Posted on 02/03/2008 7:55:25 PM PST by Wil H
Roger Goodell just presented the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the Super Bowl Champions and called them "World Champions"
How do you get to be WORLD Champions of a purely domestic competition?
I mean,Goodell is Commissioner of the NATIONAL Football League, What part of NATIONAL doesn't he understand?
Is American Football a world sport or not?
If it is, where else is it played? And why aren't those other countries included in the "World Championship"?
If it is a purely an American sport, then clearly being "World Champions" is a meaningless label and a crass arrogance. You might as well declare yourselves "Inter Galactic Champions", it would mean as much.
Ah, you argue, there isn't anyone who could beat our teams so therefore we are World Champions.
That argument doesn't hold water - If you are going declare a Champion on the basis of the form book then give the trophy to the Patriots -they clearly are superior on paper to the NY Giants who needed a wild card to even get to the Super Bowl. Besides, if you are going to confer titles based on the form book it rather negates the necessity of playing the game in the first place, doesn't it?
I've competed on foreign soil and have participated in National, European, Far Eastern, and World Championships. Competing abroad puts an entirely new dimesion and level of stress on whatever event you participate in.
Calling the winners of a purely domestic competition run by a purely domestic organization, with no international participation, or component, whatsoever "World Champions" is a total fraud.
There is a big difference in being "best in the world" and "World Champions". The best in the world don't always win the "World Championship" - just go to the Patriot's locker room right now and I'm sure they would agree.
If you know of any football team from around the world who can compete in he NFL, I’d like to hear about them.
Ya think?
that's a very "US-centric" comment.
Trust me, The Super Bowl doesn't get anything like the coverage The World Cup does world wide.
If you think the opposite you are deluding yourself.
Goodell claimed a TV audience of 900 million would watch the Super Bowl. I suspect that is considerably over inflated. Even if everyone in the US watched (which they didn't) you would still have to find another 600 million people worldwide sufficiently interested in a peculiarly American, and difficult to understand if you are not knowledgeable, game.
India, China, Japan, Eastern Europe, the Middle and Far East and Australia were all asleep while the game was on, that leaves soccer mad Western Europe, Canada, and South America as your target market. - You ain't going to find 600 million there.
Note also, when it comes to hyping attendance figures, Mr Goodell was actually quite modest when compared to Al Gore, who claimed TWO BILLION watched "Live Earth"
TV ratings and internet statistics could only account for 2% of his claimed participation, so the NFL's projections are a tad more believable...
What?
What on Earth is the basis for that ridiculous claim?
PS Perhaps you could explain why these supposed "athletes" who never have to perform a play for a more than 10 seconds at a time, were having cramp problems that required their coaches to get bananas to them in an effort to replenish their potassium levels?
I mean, how unfit are you if you can't perform for ten seconds and then get a 30 second break to recover?
It took four hours to play out a one hour play clock, and a large percentage of that was run down at the beginning and end of plays, so for over 75% of the time they WERE JUST STANDING AROUND!
The NBA is "so careful" to seat the parole officers on the bench with the players.
I am sure that every soccer player from every 3rd world country could dance a ball around the players of the NFL, but lets see them take on a full tilt tackle and be thrown to the ground, every play, for a game.
You sound like you do not think much of the game of football. That’s fine with me. This is still a free country and you have a right to your opinion. Your original post put forth the question as to “How to you get to be WORLD Champions of the NATIONAL Football League” when you are only playing teams from other parts of the same nation? I reply, and stand by my answer, that the NFL will hire anyone who can play the game, no matter where the individual is from or what country they call home. Remember the soccer players who came to the NFL just to be on special teams as kickers?
Our professional sports are open to the world and as long as they can be in the U.S. legally and do the job, the franchises will make the individual player rich, AS LONG AS THEY CAN PERFORM.
That is why professional sports titles, with AMERICAN sports, held in the United States can rightly be called “World Championships”, because the best will come here to get paid to play.
Deal with it, my friend.
So what? It's "horses for courses" a marathon runner is never going to win an Olympic gold for weightlifting, and a weight lifter isn't going to win an Olympic marathon. Neither is better or worse than the other, they are just tuned to a specific sport. Likewise with Soccer an American Football, both are atheletes but are conditioned for different environments.
As for the "World Championship" claim, it is just symptomatic of trying to hype a very small tournament into something that it isn't. What does it take to win the Super Bowl? Not much - 16 teams play a four round playoff series to determine a winner. That's not much of a tournament. Compare it to the English FA Cup (in its 137th year) which is a separate, but parallel, competition from League matches.
731 teams entered the competition last year, there are two preliminary rounds, then four qualifying rounds, then six Main Rounds followed by a semi final round and a final.
The smaller teams start at the preliminary rounds and the semi professional teams get added in at various stages until the top two professional divisions join at the third round proper. There is no seeding and it throws up some fascinating David v Goliath matches. Winning the FA Cup is an achievement to be proud of, but it is only regarded as a National Trophy.
Fine.
When Spain, Australia and Zambia get American football teams and they want to compete against US American football teams, then will you be happy?
Until then, the NFL Champions will continue to be WORLD champions without having to compete with other nations BECAUSE the other teams DO NOT EXSIST.
If there was only ONE TEAM in the world that played 43-Man Squamish, then they would be WORLD CHAMPIONS AT 43-MAN SQUAMISH!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43-Man_Squamish
I would suggest your next step is to sue the NFL for improperly using (according to your lexicon) the meaning of the words “World Champions”.
Have a nice night.
Yes They do, there is the Canadian Football league for starters, and there was, for a few years, a European League with teams in Spain England and who knows where else.
We'll just have to agree to differ.
By your own admission you don't have a world sport.
Personally I don't think you can be "World Champion" of a sport that has no international component. If you choose to call yourselves such then it is extremely shallow and the only ones you are deluding are yourselves.
Your logic is almost clintonian in defense of your claim..:-)
As I stated in my original posting, there is a difference in being best in the world and being World Champions. They are two different things.
What you are basically saying is “We have this World Championship, and if you are good enough to play in it, you have to come here because we don’t let any other countries take part in it”...
What kind of competition is that?
Nascar, which has a bigger worldwide TV following than the NFL, has drivers and crew from all over the World, but doesn’t claim to be a World Championship.
Why not? Because it is - just like the NFL - a domestic competition between American teams held on American soil.
By Comparison Formula 1 is a Worldwide event. Open to teams from any country, 16 races in 16 countries between arguably the best drivers in the World watched live by a worldwide TV audience, with rabid followings in Italy, Brazil Japan, England and many other countries. It has a strong following in the US as well, especially in California. That is a World Championship.
The NFL is all about hype and the mighty dollar. Goodell announced last Wednesday evening at The Phoenician that the game would be watched by 900 Million yet the TV ratings came in at 98 Million for the US, which, while being an excellent number, raises the question where the hell are you going to find another 802 Million viewers worldwide?
Answer is you won’t, you might cumulatively put together another 98 million, but 802 million? No way, not even if persuaded everyone that it really WAS a World Championship..
And may I return the compliment that your logic is almost mccain-ian!
I made my point and you haven’t the ammunition to fire back.
Likewise with the election of the President of the United States of America, that position is widely acknowledged as being the most powerful IN THE WORLD. Can others from other nations compete for this job? No, although the democrats HAVE made the argument that such a powerful job SHOULD have the input of the entire world. And look at the Supreme Court judges who now want to base decisions on our Constitution on other country’s laws!
It (American football) is OUR game and if we want to call the best team the “world champions”, too bad!
In Baseball, we have a “World Series” and teams from the United States AND Canada compete! Does that make you feel better? If Japan wanted to compete, I am sure that MLB would consider teams there, too! The problem is that distance makes traveling and playing times unrealistic for our games there and their games here. In the mean time, we will just continue to hire THEIR best players and bring them here. Can you say Hideki Matsui? The team he played for in Japan was the Yomiuri Giants in Tokyo, a team that is nicknamed by those IN Japan, “The New York Yankee’s of Japan”!
Look, you have your views and the rest of the world has mine.
Ha! Just a little joke. No harm intended.
Now, if you pull that “clintonian” crap line again, I’ll meet you in back in the alley and we can have a more “intensive” discussion.
Thank you for the spirited debate.
Being an Arizonan, and ashamed to have McCain as a senator, your remark was, unwittingly, a low blow.....:-)
If you want to talk about other American Sports and their position as “World Champions” let’s talk Basketball, there are several nations represented in NBA just as there are in the NFL and MLB. And each year the winners of The NBA Playoffs jump up and down and pronounce themselves “World Champions”.
The trouble with that is - they are not!
Spain is the current World Champion of Basketball.
There is a World Championship held every 4 years sanctioned by the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) and Spain are the current (2006) champions.
However, USA are now the current number 1 ranked nation, followed by Argentina then Spain, so things are improving.
There are 73 countries in the FIBA rankings. If I remember correctly, the US loaded their 2006 squad with some serious talent for the competition but STILL didn’t win it.
Why do I bring this up? Because, while we all recognize that the NBA is the finest league in the world, it isn’t the ONLY source of talent. And while the NBA may attract the best from all over the world, it is a domestic league with it’s own domestic championship and that event should be called what it is, especially when there is already an International event for the whole world to challenge each other.
The same is true for the NFL. Yes, they are the best teams and the best talent, but you can’t have a World Championship where you exclude the rest of the world from competing.
That sounds more like Hitler’s Olympics to me
But, of course, if you want to call yourselves “World Champions” then go ahead, you can call yorselves what you damn well like, but it’s about as hollow a claim as John McCain calling himself a conservative.
“And while the NBA may attract the best from all over the world, ...”
That is the KEY to my argument with your original question of “How can any domestic team call themselves World Champions when they don’t compete internationally?” The question has been answered by you! The BEST of the world COME TO US to compete! The ONLY thing that keeps exceptional talent OUT of the NBA is repression and communist dictators like that in Cuba and Venezuela. What you have in US Professional sports is the equivalence of an elimination round IN ORDER TO COMPETE HERE. This is the free market system in action! Free enterprise is rewarding “the best” with opportunities to perform and prove that they ARE the best. Does that mean that other talent is ignored? Absolutely not! Other talent from across the globe is constantly scanned, inspected and recorded in order to give NBA teams the new talent to beat the other teams! Scouts fan out to the ends of the earth to find tomorrows super stars! They watch the FIBA teams like hawks (not the Atlanta Hawks!) to get a player that will smoke the hell out of the opposition. What you are saying is that because the team from Upper Volta is not allowed to play for the NBA World Champion title, then the title game has no meaning, you need to adjust your view of the world from that of a United Nations delegate, to that of reality.
Your example of the 2006 is what happens when you take big name players who are NOT used to playing on the same team, jam them together and expect gold. Give that same group of players nothing beyond the the title game and they would’ve blown the other teams out the doors! The ego clashes and attitude of “well, this ain’t like no REAL championship” is what doomed the team. They did not value the title of FIBA world champions.
A perfect example of YOUR type of competition would perhaps be the fiasco of the 1972 Summer Olympics for Basketball when a tight game was fought between the USA and USSR, in which the game, under the eyes of INTERNATIONAL judges, was played and REPLAYED until the USSR won. That one game in itself ruined the future of respect for international title games. The whole WORLD watched a theft by the USSR team and judges on live TV.
The NFL plays AMERICAN football. If other nations don’t like the sport enough to play the sport, there is no reason to force them to play. If, on the other hand, the NFL is successful in developing an substantial audience and following TO MAKE MONEY, then the NFL would branch out (as it has on several occasions) and establish franchises outside the US. It is the MONEY that individuals are willing to EARN that brings out the best. National pride is nice, but cash is better. Call me a crass capitalist or a mercenary, but truth is truth. Good soccer players from the US go to Europe to play and that is fine by me! Go for the gold while you can!
I could have called in the ref’s on the Clinton crack, but I can give it as good as I take it and “in your face” back at you with the McCain jab.
Let the record show that you were the first to introduce the specter of “Hitler” into what had previously been a civil discussion.
Comparisons between your opponent and ANYTHING having to do with Nazi Germany is, according to International Rules for Civil Debate, disqualification by hyperbole and ends the debate.
Therefore, I win.
(grin)
I wondered that too....same with the baseball “World” Series.
OK, I spell this out one more time, in fact I’ll type it slowly ‘cos you don’t seem to be able to read very fast...:-)
As I stated in the original posting,and repeated elsewhere, being the best in the world and being World Champions are not the same thing.
The best are not necessarily the World Champions. Underdogs win World Championships too.
To be World Champions requires one to win a World Championship, and a World Championship is a competition organized by the international sanctioning body of the sport in question.
For Soccer it is FIFA, they run the World Cup.
For Basketball it is FIBA, and for American Football it is IFAF.
OK, so you’ve never heard of IFAF, but it exists and it administers the game internationally including the sanctioning of international competitions. They claim American Football is played in 50 countries but I didn’t see any of the other 49 invited to compete for the Super Bowl.
But wait, I’ve figured out why the NFL does what it does.
It’s because American Football is a left wing, liberal, sport.
They call the Super Bowl winners “World Champions” because they want everyone to feel good, there are no losers in the NFL, everyone wins. College football is even worse - They VOTE the champions in there...
Just look at it, there are two conferences in the NFL - but they are equal, there’s no upper or lower division. At the end of the year they reward the crappiest teams in each conference with first round draft picks and punish the successful ones. Nobody ever gets relegated or promoted, and they stop the teams of reaching their full potential by imposing a salary cap. It’s all about re-distribution of wealth and mediocrity for all. So no wonder they crown themselves “World Champions” its good for self esteem even if they didn’t really earn it.
In soccer, you get relegated to a lower division if you are in the last three, and you are promoted if your are in the top three of your Division. The top teams of the top division are rewarded with participation in an additional international club competition the following season and all teams can strengthen their squads as their resources allow. Excellence is rewarded and failure has it’s consequences, it’s starkly capitalistic.
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