The Miami Dolphins and New York Giants played the first NFL regular-season game outside of North America last week.
Here are reasons American “gridiron” football will never catch on in Britain.
Aqua blue: Why did the NFL make the Dolphins where their aqua jerseys? Aqua is hardly a manly color. How can you sell a supposedly tough game like football to the Brits with aqua jerseys?
Oh, those ugly lines!: The NFL defaced the hallowed pitch at Wembley (the true most famous arena in the world) with unsightly football lines. All those white dashes should wear out by ... oh, about May, just in time for the FA Cup final.
13-10: The Giants and Dolphins played a snoozer, with one touchdown for each team. That’s the same amount of goals top clubs Arsenal and Liverpool scored in their Premier League match the same day (1-1), which was watched by more people in England (and around the world). The NFL surely will attempt to play more regular-season games overseas, but a majority of the league’s games are more similar to this than the wild, exciting 42-35 shootout league execs probably hoped for. Just ask ABC, which used to televise the sleeping pill known as Monday Night Football.
Tearing up the pitch: The gridiron match ripped to shreds the grass at Wembley something nasty in England’s rain, more than all of the soccer games combined will this season. It always amuses me when, say, a high school soccer team is prohibited by the same school’s football coach or athletic director from playing games or practicing on the football field. The game of soccer barely affects the grass. Over the course of an entire season, you MIGHT see a little wear in front of the goal where the goalkeepers stand most of the game, or maybe outside the touch line where throw-ins are taken. And the touch lines are not even on the football field; soccer fields are much wider than gridirons (soccer players actually have to run). In football, a majority of the steroids-pumped players are concentrated down the middle third of the field, and they dig in their cleats.
Take 3 knees in a row: That’s how the Giants ran out the clock to clinch the game. The Brits didn’t like it one bit, hence they whistled. They wanted action. You can’t run out the clock in a soccer game, because only the referee knows when the game will end. Teams must continue to play. Surely, the Brits scoffed at us Americans proclaming soccer boring, after watching the Giants burn the last two minutes of the clock in traditional American (and unexciting) fashion.
It’s better watching on TV: Let’s see, sell more than 80,000 tickets to try to promote the sport, then subject the new fans to players standing around waiting for an extra official to signal when it’s time to play. It’s called the TV timeout, and it’s worse in person than in your living room. Plays that last for 6 seconds, with a one-minute break in between, are bad enough for the Brits to endure. Soccer and rugby are played with a running clock. Most Brits say we can keep our gridiron stateside, thank you.
Pads: The Brits think our football is wimpy, because we play it with a helmet and pads. Forget comparing football to soccer. The Brits already have a sport tougher than gridiron: rugby. The hits are just as fierce, the speed just as fast, and they do it without body armor.
sean.heilman@timesnews.com