Being a fan - the European perspective

[mano de dios]

(I  didn't really know where to put this thread. Feel free to move it if it fits somewhere else)

First off: I know I hardly ever posted around here and there is something like the 50-post-rule, but I didn't want to post random chatter and on the other hand I'm a frequent reader to this and the old board. Furthermore I already wanted to start this series of threads during the offseason, but never got to it. So I hope it's ok to discuss this:

Being myself from Germany I think there are a lot of differences for Europeans in their approach to loving football. How they get to know it, how they find their team, how they follow what happens. I think that my experiences are somewhat typical for Football lovers outside the US.
What I want to discuss is how the guys from this side of the pond experience this difference and what the Americans think about this.

With that said, hey ho, let's go:

Being a fan - the European perspective. Part I: Getting to know and love the game

Being a kid of the eighties my first contact with this sports came through a sundays weekly sports show which - from time to time - had a little feature about americans sports, presented by a guy with the interesting name of Ben Wett and a thick american accent. So I heard about a guy called Joe Montana who threw a strange-looking Ball through the Californian winter sun.  As everybody I was - and still am of course - into soccer, so I didn't care much, but was really intrigued by the stadiums and the crowds.
Everything changed for me with the invention of the World League (WLOF) in 1991 and the TV-coverage of it. But still it was a very small niche and that's my point here:

Growing up here was - and still is - in an environment without hardly any mainstream media coverage of the sport. You only find something if You're already interested in it. If You were or are a  12-year-old kid You don't know and learn anything about it.
So football has for me some kind of exotic mysticism. Even so I watch my Bengals and the Redzone Channel every sunday, follow online media every day, I still feel some kind of fairytale fascination towards it (well, especially this season so far, but that's something different), because it's something out of the world I live in. I am pretty sure, that kind of feeling doesn't aply for people growing up in the US.

What derives from this fascination ist that I really like to watch almost every game, even it's one between really boring teams with no Bengals-implications i.e. Titans vs. Jags or whatever. I am home at night and have access to Akron vs. Iowa? Put it on! This is different for me with soccer: I love that game, but soccer is everywhere around me. I don't watch a 2nd league matchup between boring teams.

This leads me to some kind of a  thesis - and correct me, if I am wrong:
I think people with a background like this (and I am sure I am more the rule than an exception for European football fans) appreciate the GAME more than the American fans, because we're not surrounded by it 24/7.


But maybe I am pompous and after all the game of Football is just more interesting than soccer...

[*rfaulk34*]

(10-17-2015, 12:14 PM)mano de dios Wrote: (I  didn't really know where to put this thread. Feel free to move it if it fits somewhere else)

First off: I know I hardly ever posted around here and there is something like the 50-post-rule, but I didn't want to post random chatter and on the other hand I'm a frequent reader to this and the old board. Furthermore I already wanted to start this series of threads during the offseason, but never got to it. So I hope it's ok to discuss this:

Being myself from Germany I think there are a lot of differences for Europeans in their approach to loving football. How they get to know it, how they find their team, how they follow what happens. I think that my experiences are somewhat typical for Football lovers outside the US.
What I want to discuss is how the guys from this side of the pond experience this difference and what the Americans think about this.

With that said, hey ho, let's go:

Being a fan - the European perspective. Part I: Getting to know and love the game

Being a kid of the eighties my first contact with this sports came through a sundays weekly sports show which - from time to time - had a little feature about americans sports, presented by a guy with the interesting name of Ben Wett and a thick american accent. So I heard about a guy called Joe Montana who threw a strange-looking Ball through the Californian winter sun.  As everybody I was - and still am of course - into soccer, so I didn't care much, but was really intrigued by the stadiums and the crowds.
Everything changed for me with the invention of the World League (WLOF) in 1991 and the TV-coverage of it. But still it was a very small niche and that's my point here:

Growing up here was - and still is - in an environment without hardly any mainstream media coverage of the sport. You only find something if You're already interested in it. If You were or are a  12-year-old kid You don't know and learn anything about it.
So football has for me some kind of exotic mysticism. Even so I watch my Bengals and the Redzone Channel every sunday, follow online media every day, I still feel some kind of fairytale fascination towards it (well, especially this season so far, but that's something different), because it's something out of the world I live in. I am pretty sure, that kind of feeling doesn't aply for people growing up in the US.

What derives from this fascination ist that I really like to watch almost every game, even it's one between really boring teams with no Bengals-implications i.e. Titans vs. Jags or whatever. I am home at night and have access to Akron vs. Iowa? Put it on! This is different for me with soccer: I love that game, but soccer is everywhere around me. I don't watch a 2nd league matchup between boring teams.

This leads me to some kind of a  thesis - and correct me, if I am wrong:
I think people with a background like this (and I am sure I am more the rule than an exception for European football fans) appreciate the GAME more than the American fans, because we're not surrounded by it 24/7.


But maybe I am pompous and after all the game of Football is just more interesting than soccer...

Not pompous at all. I think the NFL has that effect on a lot of fans. Being a Bengals fan for 35+ years, i can't get enough of them when they're winning, and i'm still there every week when they're not (the '90s o_O). But, like you, i can watch any NFL game, no matter the teams, from beginning to end and get a lot of satisfaction from it. The only other sport for me that comes close to this is college basketball. 

Welcome to the Bengals Nation!

[mallorian69]

My love of all things football has led me to watching the LFL during the summer just so I can get my football fix.

[Emphasis]

It's great to come across fans from anywhere on the globe. On a smaller scale, I get very excited when I come across a fellow Bengals supporter in NYC. It's really something when someone shouts "Who Dey!" when they see you walking past wearing a Bengals beanie, on a Queens, NY street.  


OP, have you ever been able to attend a Bengals game?

[GreenCornBengal]

Awesome post, I disagree with your thesis though!

I think there are those that appreciate football just as you do (I am one of those people). I can watch any game and find a way for it to be exciting. Good offense, good defense, bad offense, bad defense, both teams terrible, I enjoy it all.

I've never had a fascination with any European sport, so it's hard to fathom liking something that the majority of the public knows nothing about. Living in the United States, you will see people from various different fanbases, and its easy to find someone to strike up a conversation with (most of the time). It would be strange to not have that. So I can definitely understand the 'mysticism' for you. It's like a hidden secret gem that nobody else enjoys, and you are lucky to have it.

Anyways, I think the majority of people in North America aren't as in love with the game as you may imagine because there are many other sports as well. In North America we are loaded with so many different outlets that people hardly ever get invested into one single sport. I am the only person I know who follows football only. Other friends of mine have a football team, basketball team, hockey team and even a baseball team. So many different things to be invested in, that they cannot love football as much as some of us other people do. In conclusion, I think there are fans of both categories out there.

Do you like any other North American sports?

What are your opinions on a franchise in London?

[JonasNJ]

I can only agree with you.

Being a few hundred kilometers north from you, in the little country Denmark :)

In Denmark American football was a great unknown, up though the 90s.
Only time you heard about it was in sports news, whenever somethings crazy happened.

The first time NFL was transmitted on Danish TV, was Superbowl in 1998.
And this was also my first meeting with the sport, first time I saw it.

I rememeber how they told about the rules, and I started to feel an interest in this sport.

In ’99 they started air a whole season, 1 match each week. So it was very exclusive.
But form here on it took off.

Now ( I have heard ) we are the country, outside US, which features most NFL live games each week.
We get to see Thursday, Saturday early ( London games ), the we get 2-3 games Sunday morning, 2 games Sunday evening and Sunday night and Monday night.

But I agree with you, it is still very exclusive here. We do not get all the media attention to NFL, it is “just” the games.

But off cause now adays it is very easy to follow the American medias. So I don’t thing it is as exclusive as it was a few years ago.

[XenoMorph]

(10-17-2015, 12:14 PM)mano de dios Wrote: (I  didn't really know where to put this thread. Feel free to move it if it fits somewhere else)

First off: I know I hardly ever posted around here and there is something like the 50-post-rule, but I didn't want to post random chatter and on the other hand I'm a frequent reader to this and the old board. Furthermore I already wanted to start this series of threads during the offseason, but never got to it. So I hope it's ok to discuss this:

Being myself from Germany I think there are a lot of differences for Europeans in their approach to loving football. How they get to know it, how they find their team, how they follow what happens. I think that my experiences are somewhat typical for Football lovers outside the US.
What I want to discuss is how the guys from this side of the pond experience this difference and what the Americans think about this.

With that said, hey ho, let's go:

Being a fan - the European perspective. Part I: Getting to know and love the game

Being a kid of the eighties my first contact with this sports came through a sundays weekly sports show which - from time to time - had a little feature about americans sports, presented by a guy with the interesting name of Ben Wett and a thick american accent. So I heard about a guy called Joe Montana who threw a strange-looking Ball through the Californian winter sun.  As everybody I was - and still am of course - into soccer, so I didn't care much, but was really intrigued by the stadiums and the crowds.
Everything changed for me with the invention of the World League (WLOF) in 1991 and the TV-coverage of it. But still it was a very small niche and that's my point here:

Growing up here was - and still is - in an environment without hardly any mainstream media coverage of the sport. You only find something if You're already interested in it. If You were or are a  12-year-old kid You don't know and learn anything about it.
So football has for me some kind of exotic mysticism. Even so I watch my Bengals and the Redzone Channel every sunday, follow online media every day, I still feel some kind of fairytale fascination towards it (well, especially this season so far, but that's something different), because it's something out of the world I live in. I am pretty sure, that kind of feeling doesn't aply for people growing up in the US.

What derives from this fascination ist that I really like to watch almost every game, even it's one between really boring teams with no Bengals-implications i.e. Titans vs. Jags or whatever. I am home at night and have access to Akron vs. Iowa? Put it on! This is different for me with soccer: I love that game, but soccer is everywhere around me. I don't watch a 2nd league matchup between boring teams.

This leads me to some kind of a  thesis - and correct me, if I am wrong:
I think people with a background like this (and I am sure I am more the rule than an exception for European football fans) appreciate the GAME more than the American fans, because we're not surrounded by it 24/7.


But maybe I am pompous and after all the game of Football is just more interesting than soccer...

loving football is much more than just loving your team... if we could have it year round we probly would but its to much on the players.

Btw welcome to the Bengals Nation... What led you to pick the bengals as your team?

I can watch all the games i dont feel a need to but i generally will check out the scores of games even if i have no interest in them... Fantasy football though changes how you care about every team imo. you have to learn so much about every team its players and how they are trending to be successful to the point you are watching the draft looking for potential sleepers lol.

But i think in the States sports like Soccer (futbol) dont get enough media coverage Heck i even have hard times finding hockey games on TV. And baseball our national pasttime so they say is usually on par with golf for putting me to sleep.