Har har har. What, because of the pads and helmets? Those are just there so the players can hit harder. You’ll get fewer scrapes, bruises, and lost teeth with American football, but more fractures, torn ligaments, and paralysis.
As to the OP, I think “clever marketing” is the right answer. I would also point out that the NFL, with its one-game-per-week format, is particularly well suited to fantasy leagues, which solidify interest in the league among participants.
I just wish the international Cricket Council would hire the American Football marketing team.
That said, as an outsider looking in, it does appear to be mostly marketing. It does not have the grace of baseball or soccer. And, as a boxing fan, if I want to watch people beat on each other boxing does just fine
From MC Master of Ceremonies
The English MUST have had a hand in the creation of this. My friend from Wales once tried to explain the rules of cricket to me…woof. I’d say soccer is doomed in the US…most of my fellow citizens would reguard such rules as rocket science. (just kidding btw…from what I understand soccer is pretty popular in the US, if not in the same way it is around the world).
To the OP: While not a big fan myself of professional sports, including football, I’d say that its popular because those that enjoy it find it entertaining to watch and talk about (its kind of boring to talk about the statistics of baseball IMO), it has a short very competitive season, the rules are reasonable uncomplicated (well, for the most part you don’t even have to understand them to enjoy the game), its hugely marketted, and its pretty straightforward as to how teams get into the playoffs/superbowl.
I don’t get the patriotic angel unless that was just a joke. Never heard football refered to as the american sport…that was reserved for baseball I thought.
-XT
Baseball and basketball wishes they had the NFL’s marketing savvy, as well. It’s even more impressive when you are deluged by it.
Anyway, American football has plenty of grace. Watching Barry Sanders weave his way through the line and dodging the secondary was like watching poetry. Kurt Warner standing his ground while the pocket collapses around him and linemen are inches away from dragging him to the ground while he waits for an opening in the backfield exudes a noble grace. Watching Ray Lewis hang back and track his target on an end around like a predator on the Serengetti isolating his prety from the herd and then bringing it down has a certain savage grace, as well.
My two cents: American football’s biggest advantage is that, unlike most major sports, it’s a lot BETTER and more enjoyable on television than it is in person.
Ice hockey, for example, is a fantastic sport to watch in person. When you’re in a hockey arena, on top of the action, watching a good hockey game is truly thrilling. It just doesn’t work nearly as well on television. The game is just too fast, and the cameras have a hard time keeping up with the action.
Baseball, while MUCH slower than hockey, is ALSO much more fun to watch at the ballpark. The ambience is very important. A TV camera can only show a small part of the field, and a small part of the action. That can get tiresome.
American football, on the other hand, is almost ideally suited for television. The action is fast enough to be exciting, but each play develops slowly enough for cameramen to cover the best parts fully. The TV audience gets a much better view of the action than the people at the stadium!
Don’t forget, one of the main reasons the NFL is so popular is that [sarcasm]Marxist, anti-American[/sarcasm] revenue sharing plan and salary cap that keeps even the Bengals “competetive” (at least… comparatively). Do any of the international soccer leagues have anything like that? Or is it a situation where the Real Madrids of the world just spend and spend and spend? If so, Jerry Jones might want to move to Europe.
Some random thoughts from a hardcore* football fan:
Football is the greatest sport of all because…
…You achieve good things through perseverance – building off of your own achievements. Only Baseball (and rugby? dunno about the rugby) has this trait in common, and it is to a far lesser degree. In all other sports, either you score or you don’t, and everything resets. There is no “We earned these 10 yards, and now continue on that much closer to the prize.”
…It is the hardest hitting sport. Rugby does not have nearly as spectacular hits, because if you took away NFL pads without changing the hits, there would be multiple deaths every week. Hockey fans often cite that Hockey players go faster and therefore hit harder. This is patently false. A proper Football hit will drive somebody into the dirt. Hockey allows hardly more than glancing blows. (And what glancing blows they are! Hockey rocks the house.) You can’t “wrap 'em up.”
…It involves the most dazzling array of human ability and grace. The most spectacular catches in the NFL are easily as mesmerizing as the most spectacular goals in Soccer or the greatest defensive efforts in Baseball. And the running is just as amazing and graceful, but is a completely different set of human abilities. Barry Sanders was mentioned, but you don’t even need to go to that extreme to see examples. Any good back will make your jaw drop a dozen times every season.
…It involves the second best mano et mano matchups in all of sports. (Basketball unquestionably holds top dog status here.) Wanna watch power on power Sumo style? Watch the trenches. How about Basketball style coverage and finesse? Check the receivers against d-backs. Or maybe the brutal tactics of Rugby? Running backs and linebackers engage in much of the rugby-style struggles. (There is no passing in rugby, right? I mean, the ball goes incomplete but is still live, taking away any priority of catching the ball. Kinda detracts from the skill level. Correct me if I am wrong.)
…It is an event. As the creater of football envisioned, football is to be played “on an autumn afternoon, to be concluded as the sun sets.” This happens with the vast majority of games, at the same time. While you are watching your team, virtually every other team in the league is playing, leading to exciting updates during the many stoppages.
…It involves the single most difficult position to play in all of sport. The quarterback must possess the ability to read a defense, throw the ball accurately, have faith in his offensive line that he won’t get killed, and the courage to step up and make the play when he’s about to get creamed.
…It is the most violent team sport. (Just compare injury reports an any given gameday as evidence.) Boxing was made more violent with the addition of gloves and rounds. Without gloves, punches were rare. Rounds rest the fighters so they can throw more punches. Similarly, the edge of rugby is lost by the lack of padding. (The lack of ears notwithstanding.) The edge of hockey is lost because of the stringent rules on who you can hit (only the guy with the puck) and how you can hit him.
…It is a true team game. With the different skill-sets and body-types required, no man is an island. (Donovan McNabb notwithstanding.)
…You can go from losing to winning as time runs out (unlike Hockey and Soccer) leading to dramatic finishes. (A tie is anti-climactic, to put it mildly.)
I honestly don’t know why soccer is such a big deal to the rest of the world. Slower than hockey with many of the same rules and without the hitting, it honestly reminds me of watching the old atari game Pong. I guess it’s popular because kids in poor areas can still play it, needing only a ball. I could make the argument that soccer is the McDonald’s of sport…sure it’s the most popular, but is it the best?
*Life is once again worth living, now that Football has returned.
I don’t like real football that much, I find it indeed a bit boring. I only watch the World Cup and only then when Holland is playing.
Hockey is much more fun to watch but only in real life, not on TV, it’s more difficult than football and much faster paced.
Didn’t like it when they started using Astro Turf though. I like to have the sports on real grass and mud. That’s one of the reasons I like watching Rugby, it’s gritty, they don’t wear all that protective gear and they don’t stop the game as much as in American football. Ice hockey could be a fun sport too, if it weren’t for that hidiously annoying organ playing all the time.
Like I said in another thread. I could actually like American Football if it werent for the semi constant state of inaction.
I dunno about the QB being the toughest position, by the way. Who has to get rid of the ball accurately faster, and gets hit harder from several directions first, the QB, or the center?
It’s not just football - America runs its sports as entertainment, not as a collection of individual “businesses”. The success of the collective whole comes second to individual success (and fairness). I think you can remove the sarcasm tags - it looks pretty accurate without them. In addition to the factors you mentioned, there are also unbalanced schedules, roster limits and the draft that are designed to try keep relative parity.
In England, a football team can have as many players as they want, pay them what they want, everyone plays everyone else, whoever signs up a promising kid first gets him. I suspect, but don’t know for sure, that other Western European football leagues operate similarly.
I played center a long time ago albeit not professionally or even at the collegiate level. Being a center is a bit easier then being QB. The center is generally big enough to take the abuse and on top of that he doesn’t have to think as quickly as the QB does under all that pressure.
Marc
NFL Football today is wussy, especially the Super Bowl. The owners want the teams to play in 70 degree sunny weather all the time, or in hermetically sealed domes that have to be torn down every 20 years.
Real football is played in a blizzard, 10 inches of snow on the ground; when the quarterback slides on his back from the midddle hashmarks all the way to the sideline like a hockey puck, when the players have to wear sneakers beause cleats break on ice.
Ideally the players play snow football without gear, just their overcoats. That’s real football.
Any coincidence why Brett Favre is the most durable QB ever? Even though he went to school in Mississippi, he plays in Green Bay and is used to snow football. It toughened him like it did Bart Starr before him.
It’s not the players playing in the snow the owners are worried about. It’s the rich fans who want to golf that weekend. Can’t golf in January in Minnesota or New England.
I enjoy American Football.
NHL hockey- you COULD hit a lot harder- but there is a big rule called CHARGING meaning you can’t take more than two skates in the direction of the guy you wanna hit or its a penalty. I don’t mind watching NHL on tv or in person, its enjoyable either way.
As for NFL, I like it both on TV and in person too. Just like in hockey- when you see the whole field you can see plays develop easier. Most football stadiums have two huge screens that you can watch the replays on anyway.
Why do I like NFL? Its fast. Its tough. There’s a lot going on. I only played football in high school, and let me tell you- when you’re lined up there’s a lot to think about. There’s a lot to do.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ellis Dee *
…It is the most violent team sport.
I believe the most violent team sport is Irish Hurling. I don’t have any stats but the games I have seen looked like a pile of guys beating each other with sticks.
No, because they have to keep stopping for a rest every ten seconds of play.
: d&R :
Yeah… tell that to my rebuilt knee.
I think the most significant reason for the NFL’s popularity is marketing, especially with an emphasis on the public perception of the players. The “broken union” that someone mentioned earlier is a big part of this - unlike baseball and basketball, football has a salary cap, no arbitration, and no guaranteed contracts. You hear a lot of stories about baseball players who sign enormous contracts and spend the next 5 years underperforming for $12 million a year. In football, this doesn’t happen - players can be released at any time at the discretion of the team. Same thing is true for the salary cap - because NFL teams are required to get their payroll under a certain number every year, the blockbuster contracts go only to a few superstars.
The perception of NFL players is far more blue-collar, traditional American work ethic than the perception of MLB or NBA players.
Too complicated and confusing. Much simpler to have the teams play each other until two are left in a **HUGE GIGANTIC ‘WORLD’ CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH OF THE CENTURY BETWEEN THE TWO GREATEST TEAMS IN THE GREATEST LEAGUE OF THE GREATEST PATRIOTIC SPORT IN THE GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD, AMERICA COMIN AT YA SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY THIS ONLY HAPPENS ONCE A YEAR AND IT’S ON SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY FOR ALL THE GLORY AND THE MARBLES, BREAK OUT THE MAPLE SYRUP, GRANDMA CUZ IT’S PANCAKE TIME THIS SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!! ** :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:
That’s not far off Blackeyes. The Super Bowl just might be the most hyped event in sports. The Olympics might be a bit more hyped to the international nature. But I’m not sure.
Lots of parties with lots of food and lots of beer. The only day where more food is consumed in the US is Thanksgiving. With 35 million pounds of snacks being consumed. Notable mentions: 13.2 million pounds of avocados (for guac), 12.4 million pounds of potato chips, 9.3 million pounds of tortilla chips, 4.2 million pounds of popcorn, 3.8 million pounds of pretzels and 3.1 million pounds of nuts.
Nine of the ten most watched programs in US history are Super Bowls.
It’s a gigantic unofficial national party.