RF Generation Message Board

I live in Britain, and watch NFL. Please don't laugh at me, if I seem a bit wooly,with the rules and terminology.

I like it. Last night I watched the highliughts of the Redskins v Eagles.
The best bit, was when the Redskins had a  first down and goal, and the Eagles took possession of the ball.

anyway, tonight I am going to watch (i think) Cinccianti? Colts vers K.City Chiefs?

It's live on Channel 5 at about 2:30am our time.

Cincinnati played yesterday at New England and blew about ninety chances to win against one of the best teams in the league.  For more on Cincinnati, check the "Same Old Bengals" thread.  The Bengals are the Cincinnati team, which is of course where shadytool, St0rmTK421, both Leons, TraderJake, myself, and maybe a few others are from.  They have been awful since about 1990.  That's a really long time.  Thankfully they appear to be on the upswing.

The Indianapolis Colts also played yesterday against the Houston Texans.  They had their lowest-scoring game of the season at just 23 points, which for most teams would probably be pretty good in a lot of games.  Peyton Manning, their QB, is amazing.  He's setting pretty much every single-season record there is for a quarterback to set.

I'm guessing that you'll be seeing the Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Tennessee Titans.  If you're interested in reading a preview of the game, you can get one here:

http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/preview/NFL_20041213_KC@TEN

NFL.com also has stat and game-tracking, which is nice if you're trying to keep track of multiple games at once or if there is a game that you want to see but isn't on in your area.  There is also an NFL Europe site, but I don't know much about it.  Do the NFL Europe games actually get any coverage there?  Do people actually watch it?  Their site is here:

http://www.nfleurope.com/

Looks like their season doesn't start until April.  I might have to follow that, actually.  Since there is no football around here during the summer, that could be a good way to make up for our under-achieving baseball team (the Cincinnati Reds).

I don't know anything about nfleurope.

When I was a kid, grassroots British NFL was very popular, but not televised. I used to go every week to watch Brighton play.

No hydro??

2:30 AM, damn that time sucks.  You'll be up till 5:30 watching that one.  (Oh, and its spelled Cincinnati, not that anyone ever gets it right.)

I'm also not too surprised to hear that the Bengals did everything they could to lose this game.  I wasn't able to catch it, so all I had was the quarter/quarter score.  And looking at that, it would have appeard that we were just plaing getting killed, not giving them the game. Rats.  Oh well, next year we'll get to the Super Bowl.

well brush up on your NFL thx and next year you can join the RFG fantasy football league.

Los Huesos Asesinos van a matar todos los equipos y beber su sangre.

Who are the murderous bones?

My fantasy team in the RFGen league.

my confusion about who was playing was based upon me being sleepy when watching the roudup last night


it is indeed the Titans v Chiefs live tonight, yes indeed I will be up to 5.30am

The  NFL show on Channel 5 starts at 1:30am, and I can't spell anyway, we all know that, so don't pick me up on it.

Anyway, I'll probably flake out at half-time! But it's so cool to watch NFL on mainstream British t.v again!

Seriously, it was ""big"" here in the 1980's and then kinda imploded.

Hard for someone like me, to adequately explain the way it was, this was in pre-cable t.v days. We only had 4 t.v channels! Channel4 the new channel was ""alternative"" and it pushed NFL, in an intelligent way, explaining the rules, slowly, with commentators understanding our lack of knowledge of the sport, and slowly getting more complexed, week by week. By 1985 , most of the boys at my school, inlcuding the entire rugby squad, were like zombies after staying up late to watch the Superbowl.

At least that super bowl didn't involve janet jackson, some random boy band guy, and an exposed nipple. And you can always record the game and watch it at a more decent hour.  Im actually surprised that the NFL games are broadcast over there, we dont get much, if any, rugby or soccer over here.  Although, there is prolly something im just not aware of on some random channel I've never heard of.

Nep - I was going to guess that, but wasn't sure.  Kinda a dark comment though.

Maybe a little.

In the Netherlands they still try to push try NFL Europe. I think the NFL is too commercial for Europe. Like moving cluubs all the time. If a club don't attract enough crowd the just replace them. I heard that iit's quitte normal to move clubs in the USA, but in Europe it's more that you support the local club instead of a brand.

in soccer I suppoer MK Dons. Formerly Wimbeldon. The only club to have moved and renamed. Everyone hates us. :)

Teams don't get moved that often, but it seems like as soon as one moves, you can expect three or four others to move.  

Also, I never would have expected American football to be big anywhere else.  It just seems like it is too American if that makes any sense.

let's see, NFL franchise moves that I've seen in my lifetime:

Baltimore Colts move to Indianapolis

Oakland Raiders move to Los Angeles then back to Oakland

St. Louis Cardinals move to Arizona

Los Angeles Rams move to St. Louis

Cleveland Browns move to Baltimore, become the Ravens

Houston Oilers move to Tennesse become the Titans

that's all I can remember and I don't think that's in chronological order either.

Teams don't get moved every few years or anything, but they do indeed move.

*Boston Yanks became New York Bulldogs
*New York Bulldogs renamed New York Yanks
*New York Yanks became the Dallas Texans
*Dallas Texans became the Baltimore Colts
*Baltimore Colts are now the Indianapolis Colts
*Cleveland Browns are now the Baltimore Ravens
*new Cleveland Browns team created
*Houston Oilers are now the Tennessee Titans (Memphis)
*Tennessee Titans move to Nashville (same name)
*Houston Texans created
*Chicago Cardinals became the St. Louis Cardinals
*St. Louis Cardinals are now the Arizona Cardinals
*Cleveland Rams became the Los Angeles Rams
*Los Angeles Rams are now the St. Louis Rams
*Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles
*Los Angeles Raiders are now the Oakland Raiders again
*Los Angeles Chargers are now the San Diego Chargers
*Boston Patriots are now in Foxboro and are the New England Patriots
*Dallas Texans (not the same team that moved to Baltimore) are now the Kansas City Chiefs
*Boston Redskins are now the Washington Redskins


Keep in mind that these moves have taken place over the course of about sixty years, give or take.  I'm probably also missing some.  Really early on, like in the 20's or 30's, there were a LOT of professional teams that moved, changed names, combined with other teams, folded, and were re-created.  Back then, though, professional football was still a brand new thing, so it's not fair to say fans weren't loyal.  Rather, they were still trying to build fanbases in the first place.  The other thing you have to remember is that the NFL is (in its current form) less than 40 years old.  Many of the moves and name changes I have above happened before the merger of the AFL and NFL (the NFL name is the one we use today).  

Sure, it's commercial to some people, but in a lot of cities, fans are extremely loyal to their team, no matter what.  Take Cincinnati, for instance.  The Bengals haven't had a winning season since 1990.  Yes, that's right.  1990.  I was five years old at the beginning of that season.  Since then, they have been the worst team in the NFL in almost every category.  They've been in highlights videos more times than any other team - only they're the ones getting burned.  Still, Cincinnati fans stick by their team and built them a $500+ million stadium to keep Mike Brown (asshole) from taking our crappy team away from us.  We love our teams as much as anybody in the world.  Even though I can't remember a time when the Bengals didn't suck, I've always been a fan.

Well, thats not exactly fair.  Both stadiums cost 500 mil.  The Bengals got the 300 some mil one and the Reds got the 100 some mil one afaik.  And plus, a lot of that went to redeveloping the area and not just the stadiums.  (i.e. parking lots, street grids that changed, practice fields.)

Okay, I just did a check, and the figure I found was $453 million.  It was definitely far greater than $300 million.  That $453 million may not even include all of that development you mentioned which was necessary for the stadium to be built, and it also probably doesn't include the cost of guaranteed sellouts for ten or so years that we promised the Bengals.  (We pay the difference if games don't sell out.  This may have been dropped last year finally, but I believe we did have to pay penalties for a few seasons there.)

The Reds stadium cost about $320 million.

Originally, these two were supposed to cost $300 or $350 million combined.  Leave it to Cincinnati to shoulder 100% of the cost of both of these stadiums and not get anywhere near the target for either one.

Yeah, for some reason i thought it was 500 mil for the whole thing, but it was close to 1bil for the whole thing.  I guess all this exam cramming has left my mind a little exhausted.  I do know that Hamilton County shouldered most of the cost, which is why it says "Hamilton County welcomes you" over the enterence to GABP.  Not sure if the same is written on the enterence to PBS, but I would guess so. (We should have tricked Kentucky into paying for 1 of the stadiums. :))

I think Kentucky tricked us into paying for them so that they can reap the rewards.