The NFL doesn't make much sense to an European

The Game Room
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Major League Baseball teams play 162 games a year. It’s simply not possible in American football to go beyond 16-20 games. As it is, average career spams are only a couple of years. Add in more tournaments and champions and you would be lucky to have your team for a full season.

American football players don’t want to play “friendly” matches. It’s an unnecessary risk. As it is, they hate playing in their one annual all-star game, the Pro Bowl. That’s usually the worst game of the year because the NFL’s best players don’t want to risk injury for a game that doesn’t count.

American fans don’t care to see their teams compete for lesser championships and titles. Americans often get criticized for referring to league champions as “world champions,” but that reflects a reality about the American attitude. There’s only ONE award that counts.

And if any major American League instituted relegation, you can bet blood would be spilled in the commissioner’s office. Fans would eat him alive.

Also, no team would agree to a relegation system. Remember, the teams own the league.

It evolved by itself gradually through free market forces. Remember, there’s no Ministry of Sport or government-sponsored regulatory body.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were all kinds of systems—leagues controlled by players, associations that any team was welcome to join, independent “barnstorming” teams.

It was the creation of the National League of Base Ball Clubs in 1876 that established the successful model of a league owned by the owners of the member clubs, which decided as an exclusive group who was in and who was out. And no one was going to vote himself out.

The NFL grew out of the most successful old-style football league, the Ohio League, (whose most successful clubs were the Massillon Tigers and the Canton Bulldogs).

The franchise model that the NFL adopted from baseball produced the most popular competitions. Over time, the NFL added all the other elements of parity, revenue-sharing, salary caps, the draft, etc., all adding up to America’s most popular sport today.

American sports have more advertising than aist any other human endeavor. Thank Ig we still ban advertising on player uniforms (kit).

American football is heavily dependent on rules and rulings by officials. If they didn’t explain what was happening, spectators literally would not understand what was happening in front of them.

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American football is structured the way it is because when God chose America to be the center of the universe, he felt there should also be a perfect game to go along with such a perfect country, so he invented it.

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As I mentioned before, it was created in 1876, and every successful American league since then has adopted the franchise system. It produced the most popular forms of the game. No one wants a league in which their team could be dropped from the top tier, not even those who live in cities without a team in the top tier.

Fans would revolt if their teams lost players to injury or scheduling because of “international” matches. No way.

Injury is a huge component of American football. Much of the discussion surrounding football concern and conversation centers on injury reports.

Patriotism has been a major component of American professional sports since the Second World War. Militarism has been central to American culture and sports since 9/11. There is considerable overlap between those enthusiastic about militarism and those enthusiastic about the NFL.

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The noise from the crowd is important, because the fans consider themselves part of the team. The home crowd is even officially the “12th man” of the Seattle Seahawks, which notoriously have the noisiest stadium in the league.

The Atlanta Falcons are being criticized for artificially bumping up the crowd noise when the opposing teams had the ball. The owner says he had no idea there was gambling going on in Casablanca.

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As a Manchester City supporter, I’m not quite sure whether to be flattered or offended you confused us with the scum.

Otherwise, this thread’s been interesting as a clash between the European and the American appoaches to sport…

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But note that this is a self correcting problem. Yes, initially a lot of players would get injured, actually probably the vast majority of the current players would. Then the laws of natural selection would take place. The majority weak, fat, diseased, obese players would need to be dropped and the true athletes would remain. Teams would invariably have to draft athletes only, and game tactics and play would change to minimize injury. It would definitely change the pace of the game, but having two super owls per year is totally viable.

Remember, sports are a collection of arbitrary rules. Once rules are agreed upon, you have a game, and the mathematics branch of game theory allows you to predict the outcome of such a game. It is a well known yet sad fact that the rules of football have evolved, or rather have been deliberately fiddled with, over the years, with the intent of favoring morbidly obese individuals because it is somewhat of a spectacle when two or more such individuals tackle each other noisily and make a strut afterward, much like sea elephants biting at each other’s necks and such. What you are saying about the impossibility of more than 16 games in a years is true only of the current obesity stricken players. It would definitely be possible for true athletes.

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At the Mexican restaurant we like, they have TVs at the bar broadcasting Mexican sports stations. On half priced Margarita night we are all soccer fans; it gets downright raucous. Nine out of ten screaming fans have no idea what teams are playing. GOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!

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“True athletes” don’t get injured when they collide at full speed. Interesting.

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No confusion, those are meant to be separate statements. Filling the Big House for United-Real was a real eye-opener for my non-footy-following friends. I went to Pittsburgh because it was the closest venue to me hosting one of the summer games (City won handily, even with a largely second string 11 on the field). The Pittsburgh area doesn’t seem to be quite as taken with the sport as the rest of the nation but maybe 37,000 is actually pretty good for the heart of football country.

FTR, I am a Southampton man and would be thrilled for an earthquake to cause Manchester to slide into the sea. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Granted, no franchise owner would ever agree to this (at some point, however, the shit will hit the fan with MLS) but I’m curious as to why you think American fans are opposed to promotion/relegation? Personally, I think it would be wonderfully entertaining as part of the college football structure. I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority on this point but it may not be as small a minority as it once was.

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You have no idea about injuries in football. It’s self-correcting in that teams would adapt to a constantly changing roster of poorly trained and low talent players.

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The league considers all non-quarterbacks to be dispensable. So it gives the QBs additional protection while keeping up the push for two more games on the schedule to keep driving towards Mr. Goodell’s hallowed $25 billion revenue goal.

And lol at this all too true statement from above: “American football is heavily dependent on rules and rulings by officials. If they didn’t explain what was happening, spectators literally would not understand what was happening in front of them.” This is not considered a design flaw in the game by Americans.

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I don’t necessarily disagree with your first point, but it is changing. The QB is by far the most protected player on the field, but they are clearly enforcing rules on shots to the head, defenseless hits, and other rules to protect the players. There is concern that forcing players to hit lower to avoid fines will result in leg injuries (like Gronkowski’s blown out knee last season) and they’re looking to avoid that as well. There’s much more public awareness of head injuries and long term effects and the league is responding. The limits to full contact practice is a direct result of that as well.

I don’t think those two extra games are ever going to happen.

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This is easiest answered by explaining a little how American (and I think world? Kinda?) tv works. Apologies in advance if this sounds condescending, I promise you I’m not intending it as such.

The US has a handful of broadcast stations where are, for lack of a better word, free for anyone who has a television to watch. Then there are cable packages and satellite packages that you can pay extra so that you get both the broadcast channels and the cable channels.

90% of the NFL games are shown on these broadcast networks, so they are essentially free for everyone to see. Monday Night Football and the relatively new Thursday Night Football are the only football games that are shown solely on cable (ESPN and NFL Network respectively).

How do they know which games are played you ask? That’s two-fold. Across the nation two broadcast networks have each division. Fox has NFC games, CBS has AFC games. Then it just depends on your market. I don’t exactly know what designates a market, but if you have a local team it will always be shown. If you local team is AFC it will be shown on your local CBS station, same with NFC and FOX. The only time this isn’t happening is if the game is blacked out, which basically means that not enough tickets were sold and the team/league is forcing you to physically attend the game in order to watch.

Last but not least is the much controversial “NFL Sunday Ticket” from DIRECTV. DIRECTV is a satellite service that shows every single nfl game (other than your local one) at the same time. This means that I as a Packers fan can watch all of the Packers games while living in Charlotte. Whereas if i didn’t have it I could only watch Panthers games

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Nevermind.

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This is about the most ignorant and stupid thing I’ve read in a long time.

Go look up Vernon Davis and explain to me how obesity had anything to do with any of the times he’s been injured. Or any of the other super-ripped NFL players who get hurt on a regular basis.

Or JJ Watt… he’s a defensive end, is 6’5", 289 lbs… and nobody in their right mind would call him obese. Probably not even overweight.

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Yep, that Richard Sherman sure is an obese non-athlete which is why he dislocated his elbow.
The Niply Elder - when I read your post and began to fully realize the level of comprehension regarding athletics that it contained, I was immediately hit with a difficult choice, should I throw up on my laptop or aim left and throw up on my cereal?

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Nitpick… the Thursday Night game is shown on CBS for half the season and on the NFL Network for the other half.

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I realize that’s what you think, but only because of your lack of understanding of the laws of natural selection. If you actually bother to understand my post in its entirety, I clearly predict that the majority of the current crop of players would get injured and weeded out. In the long term only the fittest players would remain, and only players with that strength would be sought by teams. Your anecdotal evidence of some particular players getting injured or not is irrelevant. And it’s hard to comment on particular players health status, since the NFL only publishes weight and height, from which other people derive BMI averages and so on. If the NFL would publish the full health status of players including fat body percentage all this would be laid to rest, but of course they don’t want that as it would ruin the illusion of certain foolish people that think NFL players are healthy individuals.

What I’m referring to is what happens in American Ninja Warrior for example, some of the challenges weed out the buff people right away, because even if you are buff that extra weight is a penalty and forces them out. You could say the same thing of other sports like swimming and cycling, people with unhealthy physiques are weeded out immediately.

As it is right now, the rules of football have been tweaked such that obese players have time to rest and recover, so they can participate, if you slightly tweak the rules to up the intensity factor a bit, then all those injury prone players would be laid out flat on the field of a cardiac arrest. That will force managers to recruit actually healthy individuals if the team is to survive. So obviously along with the salary cap there would have to be a roster cap much lower than the current 175 bajillion player rosters they have. I’m sorry if you don’t understand this.

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The 1994 World Cup STILL has the highest attendance figures of all World Cup in history, and that was when there were still 24 teams (now there are 32). Another WC in the US would make money hand over fist.

Player recruitment in MLS is as you said, a mix. There is a draft for college players. There is also an academy system for high school players (and I think even if those players go to college to play soccer, they can still be tied to the team running the academy). Then there is international players, or US players playing abroad - those are done mostly in a European style transfer way. However the MLS is a “single entity”, meaning that all contracts are officially with the league and not the teams. The league was set up this way basically to promote slow, steady growth and not have disaster brought on by overspending and teams doing their own thing as affected the old American league, the NASL, in the 1970s.

The vast majority are on free networks. 1-2 games a week are on cable networks (ESPN or NFL Network).