Tag: american football

AN ENGLISHMAN ABROAD SEEKS NFL ALLEGIANCE

Two years into the journey it’s time I selected an American football team to support.  But it’s really very difficult without the personal or cultural signposts that lead to lifelong fandom.  Neither do I have the guidance of a father for who the Munich Air Disaster meant that it was Manchester United or nothing.

For the first time I find myself trying to answer the question I put whenever I see an American soccer fan in a bar wearing a Leeds shirt.  Why?  I usually don’t ask them that question until I’ve run through the plot of the Damned United and excoriated Don Revie for forsaking the England manager’s job to take the Saudi shekels. Then I explain that Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles may have looked like the Krankies but were actually spawn of the devil.

Unless you were a Loiner it was impossible to be brought up in the 1970s and support Leeds United.  The old Elland Road ground was reminiscent of the Coliseum with every visitor an object of venom and bile – and that was just on the pitch.  Fans vied with those of Millwall for exclusive rights to embody the chant of ‘nobody likes us and we don’t care’.

In my search for advice I have found that passions and partisan feelings run deep with close friends suggesting that the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriots are irredeemable.  Their respective crimes of declaring themselves ‘America’s team’ and being serial cheats/winners (depending on your view) mitigate against them.  And there is an assertion that the Ravens are wholly unacceptable because of ‘crimes against the Steelers’.   

A long chat with a friend’s son gave me a quick rundown of other no-go areas and counts as my Gen Z research.  Washington Redskins are pariahs for not dealing with the offensive symbology of their name and logo. The newer franchises don’t have enough history, so the Houston Texans are gone.  For similar reasons I discarded the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Carolina Panthers – although to be fair their franchises date back to 1995.

For someone born in the UK and used to clubs with very long traditions and a real dislike of the way Wimbledon were shunted up the M1 to become the MK Dons it’s also difficult to be serious about clubs which have changed city and name.  The Indianapolis Colts were once in Baltimore, the Tennessee Titans were previously the Houston Oilers, the LA Chargers used to be in San Diego, the Oakland Raiders were in LA for 12 years then came back, and the LA Rams spent 20 years as the St Louis Rams.  It’s bewildering.

It’s a luxury and selfish but I was too scarred by Manchester United’s year in the old Second Division to adopt a team that is not very good. So I have rejected the Cleveland Browns, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and New York Jets for serial underperformance.  The Arizona Cardinals and Cincinnati Bengals failed at that hurdle as have the Detroit Lions who haven’t ever been to a SuperBowl.

To narrow the field I eventually decided most teams in the south of the country were out – partly because I’ve only ever supported a team in the north of the country.  But also, I think that a team should play most of its home games with the possibility of snow, ice and freezing temperatures.  It’s the way professional sports with a ball should test a home team and after watching Game of Thrones I’m always reminded that ‘winter is coming’ is a good way to think of life.

Continuing on that basis I can’t really love any team that plays in a dome which is a shame because the Minnesota Vikings could have secured my allegiance.  There is something inherently wrong about professional sportspeople being shielded from the elements and fans being deprived of the wonders of sitting for three hours in pouring rain to demonstrate their allegiance.  I may be alone in my thinking, but it would be so much better if basketball was played outside, on a bumpy pitch, in the rain with the possibility of a strong gust of wind making a three-point effort look ridiculous.

Assem Allam’s attempt to rename Hull City AFC as Hull Tigers is a reminder that it’s OK to have an animal nickname – bonus point to anyone who can remember which UK team is the ‘throstles’ – but City, United and Rovers are sufficient for most purposes.  So I had to dispense with the Bears (Chicago), Buffalo (Bills), and the Eagles (Philadelphia). Anthropomorphism is cute but not acceptable in my pursuit of a logical answer.

For those who have followed this far it may be obvious that I have come down to the Green Bay Packers and the Pittsburgh Steelers as the contenders. Uniquely, the Packers are the only non-profit and ‘owned’ by their fans team in the NFL and will remain so after the 1960 Constitution of the League came into force.   The ownership of the Steelers has remained within the Rooney family since the organization’s founding.  The Packers are the third oldest NFL franchise and the Steelers are the oldest franchise in the AFC. 

Both are sufficiently embedded in tradition and location to be secure for the long term.  While they each have a history of success they are currently trying to find their way back to former glories.  It’s a tough choice but I have time.    

Image by Keith Johnston from Pixabay 

An Englishman Abroad Struggles With Sporting Conventions

It’s play-off and championship season in the National Football League and I am riveted by the mass of information on the TV screen.  There’s the score, the time, which quarter the game’s in, the number of yards needed and which down it is.  It’s a lot to take in but I remain baffled as to why the home team’s name comes second on the screen.

A lifetime in the UK has been based upon the immutable law that when a match is promoted and shown the home team’s name is first.  It makes sense because the game is at their stadium and it’s a reminder of home advantage.  It is very disorienting to have this turned on its head for no good reason.

The argument from American friends is that it is to reinforce the spoken version.  So it’s “the Steelers at the Patriots” and they seem equally bemused by my concern.  It’s common to American sports from basketball to baseball to hockey but it is as strange to a resident alien as some of the spelling. 

It might help if the American sports had proper knock-out cup competitions because it seems inconceivable that you would draw the away team out of the hat first.  But there was incredulity when I described a competition where pure chance might pit the might of Premier League Champions against the humblest of pub teams.  There is no equivalent here to the televisual genius of watching faded, mumbling players of yesteryear plucking swirling numbered balls blindly from a rotating device that has been borrowed from the local Bingo hall.

The ‘oooing’ and ‘aaaing’ and sharp intakes of breath as particularly juicy ties are drawn is a staple of being a fan of English football.  It’s matched by the camera in the clubhouse of some non-league upstarts looking to make an impression on the shins of an overpaid, over-tattooed and overrated Premier League star.  They may themselves be overweight, overworked and, er, over-tattooed but this is their moment in the sun.    

Everything about the FA Cup speaks to the principles of a working class game that has spawned decades of clichés. It’s eleven against eleven, a game of two halves and a pitch recently cleared of cow pats is a great leveller.   Nobody wants to play against Clogger United on a frosty, January night but it’s a reminder of the days when players caught the local bus to the stadium and drank a pint or four with the fans after the game (and sometimes before).     

It seems to me that the lack of decent cup competition is against the very spirit of the United States and I’d venture, without any genuine understanding, that it is likely to be unconstitutional.  This is supposed to be the land of opportunity where every child has the chance to become President and where Supreme Court Justices vehemently declare their love of beer.  Surely there has to be a space for the town of Gonzales, Louisiana, the ‘jambalaya capital of the world’, to form a team called the Gophers and take homefield advantage to give Bill Belichick’s all conquering New England Patriots a bloody nose.

When I raised the possibility it was suggested that the entire Gophers squad would be hospitalised in the first quarter by the superior physical qualities of the visiting supermen.  But anybody who saw Division 2 Sunderland beat the mighty Leeds United in the FA Cup Final, or savoured Southern League Herford’s win against the, then high-flying, Newcastle United, knows that dreams never die.  A ruptured spleen and complex fractures of every limb seem a small price to pay for a shot at glory.

It’s always good to have a theme so if I’m obliged to start a campaign my intention would be to invoke the spirit of the Rocky’s – Balboa and Marciano – and the formidable peak peaks of the Rockies – Elbert and Massive.  Warming to the task I’d eat Rocky Road ice cream (invented in California in 1929), wear Rocky boots (from Ohio since 1932) and sing Rocky Mountain Way by Joe Walsh (born in Kansas 1947) as my closer.

I put the whole fear of being beaten by part-timers down to another unfathomable thing about American sports – there is no promotion or relegation.  For a land which consistently harps on about winners being first and losers being nowhere this rather softens the blow of not being good enough.  No chance of going down or up, or facing ‘Nutter’ Smith in the backfield during a tricky cup match, means that the players can coast indefinitely.

The weakness of some of the groupings in the NFL’s structure of eight, four-team divisions grouped in two conferences has been recognised.  An example is the NFC East where the New England Patriots have topped the table 16 times in the last 18 years.  The advantage is that you get a week of rest and then homefield advantage against a ‘wild card’ team.

Talking of the Patriots reminds me of another strange thing about American football.  Each team gets to use their own balls when they are on offense (or attack in English parlance).  This led to the famous ‘deflategate’ scandal where the Patriots were accused of under-inflating their balls.  It was January 2015 and they were playing the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship game.

The referees seemed not to notice at the time which is not surprising because their ‘ruling on the field’ is overruled by video review with astonishing regularity. It may also be because they are dressed in replica Newcastle United shirts and throw yellow dusters around when they spot an infringement. It’s like watching the Toon Army take up Morris Dancing with Molly Maid Home Cleaning Services.

It’s difficult for me to get excited about the scandal because the thought of teams being able to change the ball just because they are in possession is bizarre.  But I do laugh at the thought of running a rugby game in the same way.  Imagine stopping some lumpen Welsh flanker with cauliflower ears and a broken nose, who has just turned over a ruck-ball by stomping all over the head of an English fly-half. 

Referee: “Sorry, old chap, but it’s your turn to attack now so you need to stop for a moment and play with your own ball.” Flanker: Makes unintelligible, sub-human noises due to fractured septum, mud up the nostrils, multiple concussions and an ill fitting gum-shield over teeth already needing complete reconstructive surgery. Referee: “Good man, tha……” before the rest of the conversation is lost as the unfortunate official being trampled by what the late Bill McLaren might have called, ‘twenty stone of the finest, Welsh livestock on the hoof’.

And with that I am immediately looking forward to the first day of the new six-nations championship on 1 February and the opportunity to indoctrinate friends here about the virtues of rugby.  Dark-arts in the scrum, pace and power set against speed and strength, and the ultimate in physical confrontations without padding.  There is nothing quite like it and I am hoping that the screen will show the home team first – just like it should be.