NFL Hears London Calling
By Lee Ostaszewski
Posted Nov. 16, 2014 @ 12:20 am
By Lee Ostaszewski
Posted Nov. 16, 2014 @ 12:20 am
The National Football League keeps threatening to put a team in London. As in London, England. As in Merry Olde England. As in home of William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and Benny Hill.
In other words, they think it would be a great idea to stick a team on the other side of the Atlantic. A place where their football is really our soccer. Which poses the first problem: What are the British supposed to call the sport?
They already have something called football. They could simply call it American football, but that seems too obvious. Besides, it’s not as if we refer to soccer as “foreign football.” Although, come to think of it, maybe we should. I like the sound of it.
And don’t write in suggesting we should start calling soccer “world football.” Hey, America is part of the world too, you know. It is not our football. Instead of calling it “foreign football” Americans went ahead and coined an entirely new name for the sport: soccer. The name caught on quicker than the sport itself. So maybe in England they already have a new name in mind for our football. Perhaps passerball or knickerchuckles, some idiotic name the same way they call a truck a lorry.
“The pitch is green, the hooligans have set fire to the end zone, we are ready for a great match of knikerchuckles between the Cowboys of Dallas, Texas, USA, and our own London Blokes. Here’s the first boot by the Blokes and it bounces past the flames and out of the end zone. I believe that means we scored. Jolly good job, Blokes. No, wait. I’m being told it means the Cowboys get the ball at the 20-meter line. What? We are going to a commercial? Already? It’s not halftime.”
In any case, Carrie Underwood will need to change the song.
“Waitin’ all day/evening for Sunday Night/early Monday Morning for football/knickerchuckles on NBC/BBC.”
If the NFL in England really wanted to confuse matters about the name – and from watching British television shows all my life it seems they enjoy confusing matters - they should simply refer to our American-brand football as soccer.
I said that the NFL is threatening to move a team to London. There are no actual plans. It might only be an idle threat. I am not sure how sincere they truly are. For starters, who in the NFL really wants this? Not the fans, who are told by talk radio to dread the long flight and strange water when teams play in London. Not the coaches, who hate anything out of the team’s normal routine. Not the players, who are generally unaware of what city they are in and would be shocked to suddenly realize the team bus is driving on the wrong side of the road.
That would get their cardio up.
But most everyone understands how professional sports teams operate these days. If a team feels it deserves millions of taxpayer dollars for improvements, it will throw a tantrum to get it. For instance, a common strategy to force communities to pay for infrastructure or stadium upgrades the team could afford is to threaten to move the team to another city.
With London in the mix, team owners have a perennial go-to threat to use. Let’s say the Rams owners are not feeling the love in St. Louis, which would be strange since St. Louis has the nicest fans in the world. One of their popular cheers during a game is, “Good try, guys.”
The St. Louis owners could threaten to move the team to Phoenix. Oh, wait, that already happened once. They could threaten to move the Rams back to Los Angeles (Typical Los Angeles response: “The Rams left L.A.? When?”)
London would be a much more effective threat, mostly because it will always be available. And if the NFL ever did put a team there, I could get used to calling it knickerchuckles.
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/article/20141116/OPINION/141117201/11606/OPINION/?Start=2
