Globalization Hits the NFL

I read a post on ESPN.com a few minutes ago about the National Football League expanding its regular season schedule to 17 games. Now, we all know that the current season is 17 weeks long and each team enjoys one bye week, bringing each team's total of regular season games to 16.

The catch is, the NFL wants to take away the final pre-season game and make it a regular season game....except it is played in a foreign country.

Rightly so, the NFL doesn't want to take away a home game from 8 cities each season which would alienate the rabid fan base. But the League plainly wants to follow the international appeal of other sports for financial reasons. For example, a little known but scrappy reserve on the Denver Nuggets is a guy named Linas Kleiza, a second-year player originally from Lithuania. His fan base in Lithuania is huge, they love all Lithuanians who make it to the NBA, Ardonis Sabonis to name another.

The appeal of Yao Ming, Steve Nash and Dirk Nowitzki cannot be denied. They make their countrymen proud and sell TV rights and merchandise in untapped markets. China, Canada and Germany now tune in on a regular basis. Look at the San Antonio Spurs - Tim Duncan is from the Virgin Islands, Manu Ginobli and Francisco Omberto are from Argentina. Francisco Elson is from the Netherlands. Tony Parker is from France.

Major League Baseball is the same way. Players from Asia are all the rage these days. Latin players have enjoyed success and popularity for a long time in the sport.

Hockey.

Tennis.

Skiing, chess, pictionary, etc.

But those sports are actually PLAYED in other countries. American football is a curiosity, if not mostly an afterthought to Europeans. I saw American Sports bars in Amsterdam however (the Dutch rule). But somehow, it doesn't sit right with me sharing this with the rest of the world.

You know, we were forced, more or less, to share the secrets of splitting the atom with our wartime allies (albeit we weren't going to tell the Russians but they had spies in the Franklin Roosevelt White House Cabinet and found out anyway. Stalin stared daggers across the table in Yalta at Churchill and Roosevelt). But we needed their continued cooperation to ensure victory over the Germans and Japanese.

It is not so in this case.

Why should we let them in? They are only going to scoff and criticize (most of them, some will dig it and those guys are cool) and use it to bash us some more. But really, where the fuck would they be right now if it hadn't been for the USA?

From 1919 on, they would've been speaking German.

Fortunately, they had killed each other so much and we weighed in and got the Germans to go back. Almost quite literally, the Germans didn't lose a battle until the last year of World War I.

So Europe got lucky we came in. Then, they use that precarious pedestal and inflated bragadaccio to levy some of the harshest penalties in history upon the defeated nation, guaranteeing that hate and warmongering would fester. But the pompous asses sat there for twenty years and taxed the shit out of them and took all their raw materials, they chuckled as hyperinflation soared and mass starvation gripped Germany.

Then Hitler came along and ran over 13 countries in 3 years. England, the island, was lucky that Hitler decided to occupy Russia first. Good thing for the Brits 'ole Adolph was on meth during those decision-making days.

WHO was secretly supplying nearly ALL England, France and Russia's wartime material to fight the Nazis? WHO contributed scientists that cracked the German Enigma transmission code and won the war? WHO REBUILT THE SHIT WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING BUT RUBBLE?

AND WHO WAS NEVER PAID BACK?

........................................................................................................My point is, football is a sacred American tradition. It is (by far and away) the most profitable of the professional sports. They make billions of dollars in the USA alone. How much more fucking money do you need?

My beloved Giants are traveling to London this season. To a stadium crowd that is rumored to number 200,000. The G-men better bring a gondola, because the Dolphins will be able to safely swim out the rivers of piss that will be flowing in those London streets that night. I saw more English guys pissing and singing in public, I couldn't believe it. And friends that live in London tell me that pissing in the streets is a huge problem. Fucking disgusting. THIS from the people that INVENTED the toilet!

Roger Goodell, if your spies are combing football blogs, hear this message:

KEEP FOOTBALL HERE !!!!!!