Like millions of Americans I preferred to watch a baby vomiting or a heart leap out of a woman's chest than actually pay much attention to the on-field butting, whooping, and throwing in Sunday's Super Bowl extravaganza.

I am, of course, referring to the legendary Super Bowl commercials. In the preamble to the match most shows mentioned those fabled commercials, costing millions of dollars for a short commercial slot, and in some quarters this generated more excitement than the game. One news anchor even confessed that she went to the bathroom during the game, and sat in rapt attention during the commercials. That really says it all – the World Cup final has some great adverts, but miss the action to see them? Not a chance.

American Football pales in comparison to the world game, soccer (I am using the word 'soccer' here so as not to confuse American readers) – so much so that I usually spend most of an NFL or college football game seething and stewing in my own anti-Yankee sentiments. How can they like a game that’s so static it's like watching someone play Risk or Subbuteo?

‘...is diving any more annoying than American footballers with their armadillo body armour, clod-hopping around the pitch doing their signature dance, whenever they so much as progress a few yards?’


Soccer is the most popular sport for under-18s in the US, until their parents get to them and indoctrinate them against what is the most natural game in the world, a game you can start anywhere, with jumpers for goal posts. The arguments against soccer are that it is full of divers – but is diving any more annoying than American footballers with their armadillo body armour, clod-hopping around the pitch doing their signature dance, whenever they so much as progress a few yards?

At least five times during every NFL game the camera will predictably focus on some 'wild' fans. For 'wild' read; 'a fan wearing a coloured wig, and possibly face paint' – take a second to compare them to blood-curdling Premier League fans who can be found snarling behind the home team's goal.

Aside from the above ranting, here are my eight reasons why I would rather watch a snuff movie of my parents than view another NFL game.

1. Any game that stops every couple of minutes for an advertising break (which can often be more entertaining) is in trouble. A game that only lasts for 60 minutes, but commands four hours of my time is a truly rancid game.

2. One of the (specious) arguments against soccer is that it is boring, that nothing ever happens, that there aren't enough goals. But that four whole hours of your life spent watching time-outs, huddles, commercials, and occasional action (for a few seconds), if translated into four hours of soccer – at current Premier League scoring rates – would work out at around 50 points a game in the NFL.

3.Time-outs – These merely add to the soporific atmosphere of the game. Time-outs are a horrendous disease that has spread through the whole of the US. Playing soccer with my American nephew in my back garden, results in sporadic cries of 'time out!', as if any game can be paused with those magic words. Time-outs bring the team over to the touchline and the fact that a whole legion of players is mercy to one man – the coach, who makes all tactical decisions – baffles me, too. My in-laws seemed perplexed when I told them that in soccer the players make the majority of the tactical decisions. It seems as if American sportsmen need to have their hand held and have all decisions made for them, thus putting out the last embers of spontaneous play.

4.'Football’ is an utter misnomer for this sport. When the ball is touched by a foot it is during a completely superfluous act. Any kicking for extra points is a fait d'accomplis, a needless evolutionary blind alley, like male nipples.

5. The players dance around in pre-prepared celebration signature moves whenever their team progresses a few yards, or when they stop the opposition moving a few inches forward. This sport is closer to tractor-pulling than football. A touchdown is greeted by screams of people just going through the motions – no fan emotion seems half as spontaneous as in soccer

6. Commercialism – Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, is indoor, supported by networks of escalators, shaped like a shopping mall that has had the shops removed and a stadium transplanted in their place.

7. The NFL also shares the wealth of new talent with the draft. At the end of the season the worst team gets first pick and the best team gets last pick. Pick? In the UK it is a rampant free for all, players being signed at the age of 12 at the merest hint of talent. The Detroit Lions are an abysmal team, and they are abysmal with such a consistency that one could be forgiven for thinking that they have a cunning plan of Blackadder proportions ... finish as near to rock bottom every year and get top draft pick every draft and then, once the dream team has been built, explode on to the scene. The NFL is a stagnant lake, isolated from everything else. Can you imagine a top-flight English league without any transition through the spectre of relegation? And can you imagine what that would do to the lower leagues? They would be throttled to death by avaricious owners, grabbing the necks of these minnows in the same way they grab money.

8. Rivalry – for the most part there is nothing like the Everton/Liverpool or Spurs/Arsenal, organic rivalry in the NFL. Fans hate who the commentators tell them to hate.