A Beautiful Game

This is what its come to. I'm watching an English soccer match on a Spanish language station.

No I'm not talking about how bored I am. I'm talking about how addicted I've become to soccer. English soccer to be precise.

And the NFL better be worried.

It started a couple of years ago when ESPN began broadcasting Premier League games at zero dark thirty in the morning. As someone who generally is up at that hour I started taking a peek at whatever game, excuse me, match was on.

What I saw was a game  that constantly moved.  It was a game that even though there wasn't much scoring there was a possibility of scoring on nearly every play . It was a game played by men wearing nothing more than shorts a shirt and maybe some knee pads. But most importantly it was a game that was played for 45 minutes then they took a 15 minute break then they played another 45 minutes and that was the end of the game. An investment of under 2 hours and I was thoroughly entertained.

This in contrast to the NFL who's 60 minutes of play somehow magically turns into three hours of everyone standing around and about 25 seconds worth of total actual play. Not to mention the armor required that turns players into early prototypes for ROBOCOP. And the feeling I have that American football has denigrated into nothing more than societal approved violence. The game is no longer about trying to best the other team, but rather to injure as many of the other team as possible. Hell, you trip someone by accident in a soccer match and your team might find itself playing one man short the rest of the way.

Here's another aspect of the English game I enjoy, the idea that the three teams who finished at the bottom of the league get thrown out at the end of the season and replaced by the top three teams of the next lower league. Makes every game important. It rewards teams for playing well and punishes those who don't. That seems eminently fair to me.

But why should the NFL care that I'm no longer interested in their sport? Because my whole life I've been fifteen minutes ahead of the curve. I'm the canary in the coal mine of cultural trends. If I, someone who has followed your game my entire life, have found a sport I like better that is played at the same time as yours then how many others in the next few years will make that same discovery?

They'll be joing me down at the pub to hoist a pint or two, proudly wearing our Tottenham Hotspurs scarves.