There is nothing in the world of sports quite like a good football game. In most other countries of the globe, soccer is by far more popular. But this is probably only because they don't have their kids play football. It's a truly American phenomenon, and there are a lot of reasons why.
You really can't play football unless you're really big. Getting a lot of really big guys in a society means the society as a whole has to eat a lot of food. As a matter of fact, if you go back just 20 years in the NFL, football players, although still quite a bit bigger than almost everyone else, were much smaller than they are now. The typical professional offensive lineman is 6 foot 5 inches and around 325 pounds. That's not just big, that is freaking huge. And in order to get enough guys that big who can also move, you've got to have a lot of big guys running around in their teens all over the country.
That's why you're probably never going to see very many football games in the Middle East, for example. You might be able to get a few fellows out of Germany or France, but even those societies just don't grow them as big as they do in Texas to say the least. But even a rabbit food munching state like Oregon turns out some really big fellows. With such a big pool of large men to draw from, football is more suited to them than a sport like swimming.
Apart from raw size, football also requires a rather large investment in equipment and other infrastructure before it can even be practiced properly. You can't run around on a dirt lot and get very good at it. And besides the equipment, you also can't get to an elite level of play without practicing with dozens of other players. There are very few football drills you can do by yourself, so a group of even 10 friends who love the sport are going to be hard pressed to really do much more than mimic an actual game.
But perhaps the biggest difference in football from other sports is the vast rule set that goes along with it. It's a whole lot more than men the size of bulls running into each other at top speed. Every single play requires a coordination of elements generally reserved for machines. It is 22 men being in very precise positions and then running to several other positions as fast as they can.
If you don't particularly like watching sports, it's probably likely that if you were stuck having to watch just one sport for the day you could live with a football game. Especially if it was the Super Bowl - everybody loves the commercials.
Bruce Wagner is a life-long sports enthusiast. When not watching football from the safety of his couch, he enjoys collecting Ansel Adams prints, golfing, and gardening.
