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.
chris
Guest
American Football could take off outside the states if had 2 way platoon Football and allowed the latral pass and have a limit to how many forward passes you could do.
Ned Balme
Roar Guru
NFL is human chess…its as simple as that. AFL fanatics like to talk about tactics as if its an integral part of the game when in fact it really comes down getting the ball out of your hands as quickly as possible. There is so much people don't know about the entire sport of American football and to echo Brandon, the days of football players being able to claim their toughness over Americans due to not wearing pads is over, even with the ramped up issue of concussions (which the AFL has so sheepishly followed for no reason) the NFL still hits harder on every single down that an entire AFL game. And I've played footy for 14 years, so dont think it as being a dare I say 'hater'. Australian sports fans should learn to appreciate the NFL given the fact that its the blueprint most codes are following now to expand overseas and rightly so…I mean, we are talking about the Superbowl at the very least.
Nigel Wakeley
Roar Guru
I think the NFL and American Football in general could be described as chess added with rugby - it's essential for players to be peak athletes with high amounts of skill but just as important to be able to diagnose plays, read their keys, interpret coverage and blocking assignments and then perform. Sam Monson of Profootballfocus.com does an excellent job in his 'Analysis Notebook' of breaking down plays from the NFL to show just how much technique and plannng is involved in even the "simplest" running plays - I advise anyone interested to have a look.
Bunny Colvin
Guest
Saw a recent study on American football where they timed the actual time the ball "was live and moving". Came in at 11 minutes on average per an NFL match. You watch gridiron for the colour, the presentation and the strategies. I quite like it actually. Better than watching the other garbage tv networks put out, like the never ending whinging of Tony Abbott moaning and groaning about something but never actually presenting an alternative or answering a question.
Brandon Marlow
Roar Pro
There is so much ignorance in Australia about NFL. I always see people talking about how they wear pads, if AFL players hit as hard as they did in the NFL they would need pads.
Steve
Guest
The thing is, for all the stoppages, you do get 1 cumulative hour of high octane action by the end of proceedings. Now, a rugby union match is 80 minutes, 60 minutes of which is spent retrieving the ball from the stands, watching scrums get reset, watching men puffing with their hands on their hips etc; another 9 minutes is spent punting the ball from end to end, hoping the other team will knock on, so by those calculations, you would have to watch 4800 hours of Rugby to get through 60 minutes of playing time.