The problem with American sports

American sports can be quite stupid sometimes, which is why nobody else plays them. That doesn't have to be a bad thing though.






Ice Hockey is a good laugh and American Football is a pretty good game as well, once you've learnt how it works.
But watching last night's Super Bowl showed just how much was wrong with American sport.

At this time of year, the statistic that a 30-second advert costs $2.7m is always mentioned and if you are the broadcaster of the Super Bowl, you're going to milk it. The net result is that a 60 minute game of "football", is transformed into a 6-hour QVC presentation.

Watching it was laughable at some points:
"Ladies and Gentlemen, here come the teams.....we'll be back after these messages.....we're back, here's the national anthem sung by Billy Joel......come back after the break......now, here's the coin toss (with each team having four captains for some reason).....now a word from our sponsors.....now, here's the kick-off..[14 seconds].. Touchdown!....commercial break".

Now if you are American, these breaks would be punctuated by brand new, state-of-the-art adverts from Pepsi, Burger King and a host of other multi-national conglomerates.
That creates a problem for British broadcasters. In a civilised nation such as ours, broadcasters aren't allowed to inflict 6 hours worth of commercials on us. So when they've used their allowed 'quota' of commercials, they've still got a lot of time to fill.
So instead of seeing the latest flame-grilled whopper, I had to listen to Don Johnson talking about the game, despite that fact he didn't know much about football but happened to be in Miami Vice back in the 80's, or I'd have the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders telling me what would happen if I pressed the red button. Thankfully the game wasn't forced to kick-off at some stupid time because of another sponsorship deal.
Product placement isn't allowed either and I'd be pretty certain that if you sat an American down in front of BBC4, his head would cease up because the programme wouldn't have big trucks and explosions in it and nobody would tell him which beer to drink or which underwear brand to buy.

In the end, I fell asleep. Not because the game was boring - far from it. I fell asleep because it went on too flaming long. Apparently, the Colts beat Chicago - well done Colts