USA vs World (HS all stars)

I'm actually curious to see how this goes. I was on the USA football site and read about it. Good effort on USA football's part to spread American style football around the globe.

Coach T
www.chiefpigskin.com

Brophy: Yes to all of the above. I've seen the haphazard, random efforts of the last 2-3 decades (a fair bit in person), and can say without doubt that USA Football's systematic efforts can only have an even greater effect on the internationalization of our great code of football...

As Coach Merritt has said football is the last american frontier for us international guys..both baseball and basketball are now on par in both areas.Boise have 3 dutch players,The Patriots have Sebastian Volmer,Europe is catching up.

As for the language barrier, I have never had a problem. I've been coaching in Europe since 2002 and to be honest most of my players speak better english the average American teenager...

Most countries use english as their football language...japan really being the exception.This year germany moved to using english with coaches and players.Football is a minority sport.In Ireland I compete with Gaelic Football,Hurling(like Lacrosse on a football pitch I guess),Rugby and soccer,then basketball and then we'd be somewhere below that..so it's rare I'd get a top athlete against these,generally I get lesser athletes and have to coach them up.The other thing is linemen have been conditioned over here that they are never going to play sports,because they are too big for traditional sports..so there's a mental thing there and once you get into these kids they really buy football.But getting into them is the hard part.

Brophy, most of people here in Europe do not know anything about football... The ever-changing nature of football is not a concern because football is not a concern!!!

They do not understand the game: "too complicated" or -- this is the critique I hear the most -- "Why do they stop playing each 5 seconds?"

In Soccer / Rugby (major sports where I live) the ball is "live" almost everytime.

More like Irishmen with axe handles, if you ask me...

;D ;D

I have been here forever in Europe , it seems and sometimes language can be a problem, but they the players pick it up quickly. I always tell them its like the French Foreign Legion , they say it once in French and if you don´t get it you will in another not so popular way. The use of this MFer and that MFer helps sometimes too.

Interesting questions by brophy. Let me try to explain the perception of American Football in my country.

First of all I have to second julien. They don’t see any change in the nature of American football, because they don’t even understand the basic idea behind it.

Here in Germany, people are used to watching soccer. After a two minute introduction you can watch a soccer game and have some fun. The by far most difficult rule in soccer is “offsides”, a real joke compared to the complexity of football rules. Still, in my experience, 80% of the soccer fans can’t explain it correctly. 95% don’t have a clue about tactical variations. A soccer version of “NFL chalkboard” was unknown in soccer coverage until the 2006 World Cup. Now some get the idea behind the "Double 4 Chain".

Then you start to teach football to these guys.
When the uneducated sports fan sees a football game for the first time, he usually reacts like “It has something to do with rugby, doesn’t it?” (I have no idea where that comes from. Even water polo is more popular here than rugby. No comparison to UK, France or even Italy). I always tell them that historically the rugby comparison is correct, but football has two major elements unknown to rugby, one of them unknown to any other sport: the forward pass and the offense block. The result is a completely different, very unique game. That argument gets them interested, well, usually, somewhat.

In addition, the uneducated fan is deeply annoyed by the interruptions in a football game. In that case, I use the chess problem analogy: Football is like solving a long series of different chess problems. The teams come up with a possible solution, line up their “pieces”, the problem comes to life for a few seconds and the result can be very surprising. Imagine a football game to be like solving 120 consecutive chess problems. Much more dynamic than the typical chess match, where at a certain point you know that it will end in a draw 12 moves later. Mostly, they don’t believe me. They are simply annoyed by the three hour format.
Others enjoy the "spend an afternoon with the family" atmosphere of football games (Quite a change from the violent fan culture in the soccer world), but refuse to learn any offense formations or plays. Very few understand defensive concepts.
So much for the perception of football over here. People are not used to having to make a huge investment to follow a game.
Still, football is the second most popular outdoor team sport in this country. Surprisingly, after number one there is a HUGE drop off. More popular than field hockey, though, which is pretty big here.

The language barrier has two sides.
One the one hand, every available source about football above a level of “Basic Introduction to American Football” exists only in American. I write my playbooks in American, since writing them in German would be close to impossible. I would have to invent a new terminology. Some of my players don’t speak English very well and even those who do find it difficult to get used to the terminology. That’s part of the game. Our American players love it. Most German teams write their playbooks in some kind of “Germish”.

On the other hand, football helps to overcome the language barrier. As stated in “M.A.S.H” (the Altman movie, of course) football contributes to spreading American lifestyle. You can find some evidence here in Germany. Bavaria (part of the former American sector) offers the highest team density (teams/population). The US troops mostly left 20 years ago but a lot of teams they helped to build up still exist. A major part of my motivation to learn English was my interest in US Sports. I had to understand the sports news and game broadcasts on AFN radio. Today, you have ESPN America via pay TV but in the German media US sports still are hardly mentioned. Free TV shows only the Super Bowl but not even the conference championships.

I hope this gives you an idea.

Trust me BB rugby has its fair share of concussions. Rugby is more brutal than football. Head to head collisions without a helmet on!?!?! = bad news

One major issue about American Football getting popular in Germany is the so-called Nowitzki-factor as there is in Basketball. But it will take decades to get a "skill position" player in the US. As long as a German doesn't make touchdowns in the NFL, football is a side note in sports coverage.
In Germany there are like three big team sports: soccer, handball and basketball. The latter even has a kind of low attraction in national sports coverage compared to the first two.
Handball starts to become a national game but probably won't ever become as huge as soccer is.
Soccer for example has 6 million people participating in clubs and associations, including coaches and passive members.
Basketball has around 100,000 members I guess and Football around 30,000.
Nevertheless the domestic GFL used to attract some 4,000 to 5,000 in the stadiums in the late 1990's.

So it pretty much depends on the grass roots, getting young kids to sign up for football. But as you know, this is not that easy. Especially when you look at the infrastructure a football team needs to provide good practice, leaving alone game days.
Also, coaches are a huge factor. Football has to be taught as responsibly as almost no other sport. Finding people coaching without stipends and the proper teaching abilities is somewhat hard.
But as time goes on, the first and second generation of players (at least in West-Germany) retires and can contribute its knowledge.
In the former GDR, however, amateur players from 19 years up often have to coach youth teams. So, you see where I'm going. ;-)
But the basis of football is growing bigger and stronger. Unfortunately, European players weren't as noticed in this "World" Team as they should have been.