What will I remember about NFL Europa and its two previous incarnations — NFL Europe and the World League?
Helmet-cam.
The highlighter-green jerseys of the Orlando Thunder. Its players looked as though they’d been dipped in a vat of lime sherbet.
One word: Yikes.
The ill-fated Pro Set trading card company placing one World League card inside every pack of its 1991 series. I’ll trade you a Kerwin Bell and a Mike Perez for a Ben Bennett:
The Raleigh-Durham Skyhawks, the only professional football team in modern annals to go 0-for-its existence.
Jim Valvano, sideline reporter.
Nate Jackson’s tales from the Shoney’s Inn.
Wesley Duke riding an elephant.
And perhaps the wackiest, most dyspeptic football uniforms ever concocted (images from OurSportsCentral):
As for the future …
Count me among those who’s all for the globalization of the NFL. In addition to opening new markets, this endeavor could well be necessary for the league to maintain its place among the world’s, as sport itself becomes more international in nature. All you have to do is click around the dial, where more and more soccer games from far-flung leagues find their way onto the American cable and satellite airwaves. It’s almost an exchange program of sport — we get overseas soccer, while we send the world the NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL. In Britain, for instance, NFL coverage is a late-Sunday cable/satellite staple.
The result? It is almost as easy to be a Broncos fan in London as it is in Denver … just as it is almost as easy to be a Chelsea fan in Denver as it is in London.
As for overseas games, think of it like NASCAR. Based upon television ratings and national interest, it, and not hockey, is probably the fourth side of the big-time pro sports quadrilateral in the States. But as widespread as NASCAR interest is in certain markets — Charlotte, Orlando, Tampa, Birmingham, Dallas-Fort Worth, to name a few — the circuit doesn’t take its premier Nextel Cup series to any venue more than twice a year, with eight of the 22 host tracks only holding one race per annum.
So who knows? Someday in the future, we might be talking about the “NFL Tour.” London, Mexico City, Frankfurt, Glasgow, Berlin … they’re not going to receive NFL teams anytime soon. But they and other cities just might be worthy of an annual NFL visit.
The opportunities are endless. Demetrin Veal spoke recently of the crowds of people gathered at restaurands at midnight in Italy to watch the Super Bowl. The audience could be there for live NFL games in ways that we haven’t yet imagined.
Tags: NFL Europa, World League
It’s a shame that NFL Europe has had to fold.
But as you said, it is incredibly easy to be a Bronocs fan in the UK now (I’m in Manchester and not London). The internet helps a lot too. When I first started watching the Broncos, I don’t think I ever thought I’d be interested in seeing pictures from OTAs but that’s what I was doing a few weeks back. And then there’s the NFL’s decision to stream all the games on their website, which was a brilliant idea. I didn’t miss a Broncos game last year, even if the time difference meant I watched some the next day. Normally I’d have to put up with whatever Sky / Fox decided was the best two games of the week.
I think the NFL has more work to do to penetrate Europe than soccer has to do to get on in the US though. Think of all those kids playing soccer every Saturday morning – I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game of American football being played by kids, not even flag football. Which makes it a lot easier for soccer.
Still I have my tickets to the Dolphins Giants game….
I think the other thing to point out is that we will be losing a great training ground for our young players that, without NFLE, will not get gameday experience.
I would love to see further globalization — like their proposal for a 17th game outside the US, but I’ll miss seeing guys like Greg Eslinger getting that valuable experience before they’re thrust into camp.
P.S. Great images and memories of NFL Europe!
Jonathan Douglas
http://www.mydenverobsession.com
I live in England and have followed the Broncos for 6 years now, since i was 12. I feel it is a shame that NFL Europa has to fold, as it was a good way of players getting game experience before training camp. I know the players aren’t big names now, but some of them may be in the future. Players such as Adam Vinatieri and the Broncos own Matt Lepsis have benefitted from time in Europe.
However, i am against regular season games overseas. I feel it is unfair on NFL Fans in the US; 8 home games a season is very little and to take a game away from them just for the sake of a big seller overseas is disrespectful of the teams’ fans. Even though i am a big NFL fan i am not attending the game in London. I can guarantee you that half the people who go don’t even know what the NFL is haha.
Peace…
mikebirty:
The only thing I’m missing out upon is the ability to watch all Premiership games over the Internet, but I would surmise that is in the future, as well. As it is now, we often receive four live games (two Saturday, one Sunday, one Monday) and one tape-delayed game (Saturday) per weekend on Fox Soccer Channel, and one more live game on Setanta. Man City, my team, airs fairly often, so I sat through my share of rancid, scoreless games last season. Hopefully we’ve got some better days coming in the very near future. (And for the record, I’m all for the Sven hiring, whenever it officially and finally happens.)
But as for the youth playing the sport, you are spot on — although it is often said that kids on this side of the Atlantic grow up playing soccer and then abandon their interest in it when they get to high school, trading it in for one of the more traditional sports here — football, baseball, basketball, et. al. Because American football is ingrained in the culture here, kids are more apt to play truncated versions of it in the schoolyard and on the street — e.g., take seven kids, put three on each side and have the spare be the “all-time quarterback.” In other nations, soccer is played that way; you don’t need 11 players a side; you can play three-on-three or four-on-four. Getting American football to be played like that among youth in the U.K. and elsewhere will take a generation or two, but bringing the NFL to your backyard will hopefully accelerate the process.
The other factor you have here that makes the world’s brand of football bigger here right now than the American brand is in the U.K. is the emigration of many soccer/football/futbol fans into this country — which led to the recent occurrence of a Spanish-language network, Univision, posting ratings for the U.S.-Mexico Gold Cup final that were 41 percent higher than the NHL’s Stanley Cup, which aired on one of the big four networks in this country (NBC).
denverobsession:
Just thinking out loud here, I wonder if there’s a way to financially sustain a developmental league to where it can get by on an average paid attendance of 8,000. While NFL-E averaged over 20,000 a game this year, many of the crowds over the years were in the 7,000-14,000 range everywhere but Rhein and Frankfurt. It would be unreasonable for an NFL developmental league to expect to draw more than 8,000-12,000 a game at first. Outsized attendance and revenue expectations also helped doom the USFL, the XFL and the World Football League, as well as the Stateside entries in the World League back in 1991 and 1992.
You’d have to start by placing all the teams within driving distance of each other so they can utilize bus transport. Offhand, the ideal region for this kind of endeavor would be the Southern swath of states inching over into Texas (which, as its longtime residents will attest, is neither the South nor the Southwest, but its own entity altogether). Drop the teams in places like Mobile, Ala., Jackson, Miss., Shreveport, La., and Charleston, S.C. — towns in states that have an ingrained football culture. Don’t try to compete with high-school football on Friday nights — that’ll just rankle local fans. (A developmental league isn’t going to siphon anyone from a Friday night watching Summerville High School.)
Hesky:
I admire your perspective, and, yes, taking a game away from U.S. fans is probably a little unfair. But what would you think of a 17th game being added to the schedule for international play? Then, no one loses. (Plus, you lose the notion of going 8-8, unless the unlikely 8-8-1 season takes place. You’re either a winner at 9-8 or a loser at 8-9. I like that clarity.)
Hi Andrew and thanks for responding. Man City? You poor thing. I’ve been following Manchester United all my life and live about 200 yards from Old Trafford so I don’t have too much sympathy
Of course the problem with trying to expand both types of football in the “other” regions is that there’s a large percentage of the population either side of the atlantic that just don’t care. There are only so many sports nuts that want to be converted.
“You poor thing?” Typical arrogant ManU — Nah, I’m just teasing. I’m sure I’ll drop by Old Trafford when I’m in the mother country next year whenever I can find a little downtime to cross the ocean, catch a City match or two, visit as many stadia as I can and spend time with the relatives on my mother’s side of the family.
(Sometime I’ll have to write here about how I became a City supporter … there’s absolutely no logical reason behind it; my family’s roots are in Bradford and my grandfather was a lifelong Bradford City fan. He actually had a ticket to the 1985 game against Lincoln City — which of course was the tragic day when the fire consumed the main stand. My grandfather was blessedly under the weather that day and didn’t go, and lived another 20-plus years.)
Enough rambling …
A key to expanding the reach of American football is to keep the expectations reasonable, because — as you so correctly assert — there is a significant portion of sport fandom that won’t care, or doesn’t have time to care; their sporting cup already runneth over. But with time and hopefully a ground-level emphasis on growing the sport at its grass roots, American football can find its place overseas. Soccer/football/futbol has endured many stops and starts over here en route to its current place — which, frankly, is probably above ice hockey in many corners of the country, particularly south and west of Denver. (Around here, though, hockey gets the nod over soccer, as much due to the University of Denver’s long-powerful program — which was winning titles when the Broncos were barely a glimmer in Bob Howsam’s eye — as the passionately supported Colorado Avalanche.)
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