AND ON THE TAPPED SPORTS BEAT... I missed the extinction of NFL Europa last weekend. Having shifted over the years from the World League of American Football (WLAF, or "we laugh") to the World League, to NFL European League, to the catchy NFL Europa, the NFL finally decided that the league couldn't make any money and wasn't producing any interesting players. The league had increasingly become dominated by Germany over the past few years, where five of the six teams were located last season. Apparently, the NFL will attempt to sate the growing German interest in American football by staging regular season games there as early as 2008. Given that football is such a television driven sport, I have to wonder whether having teams on-continent is really even necessary to creating a market. Also see this from Mrs. Tilton at Fistful of Euros, written after attending the final World Bowl:
It occurs to me that, though American football might have defects as a game, it is surely unbeatable as spectacle. When the Eintracht's players take the field, they run on as a group, to the cheers of the crowd. That wasn't nearly good enough for the players of the Frankfurt Galaxy and Hamburg Sea Devils. They came out one by one, running through a giant inflatable football helmet, as flares and fireworks shot off. I daresay there was mad cheering from the crowd, but you couldn't have heard it over the din. The game ball was delivered by a man with a jetpack. (This had been much ballyhooed in the press in the run-up to the match, but was sadly anticlimactic. I'd expected the pilot to zig and zag heroically through the stratosphere like the Rocketeer. As it happened he was more like Barney Gumble, lifting off feebly and slowly and not getting very far at all before the ride ended.) Before the match started, Meat Loaf favoured the crowd with a choice selection of his ballads. (The real NFL gets Bono; the NFL Europe has to settle for a fat Texan who would do almost anything for love.) And of course, there were cheerleaders doing their thing on the sidelines the whole time — six different sets of them!
--Robert Farley
