Quote:
Originally Posted by CSL
it's growing in popularity, quite a few people pay attention to the Super Bowl nowadays but most don't really have a clue what's going on, nobody really cares about the draft or the regular season etc. For me personally some of my earliest memories are of NFL related things, my Dad played tight end for a team over here during the 80's Channel 4 popularity boom and I was some kind of unofficial mascot running around like a dickhead 3-4 year old with a helmet on, remember the coach journeys, remember having a Dan Marino jersey, became a Giants fan pretty much strictly because of Jason Sehorn, had my NFL sticker book open on the Houston Oilers page the moment I was told my Dad was dead blah blah blah. Knew "football" existed before "soccer" really. As I grew up I had Madden every year, I'd read books from the library etc etc. That's the only reason I know more about the history of the game, "memorable moments"/stories, players, stats etc than the average British person or maybe even "average general fan" should.
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It goes in waves - very popular in the mid-1980s when it was on C4, there were quite a few magazines devoted to it. Went through a bit of a decline when Sky got their hands on it and unless you had Sky sports you couldn't watch it.
There was a drop in interest after Sky got hold of the sport and no one could see it and the real internet boom in the early 2000s, once you could start to get the news again with relative ease the sport has started to grow again.
In the 1980s ITV even showed college games on their through the night coverage - so you could video that if you were really hardcore.
The peak was really 91 when the WLAF took place and the London Monarchs did really well.
As for me, I caught a pre-season game in about 86 when in the US between an orange team and a purple team and decided to support the purple team. Been a Vikings fan ever since.