And as for the helmets/pads argument, it’s kind of a silly one. American football helmets make the game far, far more dangerous to players than Rugby. Yes, ruggers get their fair share of cuts, bruises and knocks, but the composite helmets of gridiron players allow them to be used as weapons, resulting in large numbers of concussions as well as severe, career-ending joint injuries such as ACL tears. The force of a helmet hitting a knee, ankle, hip or elbow is so severe that even a seemingly innocuous play can result in a player like Donovan McNabb (one of the NFL’s best) missing half an entire season.

All that said, I personally prefer the improvisational nature of association football, but American football could learn some things about how tv timeouts and delays really damage it.

the nfl will never succeed here (its far more popular in germany anyway - thats where the london and scottish teams had to go to survive in nfl europe), they just want to sell us stuff and it easy coz we speak english.

i’m not anti-american for the sake of it, just give us some space

I was watching various games on Saturday with some friends, among whom were three Germans, a Englishman, and a Spaniard. Every once and a while we’d flip to Penn State-Ohio State, a college gridiron game, with 108,000 in the stands, and not even they could help but be stunned.

Sure, those guys you linked to are big and have a bit of fat on them, but that hardly puts them in the “fat backsides, wobbley bear bellies and man boobs” category.

Nor did I read that other poster’s statement to imply that all rugby players were built like Greek Gods, either.

We’re quibbling over semantics at this point, of course.

I suppose in rugby union you can get away with a bit of extra fat for the guys in the scrum because you need the extra weight in the pack. I’ve been watching South Sydney Story on Versus here in the States (documentary about Russell Crowe’s Rabbitohs rugby league club) and have noticed that all of the players are quite lean. I suspect that this is because rugby league has a very limited use for the scrum and involves constant running, whereas in rugby union the scrum is much more important and there is more “standing around time” than there is in rugby league. Or that would be my guess anyway.

Yes those are some big lads, but the other poster has a point. Those big lads are still nowhere near the size of gridiron linesmen, who have been evolving a bit towards sumo-wrestler status, since the stop-start nature of gridiron calls for more sudden bursts of energy and much less for stamina and endurance, since players are only in motion for very short periods of time. So gridiron linesmen aren’t just big and strong, but also very heavy with lots of extra fat that wouldn’t be feasible in rugby where you do have to be able to run or at least jog for 80 minutes.

To those of you frustrated with rugby union’s constant scrum collapses and other delays - try rugby league. It doesn’t have these delays so you get more of the constant, free flowing action like you get in soccer. And for a number of other reasons it is easier for a gridiron fan to understand rugby league than rugby union.

@Joe: the free flowing action of soccer and rugby is precisely what make the action seem more important, not less; lack of breaks create tension, too. You just don’t understand what is going on, just like the critics of gridiron don’t understand what is going on during those long, long stretches of time in an NFL game when the ball isn’t moving.

I have watched rugby and enjoyed it. However, and I’m referring to an aggregate here, Rugby hits are not the same as American football hits. Perhaps in part BECAUSE of the stop and start nature, the players are better rested, and there’s no doubt they are going full speed from exactly opposite directions. Also, without blocking, there are simply FEWER hits.

To enjoy American Football, you have to think of each play as a fully calculated and planned set piece. To use Association football references, maybe a corner or a free kick from 30 yards out (but with even more variety because remember, this is the entirety of the game; “Soccer”’s complexity lies elsewhere). The wall has to be set, the players have to figure out who they’re going to mark, the movement before the ball is delivered has to be just spot-on, the player(s) on the ball have to decide where to go with it, the pass has to be just right, and/or the offensive players have to try to get the defenders out of position. It’s a brutal sport , but the brutality can be quite elegant (as when Indianapolis destroyed my beloved Jaguars last week). Also, there IS a build up between plays: what will happen next, how will the organization of tyhe sides match up, were the personnel changes made properly– hell, WILL the offense begin their play on time. There is a LOT going on. Before I was a fan of association football, I did not appreciate the intricacies of the run of play, but I’ve learned enough to know that there is a LOT going on there too.

I don’t imagine I’ll convince anyone to give up there pet peeves, as frankly rugby union is still a dizzying mess to me most of the time, probably because I am happy with the time I already invest in following other things. I understand that there is much I don’t see about many sports, and I try not to presume that the players and fans of those other sports are dullards with bad taste.

There are too many g-d commercials over here, though.

How many front rower do you know then, Here is Leinsters finest
http://www.leinsterrugby.ie/members/index.asp?locID=37&docID=1418
http://www.leinsterrugby.ie/members/index.asp?locID=37&docID=1787
http://www.sporting-heroes.net/files_rugby/LE_ROUX_Ollie_19981205_NF_L.jpg

Some big lads .

First, I think the breaks (not the commercial breaks) in American Football make the sport more exciting. The breaks create a certain tension that soccer (football) and rugby don’t have. The stop-start nature of American football makes every play important as opposed to soccer (football), where the free-flowing nature of the sport tends to make the action seem unimportant.

As for the pads, without going into too much detail, rugby is a contact sport and American football is a collision sport. Also, we tried to forgo the pads, but too many people died.

What some of the posters above experienced with American football, I experienced with British sports. For example, I like rugby union, but the next collapsed scrum or kick into touch I see, I think I am going to SCREAM!!!

I guess we don’t understand each other’s football.

Dave, I think you need to post on why you like American football.

That said, I think the NFL would be more sucessful in countries where rugby is not as popular, like Mexico and Germany

Yeah, the helmets and padding! Do rugby players need it? No, so why do they? And how about the players with fat backsides, wobbley bear bellies and man boobs? Seen in Rugby? I think not.

After 10 minutes I had realized that it was perfectly normal for the game to have longer stops than sustained action. Yawn!

After 20 minutes it was becoming tedious. Is this a Sport? Run a bit and try to catch the ball. Stop. Have a break and do it again. I used to play that with my brother in the back garden as a kid. We also stopped frequently, maybe for a drink, a sandwich or listen to our mum on the sidelines (the patio) The only bit we didn’t do was the brawling - maybe that’s what the helmet and clobber are for.

At about 30 minutes, my boyfriend painfully uttered, “what in hell is this all about, I’ve had enough”. I must admit, I felt the same way. Ooh wait, there was a touchdown. Hang on, he didn’t even touch it down, just ran over the line an down the tunnel. Was that it?

Right, we promised each other never to go through the whole charade again and to stick to Rugby and football (as in English). And then it dawned on us, thank god we were only watching the highlights!

and nfl is for pansys rugby league, rugby union and football good english bulldog games.

well i thought i would have a little look at whats going on at wembley i wished i had not bothered stop start tv breaks more stop start more tv breaks what a bore
and whats all that padding and helmets about.i hope these players watched the rugby league last night and world rugby cup final last week and feel a little embarsed

Consider how long it took basketball to develop in Europe and Asia - and it did so through FIBA affiliated national federations. The NBA had nothing to do with it, NBA was a globalist johnny-come-lately reaping the harvests sown by others.

Same situation with baseball; the only “export” success was in Japan about a hundred and twenty years ago; the real growth of baseball worldwide was through its own international organization and its affiliated national federations; MLB had nothing to do with this.

Likewise soccer grew in the USA through grassroots amateur organizations and through local businessmen willing to put money into both the amateur and the professional game. Soccer did not grow in this country due to the efforts of European leagues.

The problem with NFL is that is has absolutely no grass-roots organizations to speak of outside the USA. It simply isn’t going to have much long term success with its top-down approach. It may get some people to watch NFL games overseas but it isn’t going to build up a gridiron culture in those countries using these methods.

That said, I think Goodell would have better luck focusing more on markets relatively unsaturated with RU and RL. China, Russia, Scandinavia, and Latin America come to mind.