Not so big anywhere outside of the U.S.: NFL has pulled the plug on NFL Europa
Last month National Football League finally killed off the money losing, unnecessary, and quite possibly hurtful developmental league NFL Europa after 16 years of fruitless attempts to get it to work right. The league reportedly lost $30 million a year, did little (and increasingly less) to develop players and sucked scarce European and Japanese talent from struggling semi-pro national leagues. NFL’s commercial and athletic needs in Europe would be far better served by a few million dollars spent on supporting national leagues, in particular youth football leagues (disclosure: I was an unpaid player in a semi-pro league in the early 1990′s, so I have some bias in favor of the national leagues over NFL’s now massively failed attempt at market skimming).
NFL will focus its international efforts on promoting regular-season games hosted in foreign countries, starting with one game in 2007 and as many as two in 2008. I’m strongly opposed to NFL making it even more difficult and expensive for American fans to watch their teams live than it already is and I’m sad to say that the Kraft family, which owns New England Patriots and is otherwise very fan friendly, is one of the leading proponents of off-shoring regular-season games. Eventually, playoff games will also be sent overseas, culminating, no doubt, with Super Bowl itself being played in a country far, far away. I think NFL is foolish in taking its American base for granted while pandering to overseas foreigners whose first love is and always will be soccer. Just ask Canadian Football League how its cross-border venture worked out. Better yet, ask NFL.
Andrew Mason has a beautiful recap of WLAF/NFLE’s strange history. Orlando Thunder, I remember those guys, their wacky uniforms and their on-side kick-offs. Mr. Mason mentions the helmet cam, but not the helmet-headphones that quarterbacks wore. One team, I can’t remember which, was coached by “Mouse” Davies (sp?) and consequently ran the run-and-shoot offense in spite of the league’s lack of even decent quarterbacking.
Dan Leberfeld looks at NFL player transactions and reaches the reasonable conclusion that “it’s probably best that NFL Europa folded,” although he thinks general managers around the NFL sold the developmental league short. I disagree.
Matt Maiocco at The Press-Democrat looks at the bottom line:
Well, obviously, it’s all about money. It’s always all about money. The league believes it makes more sense financially to scrap the league and devote its energy into marketing the NFL game in Europe.
Anglofritz can brag that he saw the last NFLE regular season game:
Things were already looking dire and half-hearted when I saw the Berlin Thunder versus the Rhein Fire last month in the Olympic Stadium; the already sparse crowd of 200-odd spectators were scrunched to one side of arena (albeit peppered with plenty of hardcore, face-painted fans) and the cheerleaders were distinctly more watchable than the cringe-worthy on-field performance (come on, fellas, you can pass the ball, too). At the time, I should have known I was watching the last game ever…
Angela at Boston Brat thinks “the moral of the story is Europe is not ready for American Football.” She’s right about that and I doubt it ever will be.
Canadian football blog Twelve Men On The Field looks at what impact the demise of NFLE might have on CFL. Apparently not much. [Huge aside: Canadian football was actually how I was introduced to football. One of my all-time favorite football games as a fan came when quarterback Kent Austin led the Saskatchewan Roughriders to a thrilling victory over Hamilton Tiger-Cats in the 1989 Grey Cup. I vividly remember one of the three broadcast announcers yelling "Take that, Tony Champion" after a Saskatchewan receiver made a great catch during the winning drive. Champion was a Ti-Cat receiver who had made a spectacular touchdown grab on the preceding drive. Ah, good memories. I'm very happy that football has made a strong comeback in Canada over the past decade.]
0xCF is a European fan who will actually miss the league. He hopes for a Pan-European football league independent of NFL, but I think the sport would gain more from frequent games between Europe’s national team. Then again, he’s over there and I’m over here.
Bloginger explains why NFL Europa was more like NFL Kleindeutschland in its final days.
Skinny Moose wins the award for best headline announcing the end of NFLE:
“Europe’s final countdown.”
