This is surely the best sport on free-to-air TV right now.
First, the sport itself: it’s both brutal and skilful, with monster hits that make you wince and runs, throws and catches that are amazingly athletic. Once you understand the basics of the rules it’s straightforward, but it has a cricket-like depth of subtlety and something unusual happening in quite a few games that adds pleasingly to the outcome. Sure it can seem rather stop-start, but hey, watch the highlights.
Second the league: it’s set up with systems that make sure that just a few teams can’t dominate: wage caps, a draft system that means the poor teams get the best new players and no relegation so a poor team can focus on rebuilding for next year. Every team makes it through to the play-offs at least once a decade or more, pretty much.
Third the coverage: the BBC2 programme is twice a week, total 90 minutes, with really good analysis from a small team that are both knowledgeable and entertaining. British guy asks simple questions that allow the Yanks to demonstrate (and share) their insight, and the chemistry between the team is great. Then on Sky Sports Mix there is a long show all Sunday evening covering highlights live of loads of games, and now during play-offs there are 1-2 live matches per week. The Superbowl will be live on BBC2 in HD.
As things stand in the season the 32 teams have been reduced to 8, and maybe 6 have a reasonable chance of winning. Each match is competitive. Are there many more sports that you can say that about?
Long time fan of the NFL and agree with the points you make above. There’s massive amounts of moola in the game but the structure means that it hasn’t ruined it and fucked up competition except for the few teams like football has (FFP - just WTF).
It’s a sport where you can really appreciate the subtlety in the in-game strategy and the impact and professionalism of the coaches. If a team loses a few games they don’t panic and start lashing money at other teams best players, they have to up their game and get the best from what they’ve got. If you’re really poor then you get first pick from next years talent.
It’s also been a very good season from the start this year with a lot of really good teams able to beat anyone on their day. It’s wide open to the SB and the playoffs are going to be great with some very tasty match ups which are so difficult to predict (especially if you’re Jason Bell ).
Lots of Minnesota Vikings fans in Europe, and New England fans in this country (fucking glory hunters in every game!). Long suffering Raiders fan
While being historically a Villa supporter might explain a good part of my dislike for football nowadays, frankly I find the game thoroughly unpleasant now. The ability of basically international crooks to buy success, the absurd diving and prima donna acting, the inability to nurture talent locally, and the godawful tribal fans - football is just terrible now. I have only a slight residual interest in international football, and will watch some of the World Cup (even when England are eliminated) but I know it’ll annoy me.
The point about strategy is also a good one - it’s one of the reasons why Americal Football appeals to me (and why watching a live game, despite its length, is surprisingly interesting)
In 2013 I worked at Michigan State University for 10 days with their director for sport. While there I got to see firsthand how they select and develop the players. It was better than any sport in the UK. Even premier league Footy don’t have a system anywhere like as advanced.
The stadium the University team play in holds 100,000, with a 15 year waiting list for a corporate box. Even our best stadiums would struggle to match it.
I’ve got to say the whole set up had me thinking how poor we are as a country at supporting our talented athletes and we might benefit from following their philosophy.
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