By Gus
I approach what appears to be quite a boring looking concrete building. I push the double doors open and immediately walk into a room that is reminiscent of a library from the 70s, except this room does not have any bookcases in it nor any books, it has a mismatch of carpet on the floor and fluorescent tube lighting up on the ceiling, quite warm but not really inviting and definitely village hall musty.
In the middle of the room, amongst the patchwork quilt of carpet, there are random comfortable but shabby looking chairs situated in a circle, and on these chairs sit other NFL fans with furrowed brows, there is a hushed silence, each wears a quizzical look on their face, I wonder where I have seen this expression before, and then I realise it’s one I see every morning when I’m brushing my teeth, it’s me.
Anyway, I’ve made it to NFLA .
What is NLFA you say? Well, it’s for a group of long-suffering fans, which there are plenty, but largely silent. They need the help of the National Football League Anonymous group therapy, It’s where the group of fans can get things off their chest, get some likeminded counselling and then return to normal life.
So why am I here in this parallel universe….? Well, I have been referred. A good friend of mine (Dr Nic) said that this would be good therapy for me to get it off my chest, so here it is … My most inner thoughts on the NFL in the UK.
Ask any fan in the UK that supports an NFL team, and most will agree that they love the London games, this is where the NFL comes to London, sometimes twice a year and put on actual meaningful games.
The games here have progressed from the past, where they were only exhibition games and you got to see a 90+ player roster and your heroes only played for a couple of snaps. Hardly worth lugging all those players, let alone the equipment, over to the other side of the pond it seemed to me.
I cast my mind back to the 11th of August 1986, the Bears hosted the Cowboys and it’s played in the old decrepit and crumbling Wembley Stadium. The weather was typical of London.. overcast, slightly damp and not particularly warm, so sitting on a piece of plastic that was 3mm wide and bolted onto what used to be old terracing (used for standing) with your knees under your chin was an experience, that I would prefer to forget, but alas I can recall still.
82,699 crammed into the hallowed halls of Wembley that day.
Even an Englishman kicked off the game, (plucked from the UK American football league) but …. not a good kick, Sorry Russell. That was his five seconds of fame.
What was special about this game for me was that it was the Bears and they were the first team that I witnessed play an actual Super Bowl against the extremely bad New England Patriots at that time, who knew what was to come?!
I remember being in a pub before the game and talking to a lot of other fans, each wearing their team’s colours and none wore the green & white of the Jets apart from me.
My #83 Santana Moss jersey which I’d cut into a crop top, such was the style back then in the 80s, I also wore it to football practice for the team I was playing for, it’s hot work you know! I had a six pack back then too LOL. Anyhow, not only were the jerseys all different, so were the accents with a vast majority seemingly coming from north of the Watford Gap (Londoners get a nosebleed after this point ha ha).
Remember too that this was pre-internet and before mobile phones, so the medium then was TV, radio, publications and word of mouth.
Probably the best source being First Down newspaper and Touchdown magazine for anything that was going on.
Wembley was full as I recall, not an empty seat. And like me, a ton of fans were spellbound by the incredible ‘85 Bears and wanted to see the likes of Walter Payton, Jim McMahon, Richard Dent, Mike Singletary and I could list so many of those great players, many of which were household names in some NFLA’ers homes back then.
The game itself was quite a drab affair which the Bears won, and as we all funnelled out of the stadium it occurred to me how late a lot of these fans would be getting back home. London Underground and network rail were as broken then as they are now, and many of the motorways and service areas we take for granted these days, were not there. Greasy spoon cafes and a pee on the hard shoulder was the usual on any coach trip.
That was then, but this is now…..
Fast forward to today … do you know how many games have now been played by NFL teams in London, meaningful ones that is?
41. (My old playing number too)
41 games, where fans from all over the UK, Europe and other parts of the world flocked to.
That’s 41 times my northern brothers and sisters have had to make the trek to the apparent only place in the UK where a game of this popularity can be hosted. No, wait?! That’s not right is it? We have had the World Cup played here and the matches weren’t all in London, were they? Not even at Wembley anymore.
So now the NFL has put all its eggs in one basket and subsidised Tottenham Hotspur Football Club with a state of the art sliding field, buried under the existing soccer pitch. It is an amazing site when it’s all out and ready and even more so when you see the field rolled out in time lapse.
Oh, so that’s it then? Games will only be in London for the foreseeable future?
Which brings me kicking and screaming into the centre circle of the National Football League Anonymous group meeting to exclaim …. Why is everything so London-centric? WHY?!
There are a lot of other cities with great stadiums that can accommodate an NFL game. I get that London is exciting and is full of history and it’s got the Queen.. oops, sorry, the King and his soldiers who’ve fallen off the side of a biscuit tin. But it’s also the most expensive city in the entire UK.
What’s this really about? (Psst I know the answer)
I have to make a confession…. I’m not even a fan of having regular meaningful games played outside of the USA. Most of us fell in love with this game because of where it was played and everything about it that is so American.
Now it’s in London, that whole game day feel and build up is something else, a circus, a distraction from what should be the serious side of regular season football. Now the players have a ‘holiday’ during the season and it seems to me that this is all set up for the casual fan, the fan who will pick a team for the day and mix with other like minded folks, nothing wrong with that(!)
After 41 games you would also think that one of these Ivy League interns might come up with the idea of selling tickets primarily to the fans of both teams that are playing, then through general sale. The season ticket thing is a scandal too. Many people signed up for it to either sell their tickets on to make themselves some money, or sell them on because their team isn’t playing … and then make money.
But at what expense is it though? Serious fans like me don’t want to be sat in amongst 31 other team’s jerseys with people not even watching the game, clueless to the point where they don’t even know what a quarterback is… “is he the one who catches the ball?” I once got asked.
Hey NFL! This isn’t the 1980s anymore. There are a massive amount of highly educated football fans in this country that know their stuff, so if you’re going to do it, do it properly.
The answer of course is … it’s all about money, and this is the modern day circus coming to town. If it was taking the game to where it’s most popular outside of the UK then it would be played in Germany. Post WWII there was, and still is a large contingent of US forces stationed there.
Back in the 80s, US forces used to broadcast live games via Forces Radio on the crackly AM frequency too.
Let’s not forget what a hike it is as well, especially if a team isn’t on the east coast of the US. I don’t care what anyone says, this cannot be good for players health and safety. You try and be an elite athlete, at the top of your game, make time zone adjustments then play lights out smash-mouth football for three hours…. Then return home and adjust all over again. Even the Bye doesn’t really help. The Bye should be used as a week of recuperation, not travelling for god knows how many hours.
That aside, one of the biggest annoyances that I have is the representation within the fan bases on game day. As the camera pans around the fans in the stadium, you pretty much get every single team in the NFL, some jerseys dating back as far as the 80s through to present day, you like to see that.. or do you? Personally I don’t.
If you went to a game out in the USA, you may still see the odd team that isn’t playing being represented, that’s fine. But largely it would be the two teams that are playing that day, and all the banter and craic that goes back-and-forth between the fans.
The first time the Jets came to play in London, I boycotted the game. As I don’t believe they should be getting played here in regular season, but then realised I was just shooting myself in the foot, and it’s my team so I will go, even if that is hypocritical of me, fight me!! I can still object to them being played here.
I also wanted to meet other Jets fans who I had no idea existed, until Twitter took off, and I started noticing usernames like @UKJet and suchlike. Wow! I wasn’t alone.
The NFLA meeting now ends and I feel like a weight has been lifted from my chest.
I know my opinions on this are not everyone’s cup of tea, but these opinions are not exclusively mine either. This coming season the NFL will be playing even more games outside of the USA, some in Germany for the first time too which is great! But I’m afraid this is watering down what was a great game and league. It’s not broken, so stop trying to fix it.
My dear NFL, London is not Canton, so stop pretending that it is!
Green Smoke 
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