net and getting rid of the offside rule in order to get more goals as an American viewing public might get bored otherwise.

There rests the case for the prosecution M'Lud.

(In the end, the World Cup went off great, interest in the game took off in The States at a level not seen before and nobody had to change any rules. We were all honorary Paddies as none of the UK countries got through to the finals although most of the Irish players (and manager) were technically British. If your mother in law used to own an Irish Wolfhound, that was connection enough....)

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 11:13 AM

"You can't bristle at the idea of low attention span one minute and judge football by goals scored the next."

You are reading into my comments stuff I didn't say. All I said beyond refuting "low attention span" as a definer of nations was that watching International football (soccer) required either a large bladder capacity, or dependence on instant replay.

I do NOT judge by goals scored, and the only real complaint I have is about players who make stupid fouls while trying tackles in irrelevant situations! I can understand if Rooney is heading for the net with little opposition, but taking out a minor player from behind with a sliding tackle? Testosterone, I suppose.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: gnu
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 04:03 PM

Yankee football (for the umpteenth time!) is as much of a game of chess as it is a game of physical prowess. It "involves" the fans far more than any other sport both in strategy and during games attended. Yet again, as per many past posts of mine on Mudcat threads, I watch, and enjoy watching, many sports, including real football, rugby, Aussie Rules... the works. But, for sheer entertainment and "involvement", Yankee football is, by far, the best. And, the padding? Yes, I know it takes leather balls to play rugby but rugby is even more boring than Yankee football and not nearly as physical because it's simply the nature of the respective games. I have yet to see a 6'6" 250# rugby player run a 4/40 ten times in less than 5 minutes. Those who don't understand what I just said... you don't understand Yankee football. It's FAR more exciting than any other contact sport (save hockey, of course, but everyone knows that).

BTW... for those that don't know, I am a Canuck and I say, Canuck football is the absolute shits of all of them... two downs and a cloud of dust, as my Bro would say.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: theleveller
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 04:42 PM

Gnu, are you talking about rugby league or rugby union? They're very different games.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Dave Sutherland
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 05:08 PM

My youngest one is 100% committed to American Football and Baseball and spends an inordinate amount of time either watching it or listening to it in his room on whatever cable system he has in order to receive it. Back in September he went across to New York to take in a couple of games and undertake a stadium tour of one of the codes (baseball I think) however when it was discovered that he was from UK all the nationalities that he met wanted to talk to him about soccer (I only use that term to differentiate which football)!! At least he could tell them that he had been to the Forest v Derby game a week or so earlier!!

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: gnu
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 05:15 PM

On the level... all of them. We (I) get very little TV coverage here so it's hard to "follow" any leagues but I try. Hmmm... I must say one thing about rugby. WTF is going on when a referee has the ability to "apply" rules as the game progresses? Rules are rules. Well, it appears to me that they are not "rules" in rugby if they can be interpreted and applied as the refs deem so from game to game. Or have I seen too few games? Am I talking out of my uneducated ass?

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: gnu
Date: 10 Nov 14 - 05:34 PM

BTW... anyone catch the game at Wembley yesterday? I see Romo played with fresh cracks in his backbone. http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2014110903/2014/REG10/cowboys@jaguars#menu=gameinfo%7CcontentId%3A0ap3000000425601&tab=recap

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: J-boy
Date: 11 Nov 14 - 12:36 AM

Gnu is correct as usual. American football is the most strategic sport in the world.

Subject: RE: BS: American football in Britain?
From: Musket
Date: 11 Nov 14 - 03:27 AM

Bearing in mind

A) World is a term used by them but is bemusing to sports fans in 95% of the world.

B) Strategy and sport appear in any thesaurus alongside cricket.

You know, I would accept baseball to be about strategy on the field if I am being honest. But American football? The only way you could see strategy at play is to get a microphone in the dug out.

No. I did try. I can watch most sports, but American football, synchronised swimming and golf seem to be too clever for a simple soul like me to appreciate.