Originally Posted by Mkingy I think Saints winning would be pretty poetic considering the hurricane
I'm getting pretty tired of hearing this. It would be so poetic if a New York team won because of 9/11 and all that. It would be so great if the Bengals won because of the tornado of '42. It would be awesome if the 49ers won because of all the earthquakes in California... Not to trivialize Katrina, but I just don't get the correlation.
I'm a Hoosier by birth, so I'll root for the Colts. I'm just as interested in the commercials as the actual game though.
Originally Posted by Mkingy I think Saints winning would be pretty poetic considering the hurricane
I'm getting pretty tired of hearing this. It would be so poetic if a New York team won because of 9/11 and all that. It would be so great if the Bengals won because of the tornado of '42. It would be awesome if the 49ers won because of all the earthquakes in California... Not to trivialize Katrina, but I just don't get the correlation.
I'm a Hoosier by birth, so I'll root for the Colts. I'm just as interested in the commercials as the actual game though.
It's a sign of how they've rebuilt I guess. I was under the impression this was one of their first seasons back in the stadium but apparently not -_- Only really recently got into NFL
Originally Posted by OldManClayton There's nothing wrong with rooting for them because of that! I just don't get it myself. How many of them are actually from Louisiana anyway?
Well guess that's same argument of how many players in the English Premier League are even English. Heh.
Greatest show on Earth? Pfft, wait till the World Cup 2010 happens. 4 years ago, even the nerdiest people missed class to watch it.
Disclaimer: Any sarcasm in my posts will not be mentioned as that would ruin the purpose. It is assumed that the reader is intelligent enough to tell the difference between what is sarcasm and what is not.
Beforehand I thought the Colts would nick it, but Brees was fantastic.
Only been watching American Football recently, but actually impressed with how clever it is - there's an image of Football players being big, thick meatheads, but to be a QB for instance, or a coach, requires real intelligence (and natural instinct too).
Originally Posted by Matt Boothman Beforehand I thought the Colts would nick it, but Brees was fantastic.
Only been watching American Football recently, but actually impressed with how clever it is - there's an image of Football players being big, thick meatheads, but to be a QB for instance, or a coach, requires real intelligence (and natural instinct too).
If you're in the UK, you should get tickets to the Wembley game - they're on sale now (expensive, but still slightly cheaper than flying to the US).
You're right about football players being underestimated as athletes / people with brains. The O-line especially never really get enough credit, but if you look at teams like the Colts and Saints, a lot of their success comes because Brees and Manning are so well protected, giving their receivers an eternity in which to get open downfield.
Personally, I find American football much more entertaining than Association football (soccer) - I find it a struggle to sit through 90 minutes of soccer, but I stay up til 4am every week of the NFL regular season, and I'm still glued to the screen after 3 hours. Anyway, that's a whole other discussion...
To be honest, it wasn't a very good game last night. Saints definitely deserved it on the night, but the Colts are capable of a lot more than they showed there.
As it happens, they're two of my least favourite teams anyway, so I didn't really care who won.
If anyone here's interested, we should get a TDC fantasy football league going next season
I love football (the soccer kind) and that will always be my preferred sport to watch, but in the past few years I've really started to like American football and especially baseball - people in England for the most part hate these sports simply because they're from the US, but if you look past the stereotypes there's a lot of credit in them (the home attendances are large, and the skills on display are finely tuned because of the intensive college system). They are massive sports.
The only thing I think would improve these sports is a larger amount of international participation - perhaps if they started funding the games more at a grassroots level in Europe and increasing player numbers and thereby quality a lot more people would become interested and start following. For all its overseas games and the like, the NFL is always going to be distant to people not in America.
There was an NFL Europe, up until very recently. Unfortunately, it was never really a proper European league, as the players were still all Americans, trying to use it as a stepping-stone into the NFL (eg. Kurt Warner). Even the Canadian football league is full of Americans. The only players who make it to the NFL from outside North America seem to be punters who convert from Aussie rules.
However, it is getting very popular at university level (I was with the Plymouth Blitz back in the day). The real problem is that there's no way for young kids to get involved (I suspect partly because parents perceive it as being too dangerous). Also, it's hard to tempt kids to try another sport once they're already football/rugby fanatics, so you need to catch them early.
Loads of British students go out to American to teach soccer to kids at summer camps. I was thinking maybe we could have an organised system to bring Americans here to teach football to our kids.
The equipment is expensive, but there's actually loads of funding available for people to set up clubs, it's just that no-one's doing it (I recently set up a badminton club, so I've been looking into that kind of thing a lot).
The government is running a big campaign at the moment to get people (and children especially) healthier by playing more sports, so now would be a great time to do it.
NFLUK are at least trying to raise the sport's profile here - that's what the Wembley games are all about.
The nearest club to me is still 1.5 hours away though
The profile of the sport's risen considerably here recently. Five years ago I didn't know anyone who watched American Football, and now I have about three or four friends how regularly watch the NFL (and also play in the University league).
Once it becomes embedded in the culture it might start being taught to the youth - when people like yourself have children I'd imagine you'd be pretty keen for them to play. Perhaps it just takes time.
Mind you, baseball was massive in Britain in the early 20th century, but died out after the war.
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It would be so poetic if a New York team won because of 9/11 and all that. It would be so great if the Bengals won because of the tornado of '42. It would be awesome if the 49ers won because of all the earthquakes in California... 
Not to trivialize Katrina, but I just don't get the correlation.
I'm just as interested in the commercials as the actual game though. 
Edited by OMC
