Hey y’all!
Welcome to Aginor’s weird NFL thread.
This is where I am going to talk uninformedly (is that even a word?) about one of America’s favourite sports, American Football.
Just as a bit of background:
As you know I am German, and American Football (a.k.a. “not real Football”) is not that popular here. There are more and more people watching it during the last few years because of evil globalization and such things, but there are very few teams here, which mostly consist of middle-aged men who play in offense and defense at the same time because there aren’t enough players to play it otherwise, and noone can throw the ball further than 20 yards, so most of the time it looks… kinda different than on TV to say the least.
Some years ago, during the 90’s, one German sports TV station started broadcasting a few games every week. Most of the time the show consisted of one game per week, and half an hour of all the other games.
In addition to that some “World league” (which consisted of a few European teams and was later called “NFL Europe”) games were also broadcasted.
The only game broadcasted live was the Super Bowl, which happens to take place in the frikkin’ middle of the night and you have to work on the next day, noone understands “Super Bowl Monday”
Since I am German I did have no local team to support, and I didn’t know much about the states or cities in the USA yet, so my family and I went ahead and just chose a few teams to like, judging by important stuff like how their logo looked.
Examples:
- My mother liked the Green Bay Packers, because they wear the same helmet as Commander Keen
- My brother liked the Dolphins, because, you know, DOLPHINS
- My father liked the Chiefs, dunno why
- I liked the Cowboys, because those silver helmets with the blue star looked nice, and I loved how Emmitt Smith could run.
So my heroes were Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, Deion Sanders, and Michael Irvin.
And the choice was good, because they won the Super Bowl three times. YAY!
My father bought a book so we could learn the rules. Again, this is Germany. Every American knows the rules and positions I guess, you learn them by watching TV and playing yourselves and having knowledgable people around, but we had no idea what a “snap”, a “3rd down” or a “Tight End” was.
But I did have a ball, in Germany we jokingly call it “Ei” (egg) or “Brot” (loaf of bread) and tried throwing it. It was fun but I wasn’t exactly good with it. And everyone laughed at me, because a ball has to be round. The egg is useless for real football.
At some point that TV station went bancrupt and thus stopped all NFL in German TV.
Years passed. I tried to follow the NFL via Internet but… meh. Most of the time I forgot about it, and I heard my favourite teams were bad now anyway.
Sometimes at least the Super Bowl was broadcasted during those years, but it was unbearable. German TV made commercials even during plays, and it kinda sucked in general. Did I mention it was broadcasted in the middle of the night?
Last year something awesome happened: The Super Bowl broadcast by a German TV station was so popular the second time in a row, they decided to broadcast a few games every weekend, and create a show around it, called “ran NFL”.
So what you get:
- A short summary (1 hour) of NFL related stuff that happened during the week
- two games on sunday LIVE (which means 7 PM and 10:30 PM here, so the second one may last until 2 AM)
- A few commentators who actually know stuff about the game, and some US station’s TV picture, most of the time it is either Fox or CBS.
When the Americans have commercial breaks, the germans talk something else or do commercials as well, sometimes you can see Troy Aikman (yay!) or Erin Andrews (also yay!) talking and one of the german commentators translates it for those who can’t speak English.
So I started watching Football again. Yay!
My favourite teams now and the reason why I like them:
- Panthers. Because of Cam Newton. I love how he is not just a throwing arm and brain but a real player. Perhaps a bit too much show, but hey, he’s good. Also I like cats and a Panther is a cat.
- Cardinals. Because they…sometimes win and have a nice logo? (my wife calls them the “Angry Birds”)
- Dolphins. Mainly out of nostalgia
- Cowboys. Out of nostalgia, too. Although I have a bit of hope, because I like how they played in the preseason. Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliot FTW!
Teams I rather dislike
- Broncos (too popular, if you meet a German Football fan he is VERY likely pro-Broncos)
- Patriots (too popular, same as Broncos. Was the same for the 49ers in the 90s)
- Bills (rival)
- Redskins (rival)
- Steelers (rival)
- Browns (ugly logo)
- Giants (rival AND ugly logo)
That being said, I have no real horses in the race, most of the time I watch a game (I can’t choose which one I watch) I root for one of the teams, because I like their play style more than the other. If I have to watch Steelers vs. Bengals I still have fun.
Strange and funny things:
- All the guys I knew are inactive since 15 years or so. Some are experts now.
- Some teams that are good now were laughable back then, and vice versa. Very funny.
- there are new teams and some have moved. Back when I watched there were two LA teams who moved away, and there were Houston Oilers. And the Ravens and Panthers were brand new. I think there even was a division or two less than now.
So basically I am like a guy that was in coma for twenty years. Example: Great Quarterback list from the top of my head: Dan Marino, Warren Moon, Troy Aikman, Brett Favre, Steve Young, John Elway.
Doesn’t prevent me from having fun, and last year I got up to speed again with the rules.
I am not up to speed so I could play Fantasy Football, but I have the NFL app installed and watch all the reviews.
So what I am going to do here is talk incoherently about one of you Americans’ favourite sports. And I will talk about it if you let me. Feel free to laugh at me, because I don’t know stuff.
Have fun!