The least interesting thing about the New England Patriots game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Wembley Stadium in London on Sunday was the game itself.
It was over almost before it started. When Pats safety Brandon Meriweather intercepted a horrible pass by Bucs quarterback Josh Johnson and ran untouched into the end zone, it was clear that Tampa did not deserve to play on the same field as the Patriots.
The Patriots ended up winning 35-7. The game was completely unwatchable. The real story was not the players on the field, but the reaction of the fans in Wembley.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has publicly floated the idea of expanding to two NFL games in London next season, and is even considering holding the Super Bowl in the U.K. sometime in the future. For the league, this game was another test of how their progress expanding into a foreign market is going.
The Boston Globe sent veteran reporter Dan Shaughnessy to London to cover the game. In his article, titled, ‘Game is just not cricket,’ Shaughnessy argued that American football ‘will never be global.’
‘Our football is neither basketball nor futbol,’ Shaughnessy said in the column. ‘Kids in Europe and South America are not going to grow up playing Pop Warner, dreaming of Friday Night Lights.’
Even though the international games have been a huge economic windfall for the NFL, Shaughnessy is right in noting that right now, American football simply can’t become as popular worldwide as it is in the U.S. Yes, there were 85,000 fans at Wembley on Sunday. But Brendan Gallagher of London’s Daily Telegraph notes that many were there for the sideshow, not the product.
Gallagher said the Wembley game ‘was, as much as anything, a celebration of Americana.’ He compares the fans that came out to Wembley to ‘the wildebeest coming together in the Serengeti.’
Clearly, the attendance figures of the game were driven in some respect simply by British curiosity. Moving a franchise or expanding to more games would slowly erode the novelty, leaving the NFL with a franchise in a city where it is the not the most popular sport and its fans don’t have a strong handle on the game.
The NFL can seemingly do no wrong when it comes to business decisions. Goodell has reinforced a wholesome image in the league by emphasizing good behavior, and the NFL has stayed financially lucrative while avoiding the credibility issues that steroids brought to the MLB.
Maybe it’s because of all that success that Goodell and the owners are considering a London franchise or a London Super Bowl despite the inevitably negative reactions from fans, players and coaches. The NFL has not failed in anything for a long time, and that has created overconfidence which has the league considering making a huge mistake.
Although he fairly criticized the NFL’s expansion ideas, Shaughnessy is wrong to think that the NFL can never have an international following. It is true that the NFL won’t ever replace soccer in the U.K. But, as Goodell told Shaughnessy, just because a sport is third or fourth behind other leagues doesn’t mean it can’t be successful.
Shaughnessy’s argument that the U.K. will never be an American football market is vaguely reminiscent of John Silber’s reasoning that BU will never be a football school when he pulled the plug on the BU football team in 1997. Although Shaughnessy is criticizing a lucrative business and Silber ended a failing one, both arguments are shortsighted.
What Silber didn’t realize was investing in the program would breed winning, generate interest and ideally generate money. The model worked for the hockey team when Agganis Arena went up, and will hopefully work for the men’s basketball team by new coach Pat Chambers injecting enthusiasm into the student body. Granted, finding a winning formula isn’t that simple, and there were plenty of other reasons the program was pulled, but just because the fans weren’t coming to Nickerson doesn’t mean they couldn’t be brought back.
Similarly, Shaughnessy assumes that just because the British aren’t as passionate about American football as we are, there’s no way to win them over. There is, it just would take time and a bit of luck.
What struck me about the game in London this weekend was not the number of fans in Wembley or their enthusiasm, but the number of different jerseys they were wearing. The problem the NFL has in bringing its product to the U.K. is the British fan base has no team to unify behind, and the only thing that could give a fan base that unifying force is an international NFL superstar to create interest. Yao Ming did it for the NBA in China and Ichiro Suzuki did it for the MLB in Japan.
The NFL has been trying to set this pattern into motion by using Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez as a vehicle to galvanize its Hispanic fan base. The problem is that Sanchez is a rookie. He’s got a ways to go before becoming a superstar, as he showed when he threw five interceptions two weeks ago against the Buffalo Bills. But the league is at least on the right track.
While there’s no way to predict the emergence of a gifted player abroad, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible and it certainly doesn’t mean the NFL should abandon its vision of international expansion. But until there is a European superstar who makes his way to the NFL, the commissioner needs to put his vision for raucous British hooligans singing songs and sloshing pints on each other at an American football game on hold and focus on the game here at home.
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