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Post 13 Oct 2015, 1:26 pm

stated from a perspective of a sports fan in a small country where you can see "your" team and hear about them all the time with great ease. Not so when you have a club on a different CONTINENT. This will be much more like we have things over here. I am an hours drive to get to my local team. How many teams can you see within a one hour drive? The next closest to me (and I live on a more densely populated east coast than most of the country) is Cleveland 4 hours away, New York, New England and Philly are about 6 hours away. How many teams can you see if you drove 6 hours? I am in a dense area and can see a whole 6 teams. Someone in the midwest can see maybe 2 many only one. I think you would end up being pretty much the same as us if you got a team in London!

But i do get what you are saying and you could be right!
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Post 13 Oct 2015, 2:47 pm

I have a friend who lives 10 mins walk from the Sheffield Wednesday stadium. He supports Arsenal (based 3 hours away in London) and goes to all of their games home and away, regularly travelling down to places like Southampton and Swansea on a tuesday night where he doesn't get home till 3 in the morning. It would be much easier for him to switch across to watching Wednesday or one of the other local teams (not to mention much, much cheaper) but he wouldn't dream of doing it. He supports the same team his dad (a Londoner) supported and once you've chosen your team you've chosen for life, no matter how inconvenient.

The NFL fixtures in London have undoubtedly been a success, but in large part I'd equate them to a successful West End show or something similar. People who quite like the NFL treat it as an opportunity to have a city break in London and take in some overpriced entertainment that they quite enjoy. Many, in fact probably most, of the crowd are not Londoners and at best they'll go to one match a season because the cost of a weekend in London is very high. I can't see that it would be any different if there were a London franchise except that there would be more games to choose from and so they'd probably find it more of a struggle to fill such a big venue each time. Trust me, everybody who lives in the rest of Britain hates London, so the chances of any of us transferring allegiance to a London team is non-existent. They'd need to build a fanbase out of people who live in London, which is possible but would take a long time.
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Post 14 Oct 2015, 6:06 am

again, much like here.
I live an hour from Buffalo, our closest team
We leave early and "tailgate" for a few hours. We bring food, cook out, drink beer, throw around a football, etc. We usually go to a Buffalo area restaurant after the game for pizza and wings. It's a whole day affair! But again, to go to the next closest team takes as much time as it does to get from your two furthest teams apart. That's what I'm saying, you guys can, with relative ease, support any team in your league. That's just not possible in the NFL. For many here, our trip to the closest team is equal to your trip to the furthest team. Yes, we also make a day of it, maybe stay overnight and take in restaurants or clubs or what have you during those trips.

I think a new team brings new opportunity and "allows" people to jump teams with no "embarrassment" for doing so. It also will see fans of other teams slowly switch as they see and hear more about the local team than any other. And lastly, let's say your buddy is a fan of the Steelers, it's not going to be all that often that they will be visiting London. He will try to get to any game they do visit but, as a fan, he will no doubt take in another game or three, over time it's very natural to see your feelings switch to that local team you now follow more than you thought. It happens, it happens a lot and with great distance it only becomes much easier. You just don't have distance factoring into your equation over there, your example of a friend who drives so "far" to see his team only proves my point. This guy CAN see "his" team, for me to drive four hours, I'm still short of making to the next closest team, Your maximum drive is equal to my next closest team and I live in the more densely populated area of the country with more teams "close" by. Distance makes things a lot different and you guys just can't wrap your heads around that. Imagine a European league. You follow London or Berlin or Madrid or Rome..... how many times are you going to drive to Rome? How much are you going to be hearing about that team in Rome when most of the sports talk in your area is all about the team in London?
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Post 09 Nov 2015, 2:01 pm

Sassenach wrote:There's actually a small but surprisingly well-informed community of NFL fans in this country. A couple of my mates are among them. One supports the 49ers and the other supports the Lions and they went down together when their respective teams were playing in London..


I'm a Lions fan as well. What happened to them in London the other week was terrible, but I'm afraid unsurprising for the only team that has never been to any Super Bowl even though they've been eligible to make it all 50 years. (The Browns are close but they didn't exist for a few years.) They could have used some of that extra soft TP to sit on during the long flight home!
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Post 30 Apr 2016, 12:13 am

An enduring fascination for all non-Americans is the names of NFL players. I realise it all comes out of the ebonics culture in poor black communities and so I probably shouldn't laugh, but it is hilarious to see just how many ways you can put a random letter in front of 'shawn' to come up with a new variant, or how many ways can be found to misuse apostrophes. Still though, every now and then you do have to wonder whether the parents might have come to regret their decision over the years. This guy for example:

http://www.nfl.com/draft/2016/profiles/ ... id=2555248

Apparently it's pronounced "juh-HODD". Yeah, course it is....
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Post 02 May 2016, 7:39 am

Over here this would be a VERY racist thing to point out!
I agree with you 100% but it's a racial thing and as such, we can't make such comments if we wish to be politically correct. That may sound like I'm joking but no, no, no, it's very real!

That is unless you happen to be black, THEN you are allowed!?
Have you seen any "Key and Peele" videos?
They are always poking fun at the black culture and they do it so well!
Check You Tube,
Key and Peele Substitute teacher
and
Key and Peele east west
as search words, very funny name stuff there, it's a good laugh, trust me!