With Super Bowl XLVII looming in just a few days it’s worth contemplating this bizarre, stop-start game that Americans love and call football, despite kicking the ball with the foot being a relatively minor part of the game).
Like most red-blooded Aussie sports fans, I imagine you might have branded this game an irrelevant American peculiarity.
An over-commercialised sideshow played by pad and helmet-wearing nancy boys that spend mere seconds actually playing the game in between offensive/defensive/special team changes, time outs, half-time entertainment and any other excuse for a commercial break.
It takes a painstaking three hours to get through 60 minutes of playing time for heaven’s sake. I’ve uttered every one of those criticisms, agree with them and can’t defend them.
But then I spent a couple of years living in the US for work and I thought when in Rome, or more specifically Houston in my case, do as they do.
I invested some time watching the game with a tutor far more learned than I in all matters NFL. He explained the game to me as though I had just landed from another planet.
His most sage advice was to change my mindset when watching the game in relation to other more free-flowing football codes.
“Don’t watch it as an action game,” he said.
“Think of it as a game of tactics and strategy as the teams attempt to outwit each other on each play.”
And you know what?
I actually found a really engrossing sport sat beneath all that American hype and razzamataz.
There more I watched, the more I appreciated it.
The fundamentals of the flow of the game are really easy to follow and I became enthralled in how a team would tackle the challenge of achieving their next first down.
So on Monday, depending on your work commitments, why not watch or record it?
Find someone that knows what they’re talking about and sit down and watch it with them.
Sure there are aspects that will still annoy you, but just accept them, and you might just enjoy one of the year’s big sporting sideshows – sorry, spectacles.
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