Howcome Americans like NFL but not rugby?

Because I was born and raised around Football. Played it for years growing up. It’s one of the prominent sports when you go to high school as each high school has its own teams. Rugby doesn’t have that same advantage here. You don’t grow up playing it, you don’t join the high school Rugby team and so on.


I’ll also point out that American style football has much more strategy involved than any other sports. It can be very complex and if you’ve followed it and understood how to play it for many years it adds to the enjoyment of watching it. That’s why I’ve gotten turned off over the years by the NFL watering down the defensive side of the ball in the name of ‘player saftey’. It’s subtracted some of the complexity involved with playing that side of the ball.


In short, Football is like watching an awesome chess match unfold when you get the right teams/coaches playing one another.

Yeeeaahhh, that is horseshit...
 
Yeeeaahhh, that is horseshit...
Let's see your list of strategic sports then.
There are many plays and routes to remember. Not to mention every team has their own playbook full of cryptic names to keep other teams from figuring them out. It's incredibly strategic and I would love to see something that takes more game knowledge to compete at an incredibly high level.
 
Always wondered, in recent years rugby in the USA is more prominent than before, and watching/supporting rugby wouldn't take away from watching NFL. Im not arguing which one is better here (rugby obviously), but howcome both sports aren't as big?

Considering they both involve fucking machines smashing into each other to get a ball?

Ireland are playing New Zealand right now- and it is an amazing game. 110 tackles made in the first 17 minutes, and in rugby you can only tackle the guy with the ball...

Same reason NFL isn't big outside the US. You don't have any teams.

Hard for me to watch Australian rules football, without a team to root for.

The Seattle Sounders are huge here in Seattle. Americans hate soccer, until they have a winning team to root for.

European soccer leagues are vastly superior to MLS, and yet far more Americans watch MLS than Euro soccer.
 
Same reason NFL isn't big outside the US. You don't have any teams.

Hard for me to watch Australian rules football, without a team to root for.

The Seattle Sounders are huge here in Seattle. Americans hate soccer, until they have a winning team to root for.

European soccer leagues are vastly superior to MLS, and yet far more Americans watch MLS than Euro soccer.

There have been a few attempts to get pro rugby in the US of the ground, the last one was pretty terrible and died pretty quick...the latest one is Major League Rugby, started this year, and it seems like it might have a shot at some long-term growth. Unlike the other ones it's working closely with existing rugby clubs and support bases in the US and Canada I read. But it could take 20+ years to even start approaching anything like the MLS, but I am sure it started with small beginnings as well. The Seattle Seawolves are the current champs.

Of course, it's probably a pretty abysmal standard of rugby right now, but hope it does well in the future.
 
Yeah I agree fully I was trying to trigger some yanks to be honest

It's culture I think, you lot grow up playing American football / wrestling / basketball or baseball
So if you excelled or enjoyed playing it, naturally you're gonna enjoy watching it

All 4 of those are lost on Brits completely
However our 'school sports' are cricket, football and rugby
And if you lot tried to watch cricket or rugby .. damm you'd pull your hair out

For sure. I was trying to explain American football to a European friend of mine, and at some point, it hit me that I may as well had been teaching a class. The number of positions, their variants, what they primarily do, types of defense/offense formations and why, etc...and then the rules and penalties. I don't see how people that didn't grow up with it can get into without a lot of effort.

Maybe you just watched a boring match. I don't watch the English Premiership at all anyway really. In rugby you are equally guaranteed some big, exciting plays. E.g. last night:

And also yes, maybe part of it was just not understanding what you were watching. But like any sport you can dull games from time to time.

A bit of all of that. I will say that it seems to share the same flaw in American football in that the refs play such a big part and take up time. I'd also say that American football sets itself up for more watchability having the forward pass. I think the lack of that adds to why it's hard to watch Rugby as an American. That said, it looks fun to play and I'd like to try it even at a slow, recreational level.
 
It's not ingrained in the culture. Most Americans don't understand what the hell they're watching when Rugby is on. Simple as that. Same reason they like Baseball, but not Cricket.
 
I watch fooball every sunday its the best sport fun to watch. I have sundays off

I hate baseball, boring, and boring to play, but its also the most difficult sport its hard to hit those fast pitches and change ups.

Basketball used to be my shit but too many narcissistic players today, i prefer playing basketball or shooting hoops than watching.

We dont watch rugby because they dont show it on tv or play it in the majority of high schools.
 
Let's see your list of strategic sports then.
There are many plays and routes to remember. Not to mention every team has their own playbook full of cryptic names to keep other teams from figuring them out. It's incredibly strategic and I would love to see something that takes more game knowledge to compete at an incredibly high level.

I mean rugby also many plays and routes to remember.....

But I do agree that NFL playbooks are particularly thick, because that's how the game has evolved. It's so stop-start, and because each play takes place from a dead-stop, that gives coaches the chance to run plays every single time. The whole thing is so controlled by coaches and offensive/defensive coordinators.

Rugby is also very strategic, but it is also much more organic than NFL. Teams play within an overall structure which provides the basic shape of play; pod-systems, attacking patterns, support runners and so on, for example 2-4-2 or 1-3-3-1 formations would be the two most common. Play doesn't stop every time, there is a continual flow to the game...these formations and systems provide the overall structure, but there are multiple options within this and a lot of decision making based on what happens in the game.

When play does stop dead - either from a knock-on (fumble to yanks), or from going into touch (out of bounds) - then there is the option for strike moves. As in NFL these will also have various cryptic names and calls so the other team does not know what's coming. In high school we had plays with calls like "Ocean 13 left" etc. If a scrum happens and the number 10 (fly-half/out-half, the rugby equivalent to a quarterback, the player who makes the decisions and sets the tempo) shouted that call you would need to know what position you needed to get into, what line you need to run to hold the defender in front of you. Usually this will give the 10 multiple passing options depending on how he reads the defense in front of him (are there players out of position, whether it's a blitz defensive or drift etc.). Sometimes as a runner you know you will not even be getting the ball on a particular move but you need to make the run/correct route with full conviction in order to sell it to the defense and hold the defender in front of you. There are a lot of moving parts. Just like in the NFL.

I have already posted a video analysing one particular move, but here's more examples:





@WandySaku2 this may interest you as well

@DeJulez
 
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For sure. I was trying to explain American football to a European friend of mine, and at some point, it hit me that I may as well had been teaching a class. The number of positions, their variants, what they primarily do, types of defense/offense formations and why, etc...and then the rules and penalties. I don't see how people that didn't grow up with it can get into without a lot of effort.

A bit of all of that. I will say that it seems to share the same flaw in American football in that the refs play such a big part and take up time. I'd also say that American football sets itself up for more watchability having the forward pass. I think the lack of that adds to why it's hard to watch Rugby as an American. That said, it looks fun to play and I'd like to try it even at a slow, recreational level.

That's true about the refs unfortunately, a bad ref can bascially ruin a game of rugby union.

I don't agree about the forward pass, but I suppose that's just personal preference. I would rather watch a slick try where the ball goes through lots of different hands than watch a quarterback throw a really long bomb (though that is exciting too). My favourite part of NFL is actually the running backs, which says something as well perhaps. I suppose it does come down to culture like people have said. I used to be really into NFL, watched it religiously every Sunday when I was like 15/16, but I kind of grew out of it. I still enjoy highlights, but couldn't watch a whole game.

Like you say about the tactics, strategies and different penalties...it's somewhat similar with rugby too and that might be initially off-putting to casual viewers. I think anyone can enjoy it though, don't get me wrong.
 
Rugby isn't entertaining.
 
Let's see your list of strategic sports then.
There are many plays and routes to remember. Not to mention every team has their own playbook full of cryptic names to keep other teams from figuring them out. It's incredibly strategic and I would love to see something that takes more game knowledge to compete at an incredibly high level.

You are coming from a lack of understanding of most other sports. I played football, I do follow it. I understand the strategic implications. Not claiming I am THE capacity in regards to football strategy, however, your first hint would be: your team`s strategy fits in a book... And I don´t know how a finite amount of things to remember by name makes anything more strategic. Only because you have time during the broadcasts to overanalyse every single move on the screen and paint arbitrary lines, does not make football more or less strategic than any other sport.

The variety of strategies and organisational tactics of high level soccer, as an example, absolutely dwarfs football.
 
I mean rugby also many plays and routes to remember.....

But I do agree that NFL playbooks are particularly thick, because that's how the game has evolved. It's so stop-start, and because each play takes place from a dead-stop, that gives coaches the chance to run plays every single time. The whole thing is so controlled by coaches and offensive/defensive coordinators.

Rugby is also very strategic, but it is also much more organic than NFL. Teams play within an overall structure which provides the basic shape of play; pod-systems, attacking patterns, support runners and so on, for example 2-4-2 or 1-3-3-1 formations would be the two most common. Play doesn't stop every time, there is a continual flow to the game...these formations and systems provide the overall structure, but there are multiple options within this and a lot of decision making based on what happens in the game.

When play does stop dead - either from a knock-on (fumble to yanks), or from going into touch (out of bounds) - then there is the option for strike moves. As in NFL these will also have various cryptic names and calls so the other team does not know what's coming. In high school we had plays with calls like "Ocean 13 left" etc. If a scrum happens and the number 10 (fly-half/out-half, the rugby equivalent to a quarterback, the player who makes the decisions and sets the tempo) shouted that call you would need to know what position you needed to get into, what line you need to run to hold the defender in front of you. Usually this will give the 10 multiple passing options depending on how he reads the defense in front of him (are there players out of position, whether it's a blitz defensive or drift etc.). Sometimes as a runner you know you will not even be getting the ball on a particular move but you need to make the run/correct route with full conviction in order to sell it to the defense and hold the defender in front of you. There are a lot of moving parts. Just like in the NFL.

I have already posted a video analysing one particular move, but here's more examples:





@WandySaku2 this may interest you as well


Great post.

I don´t know why people would think a sport where you execute a 8 second action plan coordinating 11 people with one pass and a couple of options is strategically superior to other sports. While other sports do similar things on a continuous basis without having an executive meeting before every play.
 
Football is awesome. Getting ready to watch Texans vs Redskins.
<Watt1>
 
I have watched the occasional rugby match as I have French friends, but Murrcan football? Fuck that shit life is too short. The game is always stopped it seems.
 
I prefer rugby league to union. I do like NFL but think it would actually be a better game to watch if it was all no huddle offences.
 
I prefer rugby league to union. I do like NFL but think it would actually be a better game to watch if it was all no huddle offences.

League is great too, I think league and union both offer different takes on the same basic ideas of 'rugby'. They are pretty different, but both good in their own ways I think...
 
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