The NFL doesn't make much sense to an European

The Game Room
1

Hi. I’m from Italy, which as you know it’s in Southern Europe. A few nights ago I watched Super Bowl 2015, and curiosity drove me to an extensive research on the National Football League. My sports knowledge is limited to the European soccer system, so many things didn’t make sense to me.

  1. Does the college draft represent the only source of players for the NFL? It looks so. So every player would logically be a university graduate. Yet the Super Bowl didn’t exactly look like an academic symposium. So, am I missing something? Soccer players are usually barely literate, and in Italy’s Serie A there is only one university graduate that I know of - a defender with a knack for Economics.
  2. Is the NFL the only football league around? There seems to be no inferior leagues. Where do I go if I want to play amateur football or if I want to start a football team? Every town in Italy has its small soccer team that plays in minor leagues.
  3. I don’t get why teams accept the schedule variations. It is clearly aimed to weaken certain teams in order to increase competition. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just draw it randomly as it’s done in Europe?

I have other questions but these will do for now.

2

  1. Not entirely but about 95% of them. Every year there are tryout camps for former college players, guys who played other sports in college, random dudes who think they have what it takes, and athletes from foreign countries. Australia provides a disproportionate % of punters, for example. They are former Aussie rules players. They have actually changed the game for the better with their techniques. “Aussie-style punt” is a commonly used term these days, even for American punters. These players are “Free agents” and can sign with whatever team offers them a contract.

  2. Every “Minor” league that has popped up to compete with the NFL or to supply them with players has failed. Amateur leagues are all but non-existent. The equipment is very expensive and injuries are very common, so liability is an issue. Flag football, where grabbing a flag velcroed to a belt substitutes for a tackle is the common form of recreational football for older folks.

  3. Teams play about half their games against teams in their “division”. the winner of which makes the playoffs regardless of overall record. This is the same every year. The other half of the season is played against another of the eight divisions plus a few random games. These games are scheduled to give weaker teams an advantage. The NFL has decided that competitive balance is better for the league as a whole, even if it is not “fair.”

3

  1. Pretty much, yes. NCAA Football is pretty much the only source of players because no one else plays football. While most players attend college, it is possible to graduate from a major college football school without taking an academicly rigorous course load. It is easily possible to coast through school if you are a football (or basketball) player. Not all schools are like that, and not all players take full advantage of it.

  2. College football is the main inferior league. But there is also the Canadian Football League, the Arena Football League, and some much smaller semi-pro leagues. NFL teams also have a practice squad with a handful of players that they carry along during the season in case of injuries or players that stink.

  3. The NFL controls the schedules, and it’s a compromise between fairness and the desire for parity. There are many other rules like the salary cap and profit sharing designed to make the teams close in competitive parity. The teams only exist in the context of the league, they are not independent entities in any meaningful sense. But the teams own the league.

4

Every NFL player is not a college graduate. Some do get their degrees, even graduate and/or professional degrees, but many do not. They either declare for the draft before their senior year, or they run out of eligibility before obtaining a degree. Even among those who have a “degree”, players exhibit a wide range of actual academic accomplishment. Some will take legit courses, but others will take watered down courses intended to do little beyond pad a transcript with enough hours to maintain eligibility to play football…or basketball, etc.

5

To hone your football skills and play elite football, virtually all are drafted from schools with extensive football programs.

It’s the only true professional league paying the huge bucks, but there are other semi-pro teams in America, whose pay is generally kind of scanty.

It’s actually great and pretty damn fair the way the schedule is done, IMO. You establish more heated rivalries by competing in the divisions, playing these teams twice during the regular season, while some others outside of that once, and others none. Also, the teams that did the best the year before, will go last in the draft pick order, and also have a tougher schedule than the year before, while the worst teams it’s reversed.

I do wish they didn’t have such a long regular season though. Personally, 14 games was enough, but it was another revenue enhancer to go to 16, and also have a bi-week.

6

I must say, my number 3 question still puzzles me somehow.
I understand that the NFL is built to enhance entertainment, so it must have some balance mechanism - that’s okay, if you like it so.

But if you weaken a team, it will perform poorly and will probably lose momentum. Once you lose your pace, it’s hard to regain it. It seems like a vicious circle in which teams are forced to continually rise and descend to keep the league interesting.
Why do the fans accept it? Or even the teams’ companies: I guess that a poor team sells less merchandising and less tickets. It’s like they’re deliberately being hamstrung. I don’t get why anybody would let that happen.

I know I am sounding an idiot right now. :frowning:
PS: Ha! If you think that is a long season, know that Italian soccer teams play around 50 matches per season, between regular (38) and cup games. Big teams who make a lot of money out of friendlies (like Real Madrid) can easily play every week once or twice all year long aside June.

7

The schedule doesn’t make that much of a difference. There is parity somewhat, and on any given week a “bad” team can beat a “good” team, and it usually happens at least once a week. Obviously some teams have harder schedules than other teams, but the fans believe that if you want to win it all, you should not complain about having tough opponents.

Things like who gets the top draft choices, and the salary cap, are much more likely to make the bad teams better and the good teams worse over time.

8

Somehow the New England Patriots has still managed to stay on top for a number of years, of always playing the toughest schedules, and drafting much lower in the draft.

It is a little bit irritating to me, to see the same sorry teams who have continued to get these better drafts and easier schedules, still do poorly year after year, so I have mixed feelings about continuing to reward them.

9

Perhaps most important with respect to that is that the NFL has a revenue-sharing agreement. Something like 2/3 of the revenue generated from selling TV broadcast rights and other sources is shared between the teams. So having a bad couple of years doesn’t affect any given team that much–what’s important is making sure overall nationwide interest in the league remains high. Parity is believed to be a good way to do that.

10

I don’t understand professional football either, but I thought I’d at least add that as far as having informal leagues, when football is played informally, it’s very removed from professional, or even varsity high school football. For one thing, people usually just tag each other instead of tackling, and for another, the same people play offense and defense.

The other two major sports aren’t so removed from “real” ball games. Pick-up basketball games are very much played just like professional games, especially if the players have access to a full court, and with the exception of using underhand pitching, and in the case of softball’s lower leagues, a fourth outfielder, summer baseball and softball leagues in communities that are often sponsored by businesses just like little league, and have seasons and play-offs, follow the same rules as professional baseball, which means that the players have to know even things like the infield fly rule.

Whoever said it has to do with the expense of football equipment-- the padding, helmets and soforth, is right. But this is why there aren’t a lot of football leagues, like there are several different kinds of minor and semi-professional baseball leagues, in addition to college baseball (which gets little attention, because of the season, and when classes tend to be in session), and the fact that baseball players can be drafted right from high school sometimes (well, minor league players usually are, but a pro team could do that if it wanted to).

Actually, I suppose a football team could draft a high schooler, but they want 22-year-olds, not 18-year-olds, usually, because they want them as big as possible, and men will grow after 18, and add a lot of muscle.

11

Actually, Football players can’t be drafted out of High School. They have to be 3 years removed from High School to be eligible for the draft. That is why you see many really good players never get their degree. They do a minimum course load for 3 yrs, then declare for the draft. The winds are beginning to change in college football. I would like to see the players compensated for the money they bring in to the colleges, but that is a very touchy subject.

12

Coming from someone who follows football in the vaguest sense possible. maybe the Patriots are better at judging potential of /developing lower draft picks. Remember, Joe Montana went at the end of the third round and two of the three QBs who went first round did little.

it’s also because anyone who has any potential to play in the NFL won’t get enough quality competition and coaching in high school.

13

First off, the “teams” are not independent entities. They’re all in it together and the increased competition is an essential part of the league’s business model.
Secondly, most of the schedule is essentially random. Out of 16 games, only two are determined by how good the team was the year before, and only those two are different from teams’ immediate competition (each four-team division). Six are the same each year (games within the division) and eight are effectively random (games against other divisions).
Thirdly, the two assigned games ensure that each conference’s top teams from the previous year all play each other during the season, which creates highly-anticipated matchups. With a week between games, hype is necessary to keep the fans engaged. The same goes for weaker teams being paired with each other (“Hey, look! A winnable game against an also-crappy team!”)

14

Or, for a more immediate example, Tom Brady was drafted in the 6th round of the 2000 draft at #199. The list of nobody wash-outs who went ahead of him is astonishing in hindsight. But although the Patriots do generally run things intelligently, anyone who says they had any idea what Brady would eventually become is lying.

We could turn this question on its head in the European soccer leagues: why do fans accept the state of things there? In all the major leagues, it’s the same 2-4 teams battling it out for the title and the rest of the table might as well not bother. Isn’t anyone sick to death of year after year of RM vs. Barca? BVB sucking so bad they’re in the drop zone after the Winterpause is the most interesting thing to happen in the Bundesliga for ages. Ooh, look, Juventus is leading Serie A again, wake me in May. What’s the point of being a West Brom or a Sunderland fan? Fantasizing about 9th? Both systems have problems.

I also don’t understand what you mean about European schedules being “random.” Every team in the table plays every other team both home and away. What is random about that? Maybe the order of opponents, but not the actual opponents themselves. For cup draws, yes, but the NFL has no Coppa Italia or DFB Pokal or whatever equivalent. The NFL also has conferences and divisions within conferences that determine playoff spots and the whole structure is just set up very differently. Given that there are 32 teams and every team cannot play every other team in a season, much less twice, they had to come up with a system that fit within their framework and this is what they decided on. Given how much money the league is raking in and how many fans there are, it seems to be working all right.

15

Other comments about the scheduling scheme are slightly incorrect.

The league has two conferences, the NFC and the AFC.

Each conference is (currently) divided into four divisions of four teams.

Within each division, the teams play each other twice, once in each team’s stadium. That is six games.

Then, each division is matched up with one division in its own conference and one division in the other conference, that is 8 games, or a total of 14.

This leaves two games to make a 16 game schedule: these are one game against the remaining teams within the conference from each of the other two divisions, which finished the previous season in the same ranking in their divisions (first place plays first place, last place plays last place).

There is nothing at all random about it: the division<->division matchups are in a strict rotation, going through each division within the conference over the course of three seasons and each division in the other conference over four seasons. This is to insure that every team plays every other team at least once over the course of four seasons.

As far as parity goes, that amounts to two matchups out of sixteen, which seems rather trivial to me. And since strong teams play strong teams and weak teams play weak teams in those two games (based on last year’s standings), it is pretty hard to see how that puts any team at particular advantage or disadvantage.

In the past, when they only had three-division conferences, often of unequal size, it was a little more complicated, but the basic idea was to insure that every team played every other team in as short a timeframe as practicable.

16

I think the benefits of the European system are that there are so many more opportunities for glory/despair

In the UK there are many distinct battles.

  1. relegation/promotion: so at the very top or bottom of every league is the spectre/prize of moving into a different league. This keeps thing very interesting for all those teams not mired in midfield mediocrity.

  2. Domestic cup competitions: There are two specific cup competitions in England and both are pretty much unseeded. i.e. you can get lower league teams playing the big boys. Upsets do occur, the term “giant killing” is a feature of the FA cup when you can have such results as these. These can be teams of part-time players taking on (and possibly beating) the very best teams in the world.

  3. European competition: There are two main european cup competitions with qualification for these places being a glittering prize in itself and again, these are seen as worthy goals and a chance for glory outside of the main league championship.

  4. Local “derby” games. Where you have teams from the same area or city with a bitter rivalry and/or long history playing against each other. i.e. Arsenal-Spurs, Newcastle-Sunderland, Ipswich-Norwich etc. etc. etc. Even with nothing else to play for, and no realistic chance of cup or promotion the season will be dotted with these locally significant matches, the result of which may define the winning teams’ season.

So the point of being West Brom. or Sunderland or any one of the 91 other teams in the professional leagues that don’t end up top of the pile, is to find their glory or avoid their doom in one of these other battles.

17

I knew there would have been a lot of cultural attrition here. Soccer is quite an aristhocratic thing and has a well-defined nobility. In fact, the UEFA has taken steps to avoid polluting that “upper class” teams with Arab foreign investors’ pet teams.
I was quite shocked when I learned of the whole “franchises” thing and that teams are not that independent at all - wasn’t expecting that. It also seems that it is a common system for every American sport. Really, really unconceivable for me previously.
Here soccer has a federation, which is actually a government agency and mostly works as a meeting ground for teams’ societies. It does earn money from fees, but it’s all spent on the national team and prizes for all sort of competitions.
The Serie A has an agreement on how to share TV rights’ money (La Liga hasn’t one - so Real Madrid and Barcellona fatten like pigs and the rest of the teams squabble like dogs over pennies) but it stops there. Mostly they hate each other and they don’t lose occasion to talk trash about their opponents. Mors tua, vita mea.

  1. How big is the Major League Soccer actually becoming? There are contrasting reports on it.
  2. Am I wrong or there are ethnic (I don’t like the word “racial”) connotations in sports? African-Americans for basketball, White Americans for baseball, etc.
  3. Is there any international side to football? I mean, I know there is an American national team but has it any following or support? International soccer is a huge thing, probably even bigger - in terms of history and emotions - to club soccer.
18

‘An European’? This European is totally used to it and understands it. A different country does stuff differently. Wow.

19

It’s fairly big in a few markets, but overall it doesn’t get much national attention. It’s definitely a second tier sport in the US, but its fan base is pretty devoted. IMO, it’s got a sustainable business model but it’s not clear how much bigger it will ever be in the US.

There are certainly cultural factors at work. Basketball has been known as a black sport for a while, but these days there’s a strong international component, with players from all over the world, especially Europeans. Football is a big mix - the biggest change in recent years is how black quarterbacks are accepted without raising any eyebrows. In the past it was a big deal. Baseball is much more Hispanic today than ever before, with many players coming from Central America and fewer blacks involved in the sport at the lower levels. Hockey remains mostly white but with a stronger European influence than ever.

Are you talking about gridiron football? There was an International NFL league that operated in Europe for about a decade, but it was shut down for lack of interest. The NFL plays a few games in London every year and there’s a strong interest in developing fans around the world, but that really hasn’t caught on.

Or are you talking about Soccer? The US gets interested in soccer once every 4 years for the World Cup, then drops interest as soon as the US is eliminated.

20

No, I meant the American national squad that plays in international tournaments for national teams. This thing over here:

It’s strange that Americans are so fond of the World Cup even though the United States aren’t really true contenders even to consolation prizes like a good quarter-final defeat.
You would say that they’d be more interested in the Champions League… the entertainment level of the World Cup is quite low, with most teams adopting a defensive style of play and risking the least possible. I don’t mean they’re boring games, but surely the Champions League delivers much more flamboyant and exciting gameplay, considering that the best players are all there too regardless of nationality - national teams have to make due with what they have. Plus the Champions League is held every year.

I know. But I’d like to understand the reasons behind doing stuff differently.