I should also say a major difference between American Football and most other sports, including rugby, is that American Football is periodic. They spend all the article comparing it to rugby when what they should be doing is comparing it to cricket.
This is a perceptive point. Football, like cricket, is reset at the end of each play. Everybody gets back into their positions and starts again. Rugby is a little more fluid, although still subject to the stop start criticism.
And that is the stick that is usually used to beat football here in the UK: it's stop-start, no momentum etc. And I try to explain that often the stop-start actually ratchets up the tension. Yes you might wait 3 minutes for a 3rd and 3 at the two minute warning, or for a timeout, and to someone used to the game and with good knowledge of strategy and the way momentum shifts, this actually makes the game more intriguing not less.
It's the strategy I like best about it: from the draft, through the salary cap, to the roster building, the Xs and Os, play-calling etc.
But to get an intricate understanding of all that takes a huge investment of time, particularly for overseas fans as they often come with no base knowledge of the game. What drags them in initially is the violence of the hitting and the sheer athleticism and strength of the players, which to my mind is matched in few sports. If you get hooked by that, as I did, you can see that the investment in learning the rest is worthwhile.
So it'll never be a game for the masses here, but will always have a pretty devoted hardcore following.
Holding the Fins/Giants game here will put the sport in the public eye for a couple of weeks, will generate masses of media coverage and hopefully start the process of winning over a whole new generation of fans. And I'm all for that. One of the big problems with being a big fan here is that there are so few people to discuss it with. (Hence spenind hours on this board, and going drinking with Gomezcat...)
