Why is football becoming "America's game?" Because anything can happen!

by user Joliecat

Here it is, barely past the fourth of July and the NFL training camps will open soon.  Another season is just around the corner!

My interest in watching football took off during the mid 1990's after I moved to central Florida.  Dan Marino was still slinging passes for the Miami Dolphins who were the Florida team most people thought of.  Only eighty miles from where I lived, though, another team played in a stadium that looked like a warped tortilla and wore horrid orange creamsicle uniforms with the logo of a ridiculous, winking pirate.  I thought: the Buccaneers.  They need me.

Back then Sam Wyche coached them and he was usually good for a comical outburst or two or a zany play such as an end around with the halfback throwing a pass to the quarterback.  And even during their worst years, they were still capable of beating a front runner once or twice a year.

Gradually, though they started to shrewdly draft tough defensive guys who hit the other team's runners and receivers so hard it hurt to watch.  Then they traded the old uniforms for blood red and pewter and got themselves a beautiful new stadium.

In 2002 they grabbed a golden boy coach and rewarded all their fans with a championship season.  The next couple of years they went below 500 and then, somehow strung together a bunch of miracle victories to lead the division again in 2005.  Last year they slipped back to double digits in losses but still showed flashes of brilliance, such as scaring eventual Super Bowl representative Chicago Bears.

And this year?  With the drafting system, the salary caps and the x factor of "any given Sunday" anything can happen.  Fans of any other NFL team could say the same thing!

JuTMSY4Legend

912 days ago

Score 1

Nothing makes me wish i didn't have eyes like the old bucs unis... Maybe its a pirates thing, because those old Pittsburgh Pirates unis were equally hideous...

Permalink | Reply

Cobras36Red-Shirting

912 days ago

Score 0

It kinda amazes me, the draw of the NFL (and I'm towards the front of the lemming's march to training camps) when the product on the field is so staid and predictable. With scoring averaging less than 21 points per team/per game, the pokes a soccer not having a lot of scoring seem kinda lame when the NFL gets less than 6 scores per game between two teams. Throw in losing yards as a postive for winning games, absurd penalties for "excessive celebrations", over celebrating for routine plays, what really is so unpredictable about an run-of-the mill NFL game?

Permalink | Reply

ChristofMVP

912 days ago

Score 1

Nah, it is all about the action. There is more action in football than baseball. With that said, by the end of this century, look for hockey to overtake football as the American pasttime....

Permalink | Reply

Cobras36Red-Shirting

912 days ago

Score 0

Action? Seemingly the most exciting play in the NFL, special teams returns, almost uniformly results in a ticky-tack penalty that erases some fine athleticism. Two off-tackle dives and at 3rd and 8 pass into the dirt isn't all that exciting, either. Those, and taking a knee should result in a 15 yard penalty for being seriously boring.

Permalink | Reply

CWY2190Waterboy

912 days ago

Score 1

I don't know what it is about football that make us Americans (and Canadians) love it so much. I don't know if it is the toughness or the complexity or the atmosphere or all of the above. But I know I can't wait for the NFL and CFB to start again.

Permalink | Reply

IlliniEdVarsity

911 days ago

Score 1

I figure the real reason that Football has become Americas pasttime has more to due with the gambling aspect of the game. It is easier to gamble on and as a result more people have in interestin more of hte games. There is a reason that there are injury reports and lines. It is to make information more accessable to the gambler. There are confidence pools, survival pools and many other type of pools that permiate almost all work enwironments. Its every where.

Permalink | Reply

TyduffyRed-Shirting

911 days ago

Score 1

I will probably elaborate on this with an article as it comes closer to the beginning of football season, but here is my problem with it. The game last 60 minutes, within that 60 minutes there is 11 minutes of actual playing, yet it takes four hours to play. I think that it capitalizes because there is one game a week, and the league makes sure that it is on when no one has to work and drinking is a possibility.

I enjoy college football because there is still the tradition, excitement, and ambiance. There are real legitimate rivalries.

The NFL is much more smoothed over and corporate. I actually think that the parity is too much, there aren't any great teams or traditions any more. They treat the players like chattel slaves and cut them indiscriminately to meet the demands of the almighty salary cap. I find little that is enjoyable or entertaining about it, particularly because I don't gamble on it or play in fantasy leagues. I don't think the draw is so much the entertainment value but that it is tradition, there's nothing else on of a sporting nature, and it supplies the filler convorsation for the next week at work so you have to know what is going on.

Permalink | Reply