A question for American sports viewers

adexkola said:
Yes.

Football doesn't have any unique magic to it.
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But it is unique in certain aspects. The relative scarcity of goals makes it very different: a single goal is a hugely game-changing event, unlike in most other sports.

Doesn't mean other sports can't have dramatic and emotional moments, of course, but they're definitely different. Hard to imagine a last-second, dramatic winner in baseball.
 
Not NFL, but... (there’s 5 seconds left in the game when the play starts)



Me, my brother, and my dad all cried that night.
 
Carolina Red said:
Never heard of a “walk off”, eh?

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No, but reading about it, it's not quite the same: for starters, only the home team can win the game that way which immediately makes it vastly different from football.

Also, on an unrelated note: both cricket and baseball have some truly incomprehensible jargon.

A walk-off can be recorded in many ways, including: a hit, an error, a walk with the bases loaded, a hit by pitch with the bases loaded, a sacrifice fly, an out (with less than two outs in the inning), a wild pitch, a passed ball and a balk. As long as enough runs are scored to end the game as the result of the play, it is considered a walk-off.

In walk-off situations with fewer than two outs and a runner on third base, a visiting team will typically adjust its defense to maximize the chances of stopping a runner at home plate. The visitors typically bring the infield in, so the infielders are positioned closer to home plate. Sometimes, a manager will even bring one of his outfielders into the infield to maximize the chances of throwing home for an out on a ground ball. Outfielders will almost always play very shallow to have a chance at a double play on a flyout or to throw the runner out at home on a single.
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What. I understood the articles and prepositions there.
 
Siorac said:
No, but reading about it, it's not quite the same
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All you’d need to do is hit a walk off hit just once in your life and you’d understand. Not many feelings like it in the world.

It’s just as exciting when the away team wins on the final out though...
 
Obviously all sports will have dramatic moments - that's the beauty of sports. But football is definitely unique for the range of emotions it can induce and for its accessibility.

Baseball just seems to be like cricket with less skill and subtlety

Basketball can be fun but the NBA regular season is a drag and even within the good games I find the first three quarters redundant.

NFL games can be tense and the competitiveness with the league is admirable but the sport itself seems bland and inaccessible (who plays it casually?). I think that's why, apart from a few hipsters in the UK, no one outside the US care about it much.
 
VP said:
Obviously all sports will have dramatic moments - that's the beauty of sports. But football is definitely unique for the range of emotions it can induce and for its accessibility.

Baseball just seems to be like cricket with less skill and subtlety

Basketball can be fun but the NBA regular season is a drag and even within the good games I find the first three quarters redundant.

NFL games can be tense and the competitiveness with the league is admirable but the sport itself seems bland and inaccessible (who plays it casually?). I think that's why, apart from a few hipsters in the UK, no one outside the US care about it much.
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That's a lot of ignorance in a relatively short post.
 
VP said:
Obviously all sports will have dramatic moments - that's the beauty of sports. But football is definitely unique for the range of emotions it can induce and for its accessibility.

Baseball just seems to be like cricket with less skill and subtlety

Basketball can be fun but the NBA regular season is a drag and even within the good games I find the first three quarters redundant.

NFL games can be tense and the competitiveness with the league is admirable but the sport itself seems bland and inaccessible (who plays it casually?). I think that's why, apart from a few hipsters in the UK, no one outside the US care about it much.
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I'm pretty sure tons of Americans do. Sure, when you play with your friends on a field with just a ball and no protective equipment etc. it's quite different from the NFL but they still do it.

No doubt that football is more accessible overall but then that's probably why it's the most popular sport in the world.

I somewhat agree about basketball, you definitely need a different mindset compared to football to enjoy watching it. I wouldn't use the word redundant though.
 
Raoul said:
Its rarely as good as European footy imo. For instance, its next to impossible to top the two CL finals we won, or the last minute Owen winner against City, Macheda v Villa etc etc.. I'll bet most Pool and Spurs fans who watch US sports won't ever feel the same levels of exhilaration as they have over the past 24 hours.
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I’d say the Pats SB wins vs Seattle and Atlanta were at least comparable. But then I’m a Pats fan. Nothing will ever best our Bayern 1999 win though.
 
NFL games are so intriguing because a 14-0 lead can switch to a 14-28 deficit within a matter of minutes. They have plenty of late game drama as well. If Liverpool go up 2 against Huddersfield in the first 20 minutes, you can turn your TV off if you want to.

This week (Kompany's goal, Liverpool, Tottenham) might trick people into thinking that football is more exciting and entertaining than the NFL, but apart from the World Cup and the odd Champions League game here and there, it doesn't even come close for me.
 
Siorac said:
But it is unique in certain aspects. The relative scarcity of goals makes it very different: a single goal is a hugely game-changing event, unlike in most other sports.

Doesn't mean other sports can't have dramatic and emotional moments, of course, but they're definitely different. Hard to imagine a last-second, dramatic winner in baseball.
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Buzzer beaters are common in basketball and are extremely dramatic. Ice hockey can be too.

Football really isnt unique in terms of the magic/comeback side
 
Moby said:
How is that different from someone saying first half or first 60 minutes in a football match are redundant? Rubbish post.
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"Redundant" is a bad word to use but in a sense, his point is easy to understand.

In a football game, the game-winning, decisive contribution between two teams of similar strength can happen at any time. The only goal might be in the 2nd or 30th or 89th minute.

In basketball, a top class player might do something absolutely spectacular in the first quarter but it won't be the decisive contribution. In football, even an early goal is a huge thing because you know there might not be another (I'm sure you celebrated like a madman when Scholes scored against Barcelona). In handball or basketball, you know there will be many, many more goals/points.

So it's different. I'm not saying one is superior to the other but they are not the same. Depending on what you get out of watching sport, the first three quarters of a closely-fought basketball game CAN feel redundant to you. It isn't redundant, of course, but it can feel like that.
 
shamans said:
Buzzer beaters are common in basketball and are extremely dramatic. Ice hockey can be too.

Football really isnt unique in terms of the magic/comeback side
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That's why I brought up baseball, and not those sports.

Football isn't unique but the nature of its drama is different.
 
Siorac said:
In basketball, a top class player might do something absolutely spectacular in the first quarter but it won't be the decisive contribution.
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Eh? Plenty of games get decided in the first and especially in the third quarter. Just watch any Warriors game from the last 3 years to see how they use the third quarter to completely annihilate the opposition to a point of no return.
 
Lived in Chicago for 10 years as a kid, before work brought the family back to the UK. The lack of scoring in football frustrates the casual US fan. They don't get that the difficulty of scoring is what makes every goal so important, don't get the nuance of a tight high quality battle with defense having the upper hand. I always told them that they needed to play to understand that the relative rarity of scoring is what makes football so fun. Playing in matches where it ends 8-6 is usually pretty crap, you just know that the effort levels have not been there.

Basketball is my second sport, and the simplicity of the game lends itself to back and forth scoring. I used to hate it, considered it a sport for those with low attention spans(my grounding in football coming through) but have come to appreciate it.

US sports tend to be very much marketed on dominant individuals rather than teams, to the point where if a star players team wins when he is out, that will be used against him. Messi/Ronaldo discussions show the rest of the world starting to move in that direction.

I hated Baseball and American Football, Ice Hockey with its flow can be fun.
 
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RobinLFC said:
NFL games are so intriguing because a 14-0 lead can switch to a 14-28 deficit within a matter of minutes. They have plenty of late game drama as well. If Liverpool go up 2 against Huddersfield in the first 20 minutes, you can turn your TV off if you want to.

This week (Kompany's goal, Liverpool, Tottenham) might trick people into thinking that football is more exciting and entertaining than the NFL, but apart from the World Cup and the odd Champions League game here and there, it doesn't even come close for me.
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Really? Odd thing to hear from a European. I watched the NFL here and there and it's fun enough but the stop-start nature of it put me off.

And your example is not very convincing. Yeah, a 14-0 lead can switch within a matter of minutes. But do I have to tell a Liverpool fan that a 3-0 lead can be wiped out in a matter of minutes in football? Or did you just turn off your TV in 2005?

I mean, I understand that you personally find it more exciting but saying that if a team goes 2-0 up you can turn the TV off is weird.
 
Don't know about the other sports, but from what people have told me the NBA is pretty much like the National Korfball League only with all male players instead of half male half female mixed teams.
 
Moby said:
Eh? Plenty of games get decided in the first and especially in the third quarter. Just watch any Warriors game from the last 3 years to see how they use the third quarter to completely annihilate the opposition to a point of no return.
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Which is why I said close games.

A basketball game that ends 95-93 is not decided by a magical three-pointer or solo effort in the first quarter. A football game that ends 1-0 with an early goal is decided by that goal. That gives football games a certain tension that I miss when watching basketball.

When one team completely annihilates the other is a different scenario, one that is not much fun to watch in any sport, for me at least, unless you support (or hate) one of the teams.
 
The NFL is pretty consistently more dramatic for me as the teams are mostly more evenly matched and the playoffs every year serve up crazy scenarios. The season's so short every single game is really important.

sport2793 said:
Sure, the best example was the Patriots Seahawks super bowl where the Seahawks turned the ball over on the 1 yard line with 20 seconds left in the game. That was insane and I'm sure that Seahawks fans to this day have nightmares about the game.
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Can confirm.
 
In person, playoff hockey is about as good as it gets. And a college football game is the one I’d recommend to a foreign friend as a day trip.

The NFL has developed into an excellent TV product, especially with simultaneous games to break up the pacing.
 
Siorac said:
A basketball game that ends 95-93 is not decided by a magical three-pointer or solo effort in the first quarter.
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That makes no sense. Every point is added to the final score just as every goal is added to the final score, regardless of when it was scored.

I wasn't talking about complete annihilation. Loads of games teams start strongly at the start and get a good lead, which they just defend for the rest of the game. A game like that would end up close, but the winning team would have a bigger differential in the first quarter than any of the other ones, and probably even a deficit in the final quarter.

Nothing to suggest they are redundant or don't matter in the final result. That's a rubbish interpretation.
 
Moby said:
That makes no sense. Every point is added to the final score just as every goal is added to the final score, regardless of when it was scored.

I wasn't talking about complete annihilation. Loads of games teams start strongly at the start and get a good lead, which they just defend for the rest of the game. A game like that would end up close, but the winning team would have a bigger differential in the first quarter than any of the other ones, and probably even a deficit in the final quarter.

Nothing to suggest they are redundant or don't matter in the final result. That's a rubbish interpretation.
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But yet you can pick up a basketball game midway through the 3rd quarter and not miss anything of consequence the vast majority of the time.
 
Siorac said:
Really? Odd thing to hear from a European. I watched the NFL here and there and it's fun enough but the stop-start nature of it put me off.

And your example is not very convincing. Yeah, a 14-0 lead can switch within a matter of minutes. But do I have to tell a Liverpool fan that a 3-0 lead can be wiped out in a matter of minutes in football? Or did you just turn off your TV in 2005?

I mean, I understand that you personally find it more exciting but saying that if a team goes 2-0 up you can turn the TV off is weird.
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I don't do that, for the record, I just meant you can predict the outcome as Huddersfield is never coming back from that. Erasing a 14-point lead is weekly business in the NFL. Like I said, the odd CL game where a 3-0 deficit is turned around or games like yesterday and the night before top NFL games for me, but your standard Premier League game not involving Liverpool is just a pass-time for me, e.g. I watched Utd-Chelsea recently and it's not like I was really entertained by that.

I agree that a full length NFL game can be pretty boring at times but I only watch full games in the playoffs, otherwise RedZone is where it's at - constant action combined with your own Fantasy team to compete against friends really is top notch entertainment for me, great fun.
 
Moby said:
And very incorrectly, as well.
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You just don't want to consider a different perspective other than your own.
Moby said:
That makes no sense. Every point is added to the final score just as every goal is added to the final score, regardless of when it was scored.

I wasn't talking about complete annihilation. Loads of games teams start strongly at the start and get a good lead, which they just defend for the rest of the game. A game like that would end up close, but the winning team would have a bigger differential in the first quarter than any of the other ones, and probably even a deficit in the final quarter.

Nothing to suggest they are redundant or don't matter in the final result. That's a rubbish interpretation.
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Yes, every point is added to the final score, obviously. No one said they don't MATTER in the final result. What I'm saying is that you won't get a single decisive contribution in the first quarter of a basketball game because that's simply not how the game works.

Yes, everything that happens still matters. But, to me, that still does not compare to knowing that the single goal I see might have decided the entire game. Again, we're talking subjective perspectives here. About things we enjoy about sport. Please try to understand that this is not some sort of attack on basketball, merely a reflection on the differences of the two sports.

If I tune in to a football game at the 80th minute at 1-0, there's a good chance I missed the most important, decisive, game-winning contribution. If I tune in to a basketball game in the middle of the last quarter with no more than a few points separating the teams, the game-winning contribution is still ahead of us.
 
Siorac said:
What I'm saying is that you won't get a single decisive contribution in the first quarter of a basketball game because that's simply not how the game works.
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This is the part that is incorrect, not a matter of perspective but simply factually incorrect. Plethora of games to contradict that.
 
RobinLFC said:
I don't do that, for the record, I just meant you can predict the outcome as Huddersfield is never coming back from that. Erasing a 14-point lead is weekly business in the NFL. Like I said, the odd CL game where a 3-0 deficit is turned around or games like yesterday and the night before top NFL games for me, but your standard Premier League game not involving Liverpool is just a pass-time for me, e.g. I watched Utd-Chelsea recently and it's not like I was really entertained by that.

I agree that a full length NFL game can be pretty boring at times but I only watch full games in the playoffs, otherwise RedZone is where it's at - constant action combined with your own Fantasy team to compete against friends really is top notch entertainment for me, great fun.
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Yeah, well, no wonder. We're both shit. But I have seen games between shit NFL teams and those were boring, too. It's not like there aren't NFL games which basically consist of both teams punting the ball away after getting nowhere in three tries.

And I'm sure there are NFL games where the superior team blows away the shitty one that has no chance of coming back. Maybe less often, but that's mostly down to the differences in the system, not the sport itself: the NFL is way more egalitarian than the aristocratic European football.
 
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