Spectator sports exist to provide a distraction from real life. For committed fans, however, they are real life. I have written previously about my love of cricket, but these days cricket takes second place in my affections to American football, specifically the National Football League (NFL). In this article I will reflect on my years of following the NFL from the wilds of Lancashire, England, starting in the 1980s and still going strong in COVID-ridden 2021.
Like many British fans, my interest began after Channel 4 began broadcasting highlights of the NFL in 1982. For some reason, the game caught my imagination, despite being a soft-hearted liberal who was sceptical of all things American. At first, I understood very little of what I was watching. In principle, American football is a simple game, not too dissimilar to Rugby League, with a straightforward scoring system. In practice, everything about the NFL is complex. Why does a game with eleven players a side need a playing squad of 53? Why, when a game is timed to last for one hour, does it actually take upwards of three hours to complete? Why, as happened this year, does a team who won seven and lost nine games (Washington) get to the playoffs, while a team who won ten games and lost six (Miami) does not? Why does the most popular game in America, the spiritual home of free-market capitalism, seem on the surface to be a hotbed of socialism? At first, these and many other questions were mysterious to me. Watching a game, it seemed that the players scattered around the field like demented, armoured chess pieces, and the commentators analysing plays could have been discussing quadratic equations (it didn’t help that I was watching on a small, portable black-and-white television). Today, I have a decent knowledge of the sport. I can follow a game play-by-play and broadly understand what has happened and why. I know basic tactics and strategy and recognise the many penalties. I am as opinionated as any armchair Head Coach and could hold a long pub discussion about the game if the pubs were open and I knew anyone who shared my obsession. But it has taken me thirty-five years to get to this point, watching many TV games; reading several key books about the sport (listed at the end of this article) and trawling the NFL website. And despite never having visited America, I have had the thrill of watching NFL games live, when the sport has visited London’s Wembley stadium.
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| My early education in the NFL was assisted by Channel 4's American Football Annual. This is the 1986 edition, chronicling the year that the Chicago Bears won Superbowl XX |
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| Approaching Wembley Stadium for my first live NFL game in 2014. The Cowboys won, 31-17 |
Sports evolve slowly and almost imperceptibly, like the design of a marmite jar. My experience of the NFL to date is bookended by two Superbowls: Superbowl XX, which concluded the 1985 season and Superbowl LV, which ended the benighted 2020 season (Superbowls have always had the distinction of Roman numerals). Watching both games again (they can be viewed, without adverts or breaks in play, on Youtube), they are clearly the same sport. But much has changed in the NFL in the past thirty-five years, partly reflecting changes in American society. This continues the NFL’s development from its foundation just over 100 years ago. For a start, there are four more teams in the NFL now than there were in 1985, and six teams have moved cities; one twice and another three times. And if anything, the league has become more ‘socialist’, not less.
I am of course using the term ‘socialist’ advisedly. There is nothing socialist about the NFL. It is a classic example of American monopoly capitalism; as monolithic a business as McDonalds or Amazon. Over the years it has achieved the premier position in American sport, dwarfing baseball in popularity and wealth. But one way it has maintained its appeal has been by ensuring a level playing field within the league, with steps taken to minimise the risk of a few rich teams becoming dominant, reflecting the mantra that “the league is only as strong as its weakest member”. Traditionally, this was done through the annual ‘draft’, when the best college players were selected by NFL teams. The draft is carried out in reverse order of achievement, with the season’s worst-placed team choosing first in each round of the draft, and the Superbowl champion choosing last. Then, the poorer teams are given an easier schedule of games in the next season than the better teams, so that theoretically, every team (or franchise, as the NFL calls them) has as good a chance to get to the Superbowl as any other.
In 1985, NFL players were effectively vassals of their franchises. They could only leave to join another team with permission, even at the end of their contracts, while their tem could trade them away, or cut them at any time. Players today can still be traded or cut, but in the late 1980s, following a players’ strike and legal action, the league introduced ‘free agency’, whereby a player at the end of their contract could offer themselves to any other team. An inevitable consequence of free agency was that the best players could demand inflated salaries, threatening the league’s level playing field. In response, the NFL introduced a salary cap, whereby a team could not offer more than a fixed amount in total player salaries. The league’s internal level playing field was thereby preserved.
Superbowl XX was played between the Chicago Bears and the New England Patriots. That year, the Bears were firm favourites, having reached the playoffs with a 15-1 record, while the Patriots’ success was unexpected. The Superbowl went according to form, with Chicago dominating, the final score 46-10. But since then, the Bears have only been to one further Superbowl, which they lost, while since 2001, the Patriots have made a mockery of the NFL’s level playing field, reaching the Superbowl nine times and winning six – an unprecedented amount of success. We will consider this freakish dominance later.
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| How Channel 4's American Football Annual described Superbowl XX |
By Superbowl XX I had moved on from my portable black and white TV and was able to watch the game live on a decent telly. I continued to follow the NFL on Channel 4 for many years. Presenters came and went, but best of all was the Canadian former college tight-end and polymath Mike Carlson. His weekly round-ups were particular pleasures, peppered with running jokes (Pittsburgh's Hines Ward was 'so good, they named the stadium after him' - Pittsburgh played at Heinz Field - while the Rams Torry Holt was 'the Tory you can support'. Once, he sang his weekly roundup. Channel 4 no longer shows the NFL, but Mike can still be seen as part of the BBC's Superbowl presenting team. Today, Sky Sports shows up to six full games per week and the NFL was the reason I finally caved in and invested in a satellite dish.
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| Sky Sports commentators Neil Reynolds and Shaun Gayle analyse a play while the Dallas Cheerleaders entertain the crowd. Shaun Gayle was a member of Chicago's Superbowl XX-winning side |
The level of interest in the NFL in the UK has been such that the league has frequently crossed the Atlantic and played games in Britain. In August 1986, the Superbowl XX champion Chicago Bears played a pre-season (friendly) game at Wembley Stadium and other such games were played in the UK subsequently. For some years, an offshoot league known as NFL Europe was based in several European cities, including London and Edinburgh. But the real dream was to bring actual NFL games to the UK, and since 2007 up to four NFL games per year have been played in London, before COVID prevented the planned games from taking place in 2020. Most, if not all have been sell-outs and it is not impossible that an NFL franchise may be based in the UK one day. I have made the pilgrimage to Wembley three times, as the photographs accompanying this article will testify.
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| Dallas limber up prior to their Wembley game against Jacksonville in November 2014 |
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Suggs of the reggae group Madness entertains the crowd in the build-up to the game between the Detroit Lions and the Kansas City Chiefs at Wembley in 2015
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The NFL does not, of course, exist in a vacuum. Professional players hone their craft in College football, and before that in High Schools. Games between the leading College teams can attract as many spectators, and as much television coverage, as NFL games, and even High School teams have a local standing that school sports teams in the UK can only dream about. The culture of football, for good or ill, is inculcated into players from their school days. A classic account of the culture and mores of High School football in the 1980s is H. G. Bissinger’s Friday Night Lights, in which the author followed a successful High School team for a season in Odessa, a blue-collar, staunchly conservative oil town in Texas. As well as being a gripping account of the Permian Panthers’ struggle to reach the Texas State final, and the lives of some of the seventeen and eighteen-year-old players, the book paints a vivid picture of small-town America at the time of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Senior.
The success of the Panthers was not just an imperative for the school, but for the whole town. At the time, Odessa had a population of around 100,000, and the attendance at the weekly friday night football games was around 15,000 (in comparison, Preston, Lancashire has a similar population, and its Championship level soccer team, Preston North End, had an average attendance in 2019 of 13,000). Adults shamelessly lived their lives through their sons’ football achievements. The school, Permian High, threw every possible resource into the football team, to the detriment of its academic achievement – it had lower average grades than many similar schools, but thought nothing of spending thousands of dollars to charter planes to take the football team to away matches. The players, mostly white and middle-class, were treated as cannon fodder. Winning was all-important, and winning in American Football often meant being more violent than your opponents. Boys were encouraged to play through injuries and many readily did so, for one or two years of local fame and for the lucky few, a chance to win a football scholarship to a top sports college. Black players were prized for their athleticism, but subjected to casual racism off the field, including in the classroom, from classmates and teachers.
In short, to understand small-town America, and the role of sport in American society in the 1980s, Friday Night Lights is essential reading. What has changed over the thirty years since it was written? Well, Permian High School has lost its status as a leading football school, through a reappraisal of its values and how its resources should be distributed. It is over twenty-five years since the school was last State champion. Attendance at games today is lower, at around 8,000. The town of Odessa has undergone a succession of economic booms and busts, depending on the state of the oil market; prior to being brought to its knees by COVID it had been experiencing an upsurge due to being a centre for fracking. Despite now having a majority Hispanic population, the town voted solidly Republican (i.e. for Donald Trump) in 2016 and 2020, just as it did in the 1980s.
In culture and values, the NFL in the 1980s was little different to that of Permian High School. Winning was all, and in a game still largely dominated by running the ball, the way to win was essentially to be more violent than your opponents; to tackle and block harder. Head injuries, including serious concussions, were all part of the sport. In Superbowl XX, Chicago’s Hall of Fame linebacker Mike Singletary suffered a concussion early in the game, but returned to the field after taking just a few minutes to clear his head, drawing approving words from the commentators. In recent years, the downside to this aspect of the game has become tragically apparent, with the realisation that former NFL players have higher than average rates of dementia and other neurological conditions, that can be directly related to a history of head injuries and concussions. The league has taken steps to try to reduce these, with rule changes to outlaw head-to-head contact and independent assessments of head injuries, with players who show neurological symptoms being taken out of games. Time will tell if these measures will reduce rates of dementia as the present generation of players grow older.
I stated above that in 1985, the game was largely dominated by running the ball. In terms of tactics and strategy, the history of the NFL has centred on the balance between the run and the pass as ways of progressing the ball. When the NFL was first established, running the ball dominated, as the ball could only be thrown forward under certain circumstances. In 1933, unrestricted forward passes were legalised, and the game began its long road towards today’s pass-dominant approach.
As Michael Lewis explains in his great book about College football, The Blind Side, the 1980s was the decade that the balance shifted from the run to the pass. Under Head Coach Bill Walsh, the San Francisco 49ers pioneered the ‘West Coast Offence’, in which offences were dominated by short, well-practiced passing plays, with timing of passes crucial (previously, passes had tended to be long-range speculative throws, often delivered more in hope than expectation of a catch). In consequence, defences put more weight on ‘rushing the passer’, with forceful and athletic Linebackers such as New York Giants’ Lawrence Taylor, who ended Washington’s quarterback Joe Theisman’s career with a particularly violent tackle. Covering the quarterback’s ‘blind side’ became paramount, leading to the importance of the Left Offensive Tackle as the quarterback’s main protector.
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| Blake Bortles of Jacksonville calls the signals against Dallas. Will the play be a run or a pass? |
Statistics show the extent that the game has changed over the decades. In the 1985 season, just one quarterback (Miami’s Dan Marino) totalled more than 4,000 yards passing, whereas in 2020, twelve quarterbacks reached that mark. By contrast, sixteen players ran the ball for 1,000 yards in 1985, while nine did so in 2020. The rise of the pass has tended to increase scoring – a drive based on passing takes less long than one with lots of running plays. Another factor that has led to higher scores is the drastically improved efficiency of kickers when attempting field goals, both in their rates of success and the length of kicks that they are able to attempt. The first specialist kicker to reach the NFL Hall of Fame, Jan Stenerud, who played for three teams from 1967 – 1985, had a career success rate of 66.8% in kicking field goals. By contrast, the league’s worst regular kicker in 2020, Dan Bailey of Minnesota, had a success rate of 68.2%, and nine kickers achieved over 90% success.
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| Andrew
Luck of the Indianapolis Colts passes against Jacksonville in October
2016 Less one-sided than the previous games I had attended, Jacksonville
won 30-27 |
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| Cairo Santos kicks a field goal for Kansas City against Detroit at Wembley, October 2015 |
Another playing change since the 1980s has been the willingness of quarterbacks to run with the ball. Years ago, this was almost unheard of. In the 1950s, Hall of Fame quarterback Norm Van Brocklin supposedly remarked that a quarterback only ran out of sheer terror. By 1985, some quarterbacks were becoming known as runners, notably San Francisco’s Steve Young (in 1985, Chicago’s Jim McMahon rushed for 252 yards, and scored two rushing touchdowns in Superbowl XX). In 2020, Baltimore’s Lamar Jackson was ninth in the overall list of rushers, with 1,005 yards, with three other quarterbacks reaching 500 yards. For several teams, quarterbacks put up a significant portion of their teams’ rushing yards.
One quarterback whose fame is not related to his running ability is Tom Brady, for twenty years the leader of the New England Patriots and still in the NFL at the age of 43. The unprecedented success of Brady and the Patriots has been the dominant narrative of the NFL since the millennium.
The story of the Patriots would make the writer of Roy of the Rovers blush. In 1985, the Patriots were the hapless underdogs of Superbowl XX. They did not return to the Superbowl until 1996, when they were defeated by the Green Bay Packers in Superbowl XXXI. In 2000, Bill Belichick was appointed as Head Coach, and he drafted Tom Brady in the sixth round, unusually as the fourth quarterback on the roster. While successful as a College player, Brady was not deemed by other teams to be fast or athletic enough to be an NFL quarterback. But after spending the 2000 season as back-up to Drew Bledsoe, favourite of the Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft, Brady took over as starter during 2001, when Bledsoe suffered a horrendous – and near fatal – injury. The Patriots had an 11-5 record in 2001 and next year they became Superbowl champions for the first time. By 2018 the Patriots had been to nine Superbowls and won six.
What was behind the Patriots’ unprecedented success? Bill Belichick was a cerebral and ruthlessly single-minded Head Coach, who thought nothing of summarily discarding players whom he felt were past their best, but also had a knack of getting the best out of some players who, like Tom Brady, were not thought up to it by other teams (Wes Welker; Julian Edelman) and others who had a reputation as disruptive influences (Randy Moss). But would he have had such success without Brady, widely regarded as the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) among quarterbacks? Interestingly, despite their twenty-year partnership, Brady and Belichick were not close friends, partly because Belichick never got close to any of his players (it would make it harder to cut them), and partly because as his achievements grew, Brady would challenge aspects of Belichick’s authority. In particular, Brady relied on a personal trainer, Alex Guerrero, whom he credited with keeping him fit enough to play into his forties, and insisted that Guerrero be made part of the Patriots’ staff, against Belichick’s wishes.
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| Patriots fans among the crowd at Wembley in 2014. I do not share their enthusiasm |
Along with their success, the Patriots acquired a reputation for sharp practice. Two particular incidents became notorious: 2007’s ‘Spygate’, when Belichick admitted illegally filming an opposing team’s pitchside signals, and 2015’s ‘Deflategate’, when Brady was accused of ordering balls to be deflated to below the league’s required pressure. While underhand tactics had long been a part of the NFL, many teams felt that the Patriots had taken rule bending to a new level.
In 2020, aged 43, Brady finally left the Patriots, to join the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. How would he manage under a new Head Coach? How would New England thrive without their long-standing star quarterback? \Well, the Patriots failed to reach the playoffs for the first time in twelve years, while Brady led the Buccaneers to victory in Superbowl LV. Brady has now gained seven Superbowl rings, while Belichick has only once reached the playoffs (including his previous five-year spell as Head Coach of the Cleveland Browns) with a quarterback other than Tom Brady.
The Team that Brady and the Bucs defeated in Superbowl LV was the Kansas City Chiefs, piloted by quarterback Patrick Mahomes. The comparison between Brady and Mahomes is literally between the old and the new. Forty-three year old Brady is a traditional ‘pocket passer’ style of quarterback, who compensates for his relative lack of mobility with passing accuracy and a deep understanding of the game. Mahomes is twenty-five and supremely athletic, making things happen by rushing and scrambling and spectacularly acrobatic passes. And Brady is white, while Mahomes is black.
As with America itself, the history of the NFL cannot be understood without reference to race. In its early decades, there were few black players and even fewer black coaches, and blacks were excluded from the league between 1933 and 1946. By the early 1960s, black players were becoming more sought after, but were still very much in a minority. In his fine book about the 1963 Detroit Lions, Paper Lion, George Plimpton noted the double standards employed by white players and coaches. It was around the time when racial integration was becoming an issue in the South, and Plimpton noted that white players and coaches from the South held traditionally racist views when considering integration, but did not apply them to the black players on the team – football ability trumped race in how they regarded individuals.
By Superbowl XX, there were many black players in the NFL, but areas of prejudice were still apparent (we noted above the racism that the black players at Permian High endured in the 1980s, as related in Friday Night Lights). In the NFL, there was a lingering view that some positions on the field were not suitable for black players. These were the positions that required the greatest understanding of the game and leadership qualities – Centre, Middle Linebacker and, of course, Quarterback. Black players were under-represented in these positions for many years after they had come to dominate most others.
Today, around 70% of NFL players are black and attitudes towards the suitability of blacks for key positions on the field have largely changed. Like Mahomes, many of the new breed of quarterbacks are black. But, just as in American society as a whole, the position of blacks in the NFL is sometimes precarious. In 2016, San Francisco’s black quarterback Colin Kapernick and many other black players protested against racial injustice by sitting or kneeling during the national anthem, drawing the ire of President Donald Trump among others. Kapernick lost his job and has not found another team willing to employ him. The proportion of black coaches, particularly Head Coaches, is low compared to the number of black players. During the 2020 presidential election campaign, Patrick Mahomes was active in encouraging young black people to vote, and while he did not publicly endorse a candidate, it was clear that he was not a Trump supporter (unlike Tom Brady and Bill Belichick).
So the NFL, like America as a whole, has its issues and is taking baby steps towards addressing them. The role of women in the NFL is another area of attention, particularly in the light of a stream of incidents of domestic violence involving high-profile NFL players. In Superbowl LV, for the first time a female official, Sarah Thomas, was among the officiating crew, and several teams now employ female coaches on their staffs.
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| Until recently, the main contribution that women made to the NFL was as Cheerleaders. There are now several female TV presenters and commentators, and women are gradually being admitted as coaches and game officials |
In the thirty-five years that I have been following the game the
NFL has slowly changed and adapted, but for good or ill it remains quintessentially
American. As with other sports, American Football has its dark side, but as a
spectacle, especially when sitting high in the stands at a packed Wembley
stadium watching the razzle dazzle of a real NFL game, it is unbeatable. But which NFL team do I support? In general, one's sporting allegiances are imprinted from an early age, by family or peer influence or simple geography. I have long been condemned by these to supporting Kent County Cricket Club and Crystal Palace Football Club. However, I came to the NFL later in life, with no peer pressures and an imperfect understanding of the geography of the United States. Consequently, I have never adopted a franchise as my own - my perspective on the game matches the NFL's level playing field and I can watch each game as an interested neutral. But I do like it when the Patriots lose.
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| Watching the NFL is a serious business |
Recommended Reading
Bissinger H. G. (1990) Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team and a Dream.
Feinstein J (2004) Next Man Up: A Year behind the Lines in Today's NFL.
Kramer J (1968) Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer.
Lewis M (2006) The Blind Side.
McCambridge M (2005) America’s Game: The Epic Story of how Pro Football Captured a Nation.
Plimpton G (1964) Paper Lion.
