I seen photos of the new Wembley Stadium. It looks pretty impressive.
Do any of y'all know if the stadium has a retractable roof? The site didn't say.
LOL i was Gonna make a joke that London finally has a stadium worth bidding for the Super Bowl, but I saw that they are going to host the first regular season NFL game outside of N. America in October.
You know, all kidding aside, whoever runs that place probably COULD make a hosting bid for the Superbowl and get one. 90,000 people wow.....
ok.. yes it has a retractable roof. Why would london bid for superbowl if no one in Britain plays NFL. Anyway, the first major cup final was played today in the new
Wembley, it was a terrible gasme of football and the team i hate most - Chelsea - won it :'(
Agreed that it wasn't exactly the best of games to start things off with (not counting the U21 International which was just a test run)....but I think that on the day the BEST team won
(Bladey <- Born and Bred BLUE- Chelsea 'til I die!)
Firstly, it's not called NFL. It's like calling stock car racing NASCAR. There's also college football (Interuniversity sport is real popular in the US), NFL Europa, AAFL, loads of amateaur leagues, Arena Football (8 a side on an ice hockey rink with some astroturf over it) and so-on.
NFL Europa has gone downhill. They removed the London/England Monarchs and the Scotland Claymores and now they are paying, it's just NFL Germany. No city particularly cares about it outside of Duesseldorf, mainly because they don't have a Bundesliga team - I guess it stops them from watching a bunch of diving ponces trying to get acting careers in medical dramas, feigning injuries and so-on.
NFL Europe is a 6 team league, and 5 out of 6 teams are in Germany (the other being in Amsterdam).
NFLE wants to expand, and surely London would be a good market, Wembley or Twickenham. Just not the bloody Arena size pitch they had at White Hart Lane!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But no, they want to go to Leipzig and Hannover.
NFL Europe (when it was still WLAF) had only 1 team Germany - originally the Europe conference was London, Barcelona (they went tits up when they moved them out of the main Olympic Stadium and they put them in to a crap facility - at least it wasn't a 63 yard long pitch with shortened end zones ...
LOL It was called "We laugh" over here. Actually I think that London at least, if they wanted an American style football team, they should've tried for a bonafide NFL expansion team.
And I really don't think that bidding to host a Superbowl is that far fetched.
They're going to have a regular season game played there in October.
I know that the UK does have quite a bit of NFL fans there, just don't know if they are devoted enough to spend $$$ on a ticket though. Maybe they are testing the waters by having a lower priced game played there?
I remember when they were trying promote WLAF, they played a couple of exhibition games there. They were pre-season games and those usually aren't very good to watch if you've never been exposed to football.
I think WLAF started on the wrong foot and really wasn't given the type of promotion it really needed.
But yeah, I really don't think that hosting a Superbowl is all that far fetched of an idea. people from all over the world go to watch Superbowl games.
I think it would definitely generate some revenue.
LOL and unlike "football matches" that the average Britain is accustomed to, the average NFL fan won't try to catch the stadium on fire....They might get in a raging gun battle with a player or two at a strip club after the game, but the stadium will still be intact.
Uhhh Getting back to the retractable roof part. Does that big bar slide over as the roof retracts? It looked like it was connected to the roofing panels from the photos I saw. I was stuck in traffic one day next to Minute Maid park. It's a baseball stadium with a retractable roof. I was watching them open the roof up. It takes this thing hours to fully open and close. It is so weird to see something that huge move. It can really make you feel small and insignificant. And Minutemaid is maybe half as big as what Wembley is if that.
Hosting a Superbowl in London wouldn't be very fair to the hometown fans though, would it?
TBH I'm a bit disappointed with the new stadium. Sure it's an improvement over the old Wembley, but they had an opportunity to do something really special with it and completely chickened out and built a very boring-looking building. It's hard to believe they had Norman Foster in at the design stages and still ended up with something totally anonymous.
First singer to play there is George Michael *yawn*
2nd band to play there and 1st to sign up to play there is Muse.
I love Muse and I really wish I could get tickets but even if I could I wouldn't be able to get down there since it's 200 miles from me . Still, I'll buy the live DVD when it's released.
I saw the stadium yesterday when passing through on the train to Harrow!
Impressive building, shame that what is played in there is no where near as impressive!
There will be another big stadium built in London don't forget for the 2012 games.
90,000 people is alot, but they reckon at the first ever FA Cup final at Wembley in 1923 200,000 people rushed the gates and swarmed onto the pitch, it was all standing back then. The start was delayed for 45 minutes and when they did kick of, the ball never went out of play as spectators lined the pitch right up to the touchlines. Bolton beat West Ham 2-0
Id love to go see an American Football game at Wembley, no reason why it shouldnt happen. We get most of the games on tv here now, there must be a big following. Me? Im a Redskins fan Got an Uncle in Washington.
I think the new stadium is an impressive site, I was lucky enough to see it from the air returning from Spain recently. It was an impressive site, with the Thames snaking past it through London, the Millenium Dome a bit further up. Wowzers.
There has been talk of a Dolphins home fixture being played in the UK (presumably at Wembley) for ages now. It's a proper NFL game (permission to say NFL please Duke Toaster).
I doubt the NFL want to have European teams. FFS, they are the only major sports league in the US to not have a team in Canada. To be fair they might have an issue of pissing of the CFL. But then again, with only 8 teams and a few years they were going to get bought by the organisers of playfights involving men in swimming trunks, there isn't much CFL to piss off.
To make it viable, they would need to create a new division at least, or prolly a new conference. The season maths will get hard, the NFL is 32 teams already. Unless 4 owners want to move their teams off to Europe. I know that the Vikings might want to move and the Chargers are in a shitty stadium and might move but it would be a big gamble. There was talk of the NBA having teams in Europe ...
As much as I would love to see a Superbowl held in the UK, the issue would be TV times. IIRC the Superbowl is the biggest TV event in the US - and unless it was an afternoon game in London, it would be early morning on the west coast.
Quite a bit is an overstatement, using TV as a barometer on terrestrial TV we get the Monday night game with Mike Carlson (OK) and Channel 5's wanker who knows about football of choice. Thank god Jonny Gould does the baseball
As for ticket prices, they get bloody silly for Premiership football/soccer games. The cheapest seats at the FA Cup final were £50 IIRC - that's $100 or so.
WLAF had some permenant teams in Europe, they were OK but I guess that it was low grade football.
Nah, most of the hooliganism has gone out with the Prawn Sandwich brigade. Millwall, the worst team for hooliganism, have got better. The problem is flashpoint rivalry matches e.g. Manchester United versus Liverpool. I imagine for a Pats-Jets match it could get rather heated. But I guess sport on your side of the atlantic has been prawn sandwichised.
No. The arch is fixed and it takes them ages to move. The best thing about it is that it lights up at night.
I don't know times, but the match started with the roof off and it was on by the end of the match. The millenium stadium in Cardiff can do the roof in 15 minutes supposedly.
The stadium looks pretty terrific, although it had to be after the amount of time and money spent. From the TV, sounds like theres a good atmosphere in the stadium, all the sound seems like its staying inside the stadium, especially when the roof is shut.
Some things are just a joke though. Like the tens of thousands of seats that had to be replaced after about 2 weeks. Also, they say they have solved the problem of the pitch being poor because of the tight stands + roof, but the pitch yesterday just looked really poor, was getting apart, and in general it seems a very slow pitch, with the ball bobbling about all over the place. For the best Football ground in the UK it shouldnt be doing that.
Hardly, Tempers flare up at a football match but thats the nature of the game. In my 16 years and going to hundreds of football games (Both rangers and airdrie) i have yet to see somebody "catch the stadium on fire", Sure ive seen my share of fighting (usually at airdrie, where nobody gives a shit, at the bigger games people tend to behave themselves) but most of the proper hooliganism of the past 20-30 years is mostly gone out of the sport. Indeed, The scottish travelling support is well known for not creating trouble and being Good Natured (It pains me to admit it, but when 100,000 celtic fans landed in seville i didnt hear of 1 bit of trouble). Americans tend to believe stereotypes about UK people, but whinge and moan when we stereotype them .
He He He I was making a joke on Both stereotypes. But yeah, They tend to sensationalize hooliganism over here or they used to. I think the US media was a bit disappointed during the world cup having spent all that $$$ on crews and equipment just to film a soccer match and not really any nut cases throwing beer bottles at cops on horses.
Having the Superbowl in London could be done as a night game. 7 pm local time would work. That would be 11 am in California I think.
I haven't really kept up with CFL, but last I heard, they had teams in the USA as well. But it's been years since I heard much about it.
As far as ticket prices go for sporting events... I guess it's a global thing that ticket prices are so expensive, no matter what the sport is.
Unfortunatly, the world's media hates soccer in the UK ...
Yeh
The Duke's modern history of the CFL
It was in the early 90s and ended after 3 or 4 years
In 1993 the Sacramento Gold Miners was added - they were put in the West division. They were supposedly the decendants of the Surge from WLAF.
In 1994 the CFL added Las Vegas Posse, Shrevenport Pirates and the Baltimore Colts. Which got sued by the NFL and the Colts that are now in Indy (boo! hiss!), and became the Baltimore CFLers before a ball was snapped.
In 95 they changed it form W/E to North and South. Memphis Mad Dogs and the Birmingham Barracudas were added. The Goldminers became the Texans and played at the Alamodome - which is still there and used for college. Interestingly, it was the only proper Canadian sized field that the US teams had - many of them were playing on American sized pitches.
For 1996, all teams bar the Baltimore Stallions (what the lawyers came up with instead of colts) went to Carey street, the Stallions went to Montreal and became the Allouetes.
In 2001 they added Ottawa. Which then got chucked in the freezer in 2006. About this time a certain Mr McMahon tried to buy the CFL, he couldn't and he set up the XFL ...
In 03, two teams entered league ownership.
They are now an 8 team league and Ottawa look rather dead but suppoesedly they will try and re launch it in 2008. And Lord Lucan is going to ride Shergar before the first match
. Still, I'll buy the live DVD when it's released.
