@Ragman,
Basically Ragman NFL derives from the Eton wall game and rendered spectator friendly. Marketed in other words.
From the evidence of my eyes I would say that the marketing has been successful because it concentrated on certain basic features of the barbarian temperament. The main ones being, according to the experts, predation by force and cunning, systems of mastery and subservience, devout observances and sports and which not a few claim to be signs of arrested development.
The success is objective evidence of the depth of these temperamental proclivities in any given population and any such success in England will signify a drift into barbarianism.
The trouble is that the cunning aspects of the predatory drive upfield necessitates the use of a ball which is not photogenic. Only last week I saw a player stopped inches from a touchdown who turned out not to have the ball. The ball was in the corner in the hands of a chap doing a war dance in the endzone and grinning sheepishly. If the defense didn't know who had the ball what chance the spectators?
We have a white ball especially so that everybody in the stadium and at home can see it and follow its every movement. Football fans here would not be content to sit through 90 odd minutes bellowing at the top of their lungs and waving a rag around not knowing where the ball is. They want to "Whhoooo" and "Aahhhh" at every significant move it makes. Your stadia sound like a giant electricity generator. Ours are more the soughing of the waves.
Big time modern sport succeeds by what atavistic traits it tickles. I bet if you compared the sound frequencies of the voices in NFL commentaries with those of the average man they would be in a lower register, larger cojones, and the words chosen and inflected to get closer to growling.
Whether it is over-compensation, at the harmless level, for the ongoing feminisation of society I am undecided about. From other things they say they seem like pussycats albeit big ones.
