İs any aware of a get together to watch the MICHIGAN v. OHIO STATE game Saturday?
Any suggestions on where to watch American football?

[quote user="ulas" post="71023"]Any suggestions on where to watch American football?[/quote]
America?

JF

Fox Sports on Digiturk occasionally shows college football. Unfortunately, it's next to impossible to obtain program information in advance on that channel. You can find it the day of, but it still doesn't give you the specific matchup.

I haven't really seen many bars that cater to the American sports scene although I heard the sports bar in the Polat Renaissance in Yeşilköy could be a lead.

So, ulaş, who are you rooting for? We know who tijaneohio is behind...

Dont listen to John, he is going through the male menopause afterall.
I dont even know which channel shows NFL but maybe Fox does?

It's an interesting question, but I think a more interesting one is:

WHY to watch American football?

I can only think of it as being interesting to statisticians.

American football is great but its the rounders game I dont and wont understand. Cracks me up the world series winners are crowned world champions yet there is only one country playing (Toronto bluejays was a 90% american team before anyone says anything)

I was once offered tickets to the Big Bowl (or whatever it is called) but I couldn't stand the idea of spending three hours or so watching 60 seconds of action with men wearing more protection than a sex maniac in Bankok. My brother plays the game in the UK and was in a team that played in a final broadcast by SkySports, I couldn't even bring myself to go along to that as I didn't have a calculator to work out how far he'd run, number of passes he made etc etc etc.

I read a story the other day, about an American team that got killed in a plane crash. Apparently there were 75 of them ......... 75 in one team! This is not sport, it is theatre.

Anyway, I've had a bad day so rant rant rant........

I guess it's an aquired taste but in a sports-mad nation like America it's the number one spectator sport so it's not just statisticans who find it of interest.

I would rather use spectator mad nation instead of sports mad.

[quote user="burbaco" post="71115"]I guess it's an aquired taste but in a sports-mad nation like America it's the number one spectator sport so it's not just statisticans who find it of interest.[/quote]


I have a theory about that.

It's all about short attention spans of the average American Joe. A game that stops and starts means that they don't have to concentrate for more than a few seconds at a time, this goes for American Rugby & baseball, the two leading games played there. Others, which have more of a flow to them require more concentration and therefore command smaller audiences, Basketball & Ice Hockey come to mind.

American rugby?

[quote user="lisas" post="71129"]American rugby?[/quote]

A game very similar to Rugby, but played by teams of 500 players, all wearing more body armour than a soldier in Iraq. Otherwise known as "Football".

Basketball has less of an audience?? Let's see, they play 5-6 times a week to crowds of 15-20,000 fans a night, let's call it 50,000 spectators per team per week. Football, 1 game a week with 50,000 fans per week, 25,000 per team. What everyone always seems to forget about US sport is that with the exception of Football, all the sports are pretty much DAILY. Lastly, if you think that 75 members of a football team (which included the entire team,i.e. coaches, etc is a lot, how many people do you think Man U travel with? It's a hell of a lot more than 75.

As tp points out basketball is far and away a million times more popular than baseball, david_simpson. As far as flow and amount of action in an American football game, it's not as much standing around as you make out (especially at the non-professional levels where they don't have commercial breaks). In any given series of plays there are only some 30-odd seconds between plays (which is monitored with a play clock & incurs an infraction if you go over the limit). There are longer breaks between series to facilitate the change of personnel but every sport has lulls. Haven't you ever seen a goalie dilly-dally around before taking a goal kick in soccer or the ball boys slowly chase down an errant ball?

Also, rsa, I definitely meant sports-mad. In addition to 'spectating' the U.S. easily has one of the the highest (if not the highest amongst non-Communist) sports participation rates of anywhere (particularly amongst youths).

I would actually say that Baseball and Basketball are all-in-all equally popular just that BAseball plays out over a much longer season than Basketball and in much larger venues so that while there may not be as many sellout games (many baseball games occur during the day on weekdays and are not sellouts, while the nighttime and weekend games generally are). Regarding breaks, yes American football has been one of the sports that is truthful enough to admit that it has made certain concessions to TV and sponsorship, the most glaring being the "two minute warning" which was in effect the way to insert a break into the last nail biting two minutes of a game where many teams would be out of timeout. Then again, the jerseys and pitches are not plastered everywhere with advertisements either as are other sports. The sport also allows such "groundbreaking" technical innvations as VIDEO REPLAY which FIFA will not allow, most likely because it would not allow them to fix games anymore (unlike years ago almost every important voice in football EXCEPT Fifa wants these improvements, and all they give are crap excuses). One thing that many in Europe ignore, which is a big factor is that attending most American sporting events is a fun, even family friendly event. At an average baseball game supporter of both sides manage to sit next to eachother without any problems whatsoever and the absolute worst thing you might witness is a drunken fist fight between two fans, and this is rare - while in Europe not only are the two sides seperated by barbed wire and a phaylnx of police, but there are tons of fights., aggro and cursing in and out of the stadium, and they don't even have alcohol to blame it on. Going into a match in the US feels like entering a fun day out, in most of Europe it feels like entering a prison. On TV in the US a viewer has a chance to watch his local team, or national games, or even have a subscription to watch whatever game he wants, other than "direct ticket" deals this programming is either free to air or as part of a basic cable or sat package. In Europe the poor punter is forced to only watch the top games generally and pays through the nose at that. In the US most teams are profit making companies, in Europe except for perhaps the top ten CONTINENT wide the teams are mostly loss making entities that provide jobs for the boys and ultimately are huge drains on the local and even national economies. Lastlly with little exception, you would be hard placed to find me an example of any European country where more than three or for clubs have won the national championship of their country in the last 20-25 years. This is definately not the case in most US sports as there are mechanisms in place to try to even up the game, such as salary caps, draft pick systems, etc.