Actually, you do sometimes hear about player power in USA, there have even been player strikes in baseball. Also, don't forget that the top footballers/basketball players etc are still payed huge sums of money. In fact it is only fairly recently that our players have caught up. Generally though, they work within a very defined system and are happy to do so. In all this incorrect talk of teams having to get rid of their best players at the end of each season - believe it or not this system does currently operate in Speedway in England.
Very much so, there is no such thing as a thick quarter back, no matter how far Michael Vick is willing to push the boundaries. The thick ones tend to be the ones that 'like to hit stuff'. The fact that an intelligence test is part of the recruitment process says something, as does the fact that they need to go to college if they want to play in the NFL, which means succeeding in high school. How many footballers have the equivalent of 3c's or above? not including a B-tech in sport. I bet the answer is less than 10% for footballers in this country. I personally think it's a very good system they have out there.
I only really got into NFL last year but I really enjoy it. The draft system would take ages to implement here as others have said because of how good the college system is in America for sports. Another thing is the high school games aswell, taken a lot more seriously than schools/clubs here.
The one thick QB I can think of is Vince Young, but he's **** enough to not really count as a QB. O-liners in particular are noted for being very clever, everyone has to have learning power though because of how absurdly complicated the playbooks are! Whereas here you're lucky to find a footballer with over average intelligence - there are a few of course (David James has a ridiculous IQ, for example) but then you have your Joe "One GCSE" Cole types.
I admit I'm no expert on the sport, but it seems to me that most of the players are just there to stop/protect the guy with the ball, not sure where the brains come into that particular role. I suppose you need a few spare brain cells to compensate for all the ones you lose after you land on your head for the umpteenth time
It would certainly make University football more entertaining to watch. Thousands of fans cheering on a Southampton Uni team featuring the likes of Oxlade-Chamberlain, JWP, Chambers, Shaw etc. at Wide Lane on a Friday night, then getting up the next morning to cheer on our beloved Southampton FC.
The players who, in the most basic terms, "protect the guy with the ball" are on average the most clever guys on the pitch. They have to read defensive assignments, cover blocks, open holes etc... There's far more brainpower to it than you'd imagine!
Ok, perhaps 'stupid' was the wrong word, it's not academic intelligence though. You don't need a degree to play sport to a competent level. Also I don't think most footballers are as stupid as they're made out, lots of them (though not many of the English ones to be fair) speak several languages after all!
This is what I used to think before I started watching regularly. My general opinion that apart from the QB,WR, RB the rest of the positions would be piss easy to play if you were the right size. Since watching I have realised that I was very wrong and every position is pretty high skilled (obviously some more than others). Even the O-line the way they have to read where the player they are blocking is coming from, then stop him from getting to the QB without actually holding onto him, plus as Dan said, learning the playbook would be pretty hard, although in some positions I think their role would be the same in the majority of plays, just have to remember who they are blocking.
The players don't necessarily go to their local college, the college's have scouts who watch all the high school teams all over the country and offer scholarships to the players they want.
I have no first hand knowledge of American Football, but from what I have read the most popular form of the sport in terms of numbers going to matches is not the NFL but the high school leagues, played within each state, as well as college football. In the past great players at high school level were often "held back" from graduating for years, so it was not uncommon to have men in their mid-twenties still at school. The reason for this is that the USA is such a huge country that even though the crowds at NFL matches are massive, in terms of the number of matches throughout the country, individually you stand little chance of ever getting to an NFL game. It would be like just having the 8 or 10 Premier League games being the only professional games in the whole of Europe every Sunday. So most genuine football fans go to watch high-school or college football on Saturdays, and watch the NFL on TV on Sundays.
There are a number of reasons. Obviously, being only 32 teams, there are large areas with no teams in them (about half the states don't have a team) so it's very hard to get to NFL games, but as well as this, most colleges let their students in for free, obviously people who went there have loyalty, and stadiums are often bigger. In terms of size of the sport, it's incomparable, NFL is far more popular. TV viewing figures show this.
The largest football stadium in America belongs to the Michigan Wolverines, a college team. It holds 110,000! Sucks if you get this seat though: please log in to view this image Apparently 18 of the largest 20 stadiums belong to college teams. So it is a pretty big deal.
That's right. Dan, I did say popularity in terms of people going to matches. Last year just over 17 million went to NFL matches, whereas nearly 50 million went to college football games. Nearly half the "Big Ten" college teams totalled over a million at their home games. Not bad, considering last season only Man U and Arsenal topped a million at home. Obviously the NFL will have bigger TV audiences, as the games are shown globally.
Ah but we can't count that! That's like saying more people in England went to Premier League games than F1 races - obviously, there are far more! College football is big but NFL is where it's at. Far more popular, not to discredit college ball which is very big itself!
The draft seems to work well in NFL but it couldn't ever work for football. There's no equivalent to college football, for a start. If I supported an average NFL team I'd probably prefer they came bottom instead of in the middle so they get some decent new players!
Nah every American college has sports systems. Some take it really seriously, USC and Alabama for example take football programs really seriously and have really good teams, whereas Harvard don't really give a toss because they just care about academic stuff. Some, though, like Stanford, care about both - amazing academically and have produced quality players, the best player in this year's draft came from there. Nah it doesn't matter too much, the variety of positions available and trading possibility means you always want to see as many wins as you can, especially with only 16 games in the season, every game is for pride! That said, I was happy to see my team get the #1 pick this season But yeah, the draft would never work in any sport other than American ones where they have to go through college.
I guess it would stop footballers becoming younger and younger when they start their careers and mean that they at least lived a little before being drawn into the insular world of club football.
I love the way the NFL is organized, because it both ensures the worst teams get their day in the sun, eventually, and the best organized teams still tend to win most often. (Incidentally, it is only the young players who are drafted. Veterans can move, but this is controlled by how you want to deal with the salary cap everyone has.) On the other hand, I love football for the continuous play and the elegance of the game. There are a lot of tactics involved in the NFL--every play is a little set piece battle. But on the other hand, you get very little actual playing time. I've always enjoyed the thinking-along-with-the-game part. But it's partly an excuse for a load of commericals, which I can stand, and an awful lot of really annoying parading around by officials, which I can't. It's funny: the place that's supposed to love the free market has a socialistic sports system that protects the weak. I think it's because we think sports are too important to be left to the free market--and maybe you think sports are too important to be left to government regulation.
