The NFL Explained

The ground-breaking first regular season NFL game outside of North America takes place at London’s Wembley Stadium on Sunday and it’ll be interesting to see how much attention it draws from the British media and casual sports fan. Not a great deal would be my guess, even though the game’s a sellout and there are a lot of people in the UK, myself included, who love the NFL and American Foootball.

A lot of the press coverage I’ve read this week keeps harping back to the 1980s and exhibition games teams played over here, and Wiiliam ‘Refrigerator’ Perry still seems the only player many sports journalists have heard of. The Miami Dolphins’ cheerleaders have been doing their bit to raise awareness, posing at locations around town and even performing at halftime during Tuesday nights Championship game between Crystal Palace and Stoke. God only knows what they made of Selhurst Park on a a cold October night.

To help non-NFL loving British sports fans get a fix on the game, ESPN’s DJ Gallo has written an amusing and tongue in cheek 8 point guide to Sunday’s game including lines such as ‘don’t be confused if he (Porter, Dolphins) calls you a cigarette, that’s not what he means’, along with ‘when David Beckham came here, we didn’t suddenly think all British men are frail fops with delicate, girlish accents. We had decided that long before he arrived’, and ‘while soccer games are low-scoring, 3-2 snooze-fests, American football games are exciting, high-scoring, 21-14 affairs’. Although if soccer awarded 7 points for a goal 3-2 would be 21-14 or vice versa.

I think we’re in for a bit of a sporting culture clash but I’m sure everyone going to the game will have a great time, although the weather forecast for Sunday is rain with lows around 48F.

By Chris | Permalink

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