"Are you ready for some football?"
That line, immortalized by Hank Williams Jr. prior to all Monday Night Football games, provokes images of field goals, 300-pound linemen and scantily clad cheerleaders for many Americans. If that phrase were repeated across the pond here in London, fans would think of the fancy footwork and breathtaking goals that define the English version of soccer. On Sunday, these two worlds collided as the NFL staged its first regular season game outside of North America in London between the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants.
As an American watching the game in a London sports bar, it was strange to see my sport played before a foreign audience. More than 90,000 fans packed into Wembley Stadium, traditionally the home of the English national football (soccer) team, wearing jerseys not only of the teams involved but also of all the other teams in the NFL. While on the outside the game seemed like any other game seen in the United States, there were many differences that made it a truly unique experience.
First off, the pregame promotion was unlike anything I had ever seen before, save for the Super Bowl. In Trafalgar Square, the largest public meeting space in the city (think the Mall in Washington), there was a 26-foot-high robot of Dolphins linebacker Jason Taylor along with tents and booths full of information on American football.
The most surprising and, in my opinion, disappointing, aspect of the pregame festivities were the advertisements taken out by the NFL in London newspapers, explaining the rules of the game. If American football is truly a global game as the NFL claims to be, shouldn't Londoners know all of its rules?
Even though soccer is not very popular in the United States, we at least know how the game is played in order to see English teams play. Until the NFL ends this silly promotional aspect, the game will never take off on a global scale.
The game itself, while full of pomp and circumstance, was unbecoming of the NFL in my opinion. It pitted one mediocre team, the New York Giants, against a downright awful team, the winless Miami Dolphins. Add in a typical London rainstorm and you get a miserable mess complete with a torn-up field and sloppy play. It was also full of penalties due to the fact that English referees love to blow whistles and stop play.
My favorite part of the game was in the final minutes of play. As an American, I am used to the traditional kneel-down by the quarterback to run out the clock and end the game. However, Europeans are used to teams playing very hard to the final whistle. English fans started heavily booing both teams, not understanding why play stopped early. Clearly, this rule was left out of the NFL's pamphlet of rules for English fans.
The idea of American sports coming to play in London is not a novel idea, with the NBA and NHL staging matches here earlier this year. However, unlike those two sports, there is no international league for American football. Instead of continuing its campaign of global domination, the NFL should focus instead on improving the product it already has in the United States before trying to pass American football off as the world's greatest game.
