Question on International Football

[Vet]

We've seen baseball come to be "dominated" (for lack of a better word) by Latin athletes, and we're now starting to see more and more Asian players come into MLB. And the USA is no longer the favorite in international baseball competitions.

 

We've also seen our national basketball teams ("Dream Teams") go and get beaten regularly by foreign teams and we've seen a huge influx of international athletes into the NBA, many of whom are great players.

 

The NHL is predominantly a Canadian, Russian and Eastern European sport.

 

I'm not making any type of value judgement here. As a matter of fact, when I tune into a professional sporting competition, I want to see the best atheletes the world has to offer. I really don't care about their race, color, politics or creed.

 

But, clearly (American) football is the last of the major US sports not to be "infiltrated" by international players. To me, it seems like only a matter of time. I don't know if it'll be 10, 20, 50 or 100 years...but there's no reason why there won't be first round draft picks from Europe, Asia, and all over the world. The lure of money will bring top athletes to this sport eventually.

 

How long do you think it will be before foreign players start to make inroads into the NFL?

[DMD]

The biggest factor here is that unlike all other sports, the NFL is fed 99.999% from the college ranks. The biggest college sport is football followed by basketball and then the rest pale.

 

Football as a sport is not played internationally unlike basketball, soccer, baseball, etc. There is no system for players to come up through or to develop in prior to the pro ranks. If the kids don't play it, then they are not going to play it as adults.

 

Problem with football unlike most other sports is that it is really expensive to play and requires more people than most any other sport I can think of. You have to have extensive equipment and at least 22 guys to play. Baseball? 18 guys and at least nine gloves and one bat and an empty field. Basketball? 10 guys, 1 ball, 2 goals. Soccer? 12 (?) guys, one ball and a field. Football - at least 22 guys, 22 sets of helmets and pads, a ball and a field that is not only exact dimensions but it has to be marked precisely right every five yards.

 

It's just more complicated and expensive to play football. It may become more international but it would surprise me. There are already a ton of sports other countries like to play, so what is the incentive for them to change?

[LooGie]

There's alot of polynesians becoming great NFL players.

Obviously, they're from the USA, but I'm speaking purely about race.

 

Polomalu, Tatupu and about 10 others i think.

[Vet]

The biggest factor here is that unlike all other sports, the NFL is fed 99.999% from the college ranks. The biggest college sport is football followed by basketball and then the rest pale.

 

Football as a sport is not played internationally unlike basketball, soccer, baseball, etc. There is no system for players to come up through or to develop in prior to the pro ranks. If the kids don't play it, then they are not going to play it as adults.

 

Problem with football unlike most other sports is that it is really expensive to play and requires more people than most any other sport I can think of. You have to have extensive equipment and at least 22 guys to play. Baseball? 18 guys and at least nine gloves and one bat and an empty field. Basketball? 10 guys, 1 ball, 2 goals. Soccer? 12 (?) guys, one ball and a field. Football - at least 22 guys, 22 sets of helmets and pads, a ball and a field that is not only exact dimensions but it has to be marked precisely right every five yards.

 

It's just more complicated and expensive to play football. It may become more international but it would surprise me. There are already a ton of sports other countries like to play, so what is the incentive for them to change?

 

 

 

I understand your point, but 15 years ago the NBA draft was almost 100% college players.

 

And organized youth hockey is more expensive to play than organized youth football.

 

I don't know, just seems like a matter of time to me. Especially if the money is there.

[alexgaddis]

I think it will be the Afghanies...

[DMD]

I understand your point, but 15 years ago the NBA draft was almost 100% college players.

 

And organized youth hockey is more expensive to play than organized youth football.

 

I don't know, just seems like a matter of time to me. Especially if the money is there.

 

 

Basketball is such an easy game to organize though so it imports well, is relatively easy to play (meaning anyone can dribble and shoot, maybe not that well though) and it's an exciting spectator sport requiring only a relatively small area to play with fewer fans watching it.

 

Hockey has been played for a century in any country that has ice on their ponds in winter. I'm surprised the US has as good of hockey as it does compared to Canada, Russia, Scandanavia, etc. who all grew up on ice.

 

Problem too is that in most cases, football players need to be really big guys. Baseball players (non-steroid users) are pretty much average size as are soccer, hockey, etc. Basketball favors tall people of course. There are many samoans in the NFL because so many of them are large physically plus Hawaii feeds them into the system because of college. I don't think there are any Samoans who actually lived in Samoa their entire life previous to coming to play in the NFL.

 

I'm sure there will be more "foriegners" over time just from the immigration of people all over the world, but american football won't ever be an olympic sport because only we and canada (which is like the US only with heavy accents) play it.

[Bronco Billy]

A long time. For countries to start contributing meaningful players to a professional sport, that country needs to have the sport be part of their culture, thus getting the best athletes involved in that sport at the youth level. Another reason is that some sports are much more condusive to poorer countries playing the sport. Soccer is popular because all you need is a ball & an open field to play and good organized game, so it is extremely popular in poorer countries. Baseball & basketball are very similar in that they don't need a lot of expensive equipment to play.

 

Hockey & football (our football) do require a lot of equipment, though, as the levels of play become more sophisticated, and that equipment is expensive, so hockey & football have limited followings. Because the athlete that plays football - at least the skill positions - is similar in many ways to soccer players & basketball players, economics drives youth from other countries into the other 2 sports rather than football.

 

Then you add the cultural identification with sports - say baseball here as opposed to cricket in England despite a very similar skill set for athletes in the 2 sports, and you have football as being a very Americanized sport. People in other countries see our football as boring because they are always stopping between plays and spend longer in the huddle than they do each game actually playing - kind of like we see soccer as boring because there are so few scoring opportunities & violence is predominantly discouraged in the game, making it a running-up-and-down the field game.

 

That's a pretty simplified explanation for something I could write a few pages on, but that's what I see as far as a lack of interest by other countries in football, and therefore a probable lack of incorporation by football into other cultures, and therefore many fewer foreign athletes in football.

[Pope Flick]

It won't happen for football, basically because of culture.

 

It's easy for 3rd world countries to develop strongly in basketball and baseball because it takes little or no equipment to create a street game. Heck, you can tie a bunch of rags together and you've got a soccer game. Baseball? I played with the Chevy's bumper down the street being 2nd base.

 

Football as a meaningful pickup game would require at least flags. Touch football isn't going to develop stars in any sense simply because it's so vastly different that the real game. And how do you play a solid game of football without a good organization that can provide the pads, helmets and the other equipment you'd need? Those don't exist outside of this country, and hence are not part of anyone else's culture. If so, they probably play Rugby. We'll never play cricket here because we'd rather play baseball and the same is true for pretty much overy other country that plays Rugby.

 

We had this talk in the Tailgate: I'm surprised there are MORE American Pacific islanders in the NFL.