Aginor's weird NFL thread

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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? :wink:

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. :smiley:

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. :slight_smile:

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! :smiley:

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As the average italian…

What?
I just know American Football is about huge ex-inmate guys defending Keanu Reeves throwing the ball as far as possible to a guy that runs fast.
Throw in some armor fro all of them and it just makes a more boring less engaging version of this…

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Holding! #2, offense :smiley:

Yeah, as an Italian you are only familiar with real football of course.

So in short:
American “football” means most of the time people don’t play with their feet. Also this is the US sport for fat people. (There is also one for tall people, called “Basketball”. As an Italian of course you don’t know that, there are no tall Italians. :smiley: )
Then there is a US sport for people who think American Football isn’t violent enough, it is called “Ice Hockey” and everyone who is good at that is actually Canadian. Which is weird since Canadians are known to be polite and that sport is frikkin’ violent. :smiley: :smiley:
Oh, and then there is “Baseball”, a sport derived from an English one but the Americans didn’t get the rules so they changed them. Which was probably a good idea. :smiley:

But back to Football: You grab the egg and try to get it to the other side. That’s the most important rule. The rest comes naturally. :smiley:

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No wait, wait, wait…

Violent sport + Throwing an egg on the other side is Rugby.

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Good point! American Football is derived from Rugby. Just more organized and with more armor.

Soooo joking aside:

I’d like to hear your opinions about some stuff:

  • 25 yard line after the kickoff instead of 20, meant to reduce the number of returns because of people getting hurt. IMO it doesn’t work. Any halfway decent returner thinks he can make more than 25 yards, and will try it.
  • Tight Ends: the better receivers? It may be just me but it feels like TEs are more often used than WRs nowadays. Is that because they are more versatile?
  • The new focus on player health. Concussion protocol and so on, and do the new rules against hitting other players prevent proper defense work? In the last games there were some flags for actions that I would probably call “normal defense play”. But I am aware that those hard hits can be bad for your health.
  • new rules for some personal fouls: 2 and you are out. Like in the real football. Good or bad? I don’t know. I think it doesn’t have too much impact.
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I’m not a huge NFL fan…as in - I don’t plan my weekends around watching football. Usually, I’ll watch games when I’m around my Dad because he enjoys sports so much. I’m a Philadelphia Eagles fan by birth, and also root for Chicago because I lived there for a bit. I’ve actually lived in the Carolinas for 20+ years now, so I should be a Panthers fan…but I’m sorta…meh…indifferent to the Panthers. I actively root against the Cowboys and Giants (because they are division rivals), and I love when Green Bay loses (it was a great game last night!).

Re - concussions and hitting. The violence of the game is always impressive. I always have to turn away from the TV when they do replays where people break legs or have ankle injuries. I’ve broken too many bones to get any thrill out of seeing people get injured. Personally, I would not really want my son to play football. The concussion stuff is too scary to make it worth it in my opinion.

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I also dislike to see people get hurt. Never been a fan of really violent sports like boxing or so, either.

I sometimes wonder whether I would have played one of those sports if I had been in the US when I was a child. Perhaps not, I was a nerd.
But I would sure go watch it if my local team was any good.

I was there during the 90s and it was dire. Back then it was really just a few enthusiasts, and I think every US high school team would have beaten them easily. I had expected seeing something like in the NFL or at least the less high-class NFL Europe, but… no. I never went there again. Probably I should try again now, 20 years later. But I distinctively remember being there with my mother and anticipating real American Football action, and how my mother had to console me because those guys were SO bad.

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Man, it’s always interesting seeing non-American views on what a lot of Americans consider a huge pillar of American “culture”.

On one hand, it’s a marvel, isn’t it? All that money, all that training/teamwork, huge stadiums packed with fans, etc. On the other, the controversies over violence, corruption, off-field player behavior, medical consequences of such a violent sport, etc, are all pretty valid.

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Wait are we still talking about AMERICAN foot ball or it’s about EUROPEAN one? I got confused!

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Haha, right! It is kinda the same in the real Football (soccer for our American friends). Minus the violence to some degree.
80,000 people in the stadium, players earning millions, corruption and such stuff. Players are well-known role models and seen everywhere on TV and in other media. Everything is there. :smiley:

What intrigues me about that American Football is this:

  • There are guys who are 6 ft 7" tall (2 meters), and 320lbs heavy (140kg). Yet see them run! WTF??!! That’s what I call an athlete!
  • I like how it is… round-based. That offers so many tactical variants. I like that. I am not saying other sports don’t have tactics, but in American Football they can be seen so clearly, that’s great.
  • Statistics. Man, I love statistics. And so do Americans it seems. There are statistics about everything in the NFL.
  • There is something cool about a game that does (except for some exceptions like pre-season games IIRC) not know draws. In the real Football draws happen pretty often, which I somewhat dislike.
  • I kinda like the specialization of the players, but also if they break out of those patterns sometimes, like letting a Running Back throw the ball.
  • and then of course it might be the grass that is greener over there. Perhaps I like it because we don’t have it. We have soccer clubs of every size and quality everywhere (There are more soccer clubs in Germany than active soccer players in many countries), I am still not very interested in that.

Don’t get me wrong, I like our good old real Football and I know that the pros there are great in what they do. It does have it perks, but I kinda miss some aspects there that make sports interesting for me. It is a very dynamic game, like Ice Hockey.

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No worries- I’m just taking fun of it. :stuck_out_tongue:
Not meant to bother or irritate :slight_smile:

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Now we’re talking!

Paging @Fridge and @Tyco , EH?

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Ok, here’s a funny picture I made last year, after the NFC championship game.

Oh, and I hope I don’t hurt anybody’s feelings in this thread, it is not meant to mock your culture or anything, for me it is just a sport. :slight_smile:

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And then I thought the Super Bowl would be like this:

But it ended up being like this:

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Sorry for the bad photoshops, that’s how I roll. :smiley:

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I’d have to search for a while to find them, but there was a professional artist a while back that did great cartoons of each team’s mascot acting out the results of the playoffs a number of seasons back.

My personal favorite was of a very concerned pilot of the New York Jets’ fighter jet looking in his mirror and seeing the New England Patriot enthusiastically riding a SAM on an intercept course.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhN1ExFCXNA

Oh and New England Football is best football.

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What’s this about then?1 SPORTS? Like, watching it?! What kind of plebeian activity is that! No sir, I only partake in sports, not watch it! :wink:

Anyway, never watched NFL, it looks rather boring although most sports do. Hence why I don’t watch it since I do not get any emotional attachment to anything that happens.

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Watching sports is much healthier than doing it.
Also I have a good excuse to not play American Football. Several in fact. :slight_smile:

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Football? Football? talking about American Football???!! :dizzy_face:
I’m Italian…but…I’M FOND OF AMERICAN FOOTBALL !!! I played it for 20 years…started when I was 16 and finished at 36…As amateur of course (there are no professional teams here in Italy) and I had LOOOOT of fun and just few injuries.

There is my team , Ravenna CHIEFS when i started in 1986 (I’m #7)

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here few years after

and here at my last game in 2006

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That’s pretty awesome in fact!
In Germany there were hardly any teams before the 90s AFAIK.

EDIT: Also that logo reminds me of this. Which is a good thing. :slight_smile:

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