Give me Super Sunday over Super Bowl any day

I’m no xenophobic, but if I never saw the NFL’s Super Bowl on my TV again it wouldn’t faze me, in fact, you could say I would rejoice. Avoiding too many crashing stereotypes, I find the brash, heavily commercialised, in your face nature of American Football just too ‘American’. There, I said it, stereotyping over.

Any sport that considers a geriatric Madonna thrusting as a highlight is for me, a circus show, supported by an armada of men wearing more Lycra than Madonna herself, not to mention to the copious amounts of padding forcing the players to look more like droids than humans. 

The beauty of ‘soccer’ or as this side of The Pond calls it, ‘proper football’, is that the half-time interval is spent nattering with those around you whilst enjoying the provided food outlets, not turning it into a spoof of Comic Relief with numerous acts allegedly ‘entertaining’ the on looking fans as the pitch turns into a stage for exuberance and typically American over-keenness (whoops I said I’d finished stereotyping).

If you did manage to watch the entirety of NFL’s flagship fixture the chances are that you can describe in greater detail Mark Chapman’s attire than what happened in the game, and as nice as Mark Chapman is, watching him will never be a worldwide sport. 

Earlier in the day, I sat through 180 minutes of Premier League football, which incidentally is the time it takes to complete just one NFL match – excluding Madonna’s gyrating – and found myself engrossed for every single moment, from the second Fabricio Coloccini led Newcastle onto the field against Aston Villa to the very last kick some three hours later at Stamford Bridge for Chelsea versus Manchester United. A truly Super Sunday. 

Everything about football is more appealing to the eye: the fluency; the non-stop action; the variety of both goals and chances; the skill; the ability; and the variety of players on display. I’m not one of these people who lives and breathes football (well not entirely), I’m a lover of sport in general, but the day an exaggerated bar brawl involving the throwing of an oval ball becomes a worldwide sporting phenomenon, I’m buying all of Madonna’s CDs from the last 20 years. Promise.

Granted, it is probably a patriotic thing, loving whichever version of football you’re surrounded by, but being as impartial as I can, the NFL signifies everything we don’t want English football to become: a commercialised, money-driven sport with too many side shows and distractions, grabbing the attention away from the elation sport can bring you all by itself.

So, as I tune into yet another Barclay’s Premier League game it is safe to say where my allegiances lie, with the game which I believe to be the true definition of football, and something I believe it always be – sporting perfection.

Alex O’Loughlin @AlexOLoughlin18

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