(American) Football or Soccer?

The Game Room
21

I was born in Youropp, but I’ve lived in the US for just over half of my 28 years so I identified as North American, and said I’m a fan of both. However, I find American football more exciting, but I find association football more satisfying.

Put another way, I think American football is better to watch in and of itself. That’s not surprising; there have been a hundred little changes made to the rules to make the sport more exciting, mostly for the benefit of TV viewers. While there have been a few minor changes to soccer for the same reason, they’re mostly refereeing directives rather than rule changes, and haven’t ma

However, American football doesn’t generate the same passion. The same things that make soccer less exciting - mostly the difficulty in executing visually spectacular scoring sequences - make it much more gripping when those things do happen. The atmosphere at a soccer game is superior.

I’m a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan. I was a Bucs fan before I moved to the US, even; it was just luck that they were the closest team when I moved here. I was thrilled when they won the Super Bowl. However, that thrill ranks slightly below Turkey winning from a goal down against the Czech Republic in the last European Cup - and I don’t give a shit about Turkey. If it was a Buccaneers Super Bowl win versus an England win over Germany, it wouldn’t even be close. I’d even prefer a Yeovil Town win over Hereford.

That holds true even though I follow American football closely, and I check soccer league standings once a month, if at all.

I think there are a few reasons why soccer is more popular despite being less watchable, and I think it has very little to do with what goes on during the match. One is that in US sports generally, it only matters who wins. Nobody cares about the Super Bowl loser, let alone the teams that lose in the first round of the playoffs. In club soccer, those teams have something to show for their success - a place in European competition, a higher cup seeding, whatever. In the NFL playoff losers have nothing except a worse draft spot. As an aside, I think that’s one of the reasons college football is nearly as popular despite being a vastly inferior product.

22

I’m with the poster who said it’d be more fair to compare American Football to Rugby (which I am a huge fan of as well).

Frankly for me, I like impact sports. I like playing impact sports, and I like watching them. Soccer is in the same category as basketball with me–lots of incidental contact, but that’s not the same thing.

23

No opinion about it. I’m commenting on fact.

I could post a thread with a thread title “Soccer” where every post consists of nothing but minor tidbits about the sport and some joker will show up sooner or later to let the millions of soccer fans on the planet know that soccer is for pussies … or some variant therof.

Don’t make me cite every single thread on soccer that’s every been posted here.

24

My comment addressed your calling my post “bull shit.” That’s an opinion.

25

I prefer American football (or, more accurately, Canadian football, as I do find that version to be more exciting!)

I’ll occasionally catch part of a soccer game, and enjoy watching the highlights because the skill and athleticism is amazing…it just seems that most games I see are filmed from cameras so far away that I can’t really see any of that “live”. I suppose if I watched more I’d be able to pick up on it, just as I continue to learn to see amazing plays in hockey, but I’m not really likely to bother putting in the time. Frankly, the CFL and NHL take up more than enough of my time!

26

Well, then allow me to congratulate you on being the first person to float the oh so original theory that soccer is none but a child’s game. Well played, sir. Carry on.

27

That’s an interesting point, mnemosyne. The single thing that really helped me appreciate the game was in the '02 World Cup when I caught part of a match, and at that moment, they were showing a handful of players trying to fight for the ball near the sideline, and seeing how quick they were, the control, and ability to pass in such tight quarters impressed me. But on the other hand, the faraway camera, especially with widescreen tv, shows off how great the game can be with the runs off the ball and crossfield passes. Seeing a Paul Scholes pass from in his own half to Wayne Rooney making a run on the far side is really, really sweet (United vs Arsenal), or a throughball from Park Ji-Sung to Javier Hernandez (United vs Chelsea) is much more appreciated from up high.

28

I wonder if soccer would be more popularly watched in the US if they had the kinds of camera arrangements and direction that, say, NFL Football has.

29

Maybe I’m not the best person to ask because I’m not a sports fan, but I’d rather watch American football than soccer. There are too many pauses in American football but at least the scoring is (usually) fairly frequent. Soccer games are too much back and forth without scoring for long periods of time.

30

North American. As I grew up within sight of Lambeau Field, it’s not surprising that I’m a big fan of American football. I haven’t had a great deal of exposure to soccer, and so, I know that I don’t understand a lot of the nuances of the game. I find the sport interesting, and have been attempting to learn more about it.

So, while I find American football more exciting, I don’t dismiss soccer, either.

31

American football - higher scores, harder hits, wardrobe malfunctions; who could ask for more?

Soccer: soccer hooligans, fan riots, English people; NO thanks

32

European brought up on football so that’s my game - I like American football just fine though. Don’t follow it these days but have in the past and did so when I lived in the States. The game seems very optimised for TV, which has it’s pros and cons. It’s certainly a very exciting game to watch.

Our football has quite a wide dynamic range of quality - at it’s best it’s pretty much the apotheosis of sport IMHO. It can also be very boring though - if I go to see my side (Everton) play it’s 50/50 on whether I’ll see a good game of football tbh. This actually doesn’t matter to me, because I’m a diehard, born-not-chosen fan, but it would be very noticeable to a neutral.

I get the impression, though I could be wrong, that the average quality of an American football game is higher. It’s just a format that has found a good weighting for scoring (a happy medium between football and basketball, say). Like if you were a neutral sort of fan who bought a season ticket you’d nearly always be entertained.

33

North American - like them both, though don’t get to see soccer very much.

34

I’m European, and I love American football. I watch at least one NFL game a week during season (go Packers – horray!). On the other hand, I follow World Cup soccer and Champions League closely. (Also I’m Swedish, but Swedish soccer sucks too much to follow.) Very different games, both very passionate and interesting, great entertainment.

35

I expect a lot of this is a function of league rules (revenue sharing, salary caps, one league with no promotion/relegation) rather than a function of the rules of the sport.

36

American football is the only sport I watch with any regularity. I learned to like it late in life and really only did so because it gave me something to share with my dad.

Now I still like it and watch every weekend it is on.

37

It’s interesting, because I kind of feel the same way and yet feel that hockey games that end 1-0 or go to overtime with a 0-0 score are some of the best games. One difference, it seems, is that hockey has a very active goalie compared to soccer; low-scoring games are often due to incredible performances by the goalie, while soccer is more due to the entire team’s effectiveness. Or maybe I just obsess too much about hockey goalies!

So basically an aspect in one sport that I love becomes oddly annoying in another sport that I’m kind of indifferent to.

High scoring is kind of artificial in football, though, isn’t it? I mean, why 6 points for a touchdown, and 3 for a field goal? Why not 2 and 1? The average score per game in the NFL is about 21 according to random people on wikiAnswers. Would the scoring aspect still be preferred in American football if the usual scores were 6-2? (Yes, I know that this ignores the PAT and 2pt conversion, and the safety and the rouge, but the point stands: is a “high score” awesome because the ball made it to the end zone often, or is it awesome because it happens to be “47”?)

38

Football (soccer) has the advantage of nationalism (carefully termed “patriotism”). The biggest sporting event in the world involves the entire planet competing in bloodless battle. American Football doesn’t have that element - it’s all internal.

Partly it’s just the scale of the things. Football (soccer) is just on so much of a vaster scale that it’s hard for even non-sports-followers to not care when it comes to World Cups with billions of viewers, as opposed to the Superbowl which is minuscule in comparison.

Local preferences may vary; but in the end America only has a population of 350 million. It’s a superpower in many ways, but its sports viewers are small fry compared to the world stage. The US preference for American Football simply doesn’t matter that much.

39

I thoroughly enjoy ‘soccer’, Canadian football, Rugby and Australian Rules Football. The US college football games are very good as well.

The American NFL is nothing but a make work program for extra large men who want to slam into each other but are too ugly for gay porn. I cannot change the channel fast enough when that stuff comes on.

40

Racism. Always welcome.

Thanks so much, though. It’s nice when someone declares their dislike for a cosmopolitan culture of 60 million people.