How far can the NFL go in London?

Last of what eventually did wind up being three in my series about going to England. You can see the first one here and the second one here.

There was an NFL game while I was in London. The Vikings beat the Steelers. Mrs. Last Honest and I are pretty sure we saw Wembley Stadium during the game on our way back from Liverpool.

But had it not been for all the Steelers jerseys we saw in London in the days before the game (there were also Vikings jerseys, but black and gold appeared to outnumber purple about 10-1 based on what we saw), we might not have known the game was even going on.

Perhaps that was a function of not reading a ton of newspapers or watching a lot of TV during that time, and the TV in our hotel didn't even have sports channels (the only soccer game I saw was the Champions League match between Manchester City and Bayern Munich ... in German), but coming from a place where preseason games get endless intense coverage, it didn't seem like there was a lot of hype for the game, even though it did pull in more than 83,000 fans.

We weren't exactly on the outskirts of town, either. We were a short train ride from, and spent a lot of time walking through, both Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square, and the only signs we saw of the game were a couple banners one night.

Jacksonville and San Francisco are in London this weekend, and, as an example, the sports page on The Guardian's website as of this writing (Oct. 24 at just after 3 p.m., or 8 p.m. London time) has one NFL story, about the Dallas Cowboys playing in London next year as one of three NFL games in Wembley. The U.S. sport site is, as might be expected, dominated by the World Series, with the two NFL stories on the main page being the announcement of next year's games and how horrible Florida's NFL teams are.

Yet there is talk about an NFL franchise in London, or even a Super Bowl, to which I say, "Fat chance," for various reasons.

1. Getting beyond the inroads already made -- Even the SI piece linked above states that the fan base is not quite there for an NFL team.

"The 'core fan base' in the U.K. is now more than 2 million, according to Chris Parsons, the NFL's senior vice president of international.
That's more than double the figure when the league first brought regular-season games to Wembley in 2007, but still not high enough for a franchise here to be sustainable.
'We've doubled our fan base in the last 3 1-2 to four years," Parsons said. "I'd like to see that at least double again in the next three or four years. That would put us among the top five sports in the U.K. in terms of core fan base.'"

Four million fans sounds like a lot, but if that's over the entire United Kingdom, is it enough to fill a stadium the size of Wembley eight times a year? It will be interesting to see what the attendance figures are as the NFL adds games. Before anyone talks about ramping up to a full schedule, let's see what happens when it's not a once-a-year thing.

Not to mention that a full-scale commitment to the NFL in London -- most likely with an expansion team or a terrible NFL team like the Jaguars (whose owner, Shahid Khan, also owns the Fulham soccer team) -- would require taking on soccer, a sport that may be even more entrenched in the English landscape than the NFL is here. Granted, the lack of anything similar to Major League Baseball, the NBA or NHL in England (more on that later) may give the NFL a vacuum to slip into, but would being a likely distant No. 2 be enough?

2. Playing logistics -- This Kyle Baker blog post pretty much spells out the logistical problems of having an NFL team in London, namely that it's a long way from every other team. I made the flight from Logan to Heathrow, which presumably would be the flight involved for any New England-London game, and while the planes any NFL team would take are certainly much nicer than the very nice British Airways plane I flew, it's still a haul, and I didn't have to play a football game after landing.

And that's the shortest flight.

To make London work, you would almost have to put two teams there, like the Dodgers and Giants did when they moved, so any road team playing there would at least have two games before flying back, but that would still require setting up shop in London for more than a week and finding practice facilities and arranging the schedules so that one London team was always home while the other was on the road and that they played the same opponents (and each other), etc. etc.

It would be really hard. Let's put it that way.

3. Getting people to watch -- When you live in the eastern United States, you don't realize the time implications of traveling east unless you actually go to a city like London, which is five hours ahead.

If I lived in London, the only baseball games I would be able to watch, presumably online if my computer magically allowed me to do that, would be games that start at 1 p.m. in whatever U.S. time zone the game is being played (or the 4 p.m. Fox game on Saturdays), as that would be anywhere from 6 to 9 p.m. London time. American night games, which make up the majority of the schedule? Forget it. Even on the nights I'm inspired to stay awake, a midnight start in London (7 p.m. in the eastern United States), might get you an inning or two.

And the playoffs and World Series? Americans can't stay up to watch. What do you think Brits do?

I would imagine the time difference is a major reason why it would be tough for an American sport to fully catch on in England, although the NFL, with its 1 and 4 p.m. start times on Sundays, would have the best chance. However, I don't think NBC would appreciate "Sunday Night Football" airing at 1 a.m. in London, and it would be nearly impossible to have a Sunday night or Monday night ESPN game in London, no matter how good the team is, because it wouldn't fit a prime-time schedule.

And that brings us to the Super Bowl. As the video in this post notes, London would be an awesome place to hold a Super Bowl. Having been to both New Orleans and London in recent years, London may not be quite as much fun for the Super Bowl traveling circus, especially given the weather in late January or early February, but it wouldn't be far behind.

Except the game would have to start after 11 p.m. local time (which players, fans and media at the game would just love, I say sarcastically) or early afternoon Eastern time in the United States (say goodbye millions upon millions in ad revenue).

In the video linked above, Don Banks of Sports Illustrated suggests playing the Pro Bowl in London before the Super Bowl, which actually would likely serve two purposes if the NFL tried it -- killing the Pro Bowl once and for all and killing the NFL in London.

Bob Uecker should have gone to see Fulham play Stoke

Second of what will probably be three parts about vacationing in England. You can see the first one here.

We showed our tickets to the usher, and he told us to walk down the steps ...

When Mrs. Last Honest and I were looking for tickets to an English Premier League game during our vacation to London, my first choice, Liverpool, was on the road, and there weren't a ton of games in the city.

The best bet was the game between Fulham and Stoke at Craven Cottage, and after much exploring on the Fulham website, we found seats that were relatively inexpensive in the mixed zone, available to home, away and neutral fans.

... so we walked down the steps, all the way to the front row, right behind the goal.

Yes, we were in the front row. When I posted pictures on Facebook after the game, my buddy Pizz asked who I killed to get the seats, and to be honest, I was shocked to see where we were sitting. The only thing I can think of is that they weren't as expensive either because they were in the mixed fan area or the seats behind the net aren't considered very desirable.

Me, I thought they were awesome.

Being able to see plays develop right in front of me? I had no complaints.

Since we got to the game early, we saw a lot of the Stoke warmup right in front of us. During one of the drills, Stoke goalkeeper Asmir Begovic tipped a ball over the bar, whereupon it bounced off a seat about six rows behind me and then right toward me. I was holding my phone in one hand, so I tried to grab the ball with the other. I'm lucky I still have a hand ... even after a tip and bouncing off a seat, that ball had some heat on it! 

That was a small clue as to the speed of the game. Even so-so to poor teams like Fulham (whose manager, Martin Jol, has been rumored to be in line for the sack, meaning the Martin Jol Memorial Death Watch is once again being applied to ... Martin Jol) and Stoke have players that can start and break up play almost faster than you can see up close. (Except Peter Crouch, who I don't think can move out of his own way.)

After a while, when I was filming corner kicks, I didn't even try to follow the ball in from the corner because I couldn't keep up.

Fear not, Martin. We're here to save you!

One thing we didn't see in front of us was a goal. A Stoke player kicked the ball into the net at one point, but it was obvious that the play was offside, so no one moved anyway. However, this still disappointed the Stoke fans in our midst, who seemed to outnumber the Fulham fans, or were at least louder, particularly the ones in the official away fans section in the upper corner, who when they weren't singing "When the Saints Go Marching In" were chanting various sometimes-profane unintelligibles.

Of course, the fans had to entertain themselves beyond the action on the pitch because, as Mrs. Last Honest noticed, there isn't a lot of extraneous stuff going on. Fulham has a mascot, but there are no cheerleaders, no games on the scoreboard, no organ music. They actually rely on people to watch the game. What a concept!

So we didn't get a goal on our end, and for most of the game, we were afraid we wouldn't see a goal, and the possibly only Premier League game I ever saw would end in a scoreless draw. Fortunately, Darren Bent tallied for Fulham, and even though it was clear on the other end of the pitch, we were able to see the play develop and the goal go in. 

Yay, a goal! Maybe Martin gets to keep his job for a couple more weeks!

After the game, we were filing out when some random guy asked the most-obvious question anyone probably heard all day.

"Are you Americans?"

I can't imagine how he figured that out, but I confirmed that yes, we were from America. He then started chatting us up in an accent that I fingernails-hanging-on-a-cliff understood about how he and his brother were lifelong Stoke fans and that English football is better than the American version.

Then he disappeared into the crowd, replaced in our conversation by another guy, clearly American, who said, "But at least in America they let you drink through all four quarters, none of this stopping 15 minutes after halftime BS."

So there you go.

My new best friends are in that group somewhere.

Learning at Liverpool

First of a series (probably three) about my recent trip to England.

"No major American team would stand for this."

The "this" that Mrs. Last Honest was referring to was the home-team locker room at Anfield, which we visited on what was our only trip outside London proper so we could see where my favorite soccer team played. (It was about a three-hour train ride each way, causing my wife to joke that she wished I was a Chelsea fan, given that we could see Stamford Bridge from our hotel room. After all, I originally became a Liverpool fan because I liked Fernando Torres, and he's with Chelsea now.)

Especially after having seen the kind of palatial clubhouses and locker rooms that major North American teams are used to -- including hearing about Derek Jeter having a vacant locker next to his at the old Yankee Stadium to hold his fan mail, which our guide said was a "physical impossibility" for him to answer -- the locker room at Anfield looked like a nice high school locker room.

There was a bench around the wall with the players' jerseys hanging by position (no lockers), a couple of training tables and ... that was about it.

Eighteen league titles, five European cups, home of England's captain, and this is the locker room.

And oh yeah, the fans were allowed in. There were no ropes to stand behind as we gawked. We could walk around, sit on the benches, touch the uniforms, take pictures. (By the way, I don't know the people in the photo; it was just the best chance I got to shoot the whole room.)

The man, Steven Gerrard



I'm hoping for lots of goals from these two ...



... and for him to keep the ball out of the goal.

The behind-the scenes aspects to Anfield -- the locker rooms, the manager's interview area (which we learned partly consists of the famed Boot Room and is a kitchen away from the television cameras), the pictures of Liverpool legends -- were actually among the highlights of the tour for me.

What you can't see (because it's behind me) is the kitchen.

King Kenny

Not that seeing one of the most famous soccer stadiums in all the world was a bad thing.

And hearing this was obviously pretty cool.

We were also sure to pay proper respect to Hillsborough.

They told us to take all the pictures we wanted, as long as no one was leaving something at the memorial.

Aside from what we actually saw on the tour, there were two things I found particularly striking.

Not to brag, but generally when I go on a tour, I know as much or more about where we are than most of the other people, including knowing all but one of the retired numbers on a trip to Dodger Stadium a few years back. But because I'm a fairly new fan, I don't know a lot of the history, although at least I had the good sense not to do what Mrs. Last Honest did, which was to give Manchester United for an answer when our tour guide asked what other teams had won five European Cups.

It was also pretty funny to see the picture of Robbie Fowler, given that he had kind of stepped in it a couple days before. (I actually saw him make the comment live, and cringed when he said it. I also have no problem with him being forced to apologize, given that fighting "like girls" was intended to be a high insult.)

I also realized that this might be my only shot at ever seeing Anfield. I've been on several tours -- the old Yankee Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Air Canada Centre, Rogers Centre, the Charlotte and Daytona speedways, Chase Field -- and it's not inconceivable to think I could actually see games there if I ever went back, and in the case of the old Yankee Stadium, I have.

However, even though Mrs. Last Honest is plotting to get back to England (the vacation as a whole was amazing), I have no idea if I'll ever be there again.

So this may have been a once-in-a-lifetime thing. And that's what made it even more special.