I have a story to do with this. (start from HOWEVER if you are not interested in young British males and their reaction to American football)
Me and my flatmates were perplexed when the lovely Match of the Day showed some footage of today's Premier League action as per usual, only to return to the studio where Adrian Chiles sat adorned in full American football armour and Alan Hansen and Lee Dixon sat very awkwardly with pigskins in their hand.
"What is this?" we thought. I'd heard the BBC were beginning to show American football and presumed this was some sort of stunt to make us blokes chuckle and think "I'll give the Superbowl a watch, seeing as old Chilesy's dressed up and all! And in an extremely deadpan manner he's informing us they are cutting straight to the action!"
It worked.
Until they actually cut to the 'action' (after a very long-winded introduction including and implying Obama in all this malarkey). A brief check of the TV guide told us we'd be up 'til 3am watching this, and I briefly recalled the nature of the sport.
After recounting what I knew (lots of breaks, 'plays', the rules, two seperate teams, the overriding feeling this is just gay rugby) and our previous experience trying to watch baseball, we gave it a miss.
HOWEVER.
Their is obviously a concerted effort to make American football a more global, inclusive thing (probably that Obama again) and the BBC had even sent a commentary team. I will inform you of it's impact over here.
The most important thing is, and I'll let you guys field this:
A) Is it easy to play 'off-the-cuff'? As in, could I suddenly decide to get a game going, head down the park (a flat unmarked grass surface) with minimal preparation and get a game going?
B) Do you need equipment?
C) Do you need a certain amount of players?
I ask because one of the successes of rugby/football here is that it's very versatile. Football can be played with one/two goals (made of jumpers), literally any amount of players split and don't have to be equal teams, etc. and rugby is the same except it requires two 'ends'.
If you could do this with American football and it was promoted enough, kids would start playing and success would be yours in the battle for hearts and minds.
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Topic: Wombat Watches the Super Bowl (Read 10850 times)