In the NFL, the coaches dive into the videos to see how their defense and offense can accomplish this and this. A strong first rounder can make a huge impact on an NFL team, but soccer looks the same to me--pass pass pass pass steal pass pass pass pass missed shot pass pass pass pass etc until one team gets a goal

i would jsut like to see some lower teams actually climb to the top in soccer. like lets see wolverhampton or some other team get to the top of the table i eman i suppose its the money factor. Chelsea and teams of that nature can get better players. Just like say the Yankees in baseball

Well, I don't know about the English Football League, but the NFL is VERY even...

I'm typing this after my 49ers essentially threw a game away and so I'm not so happy about football as I normally am (even with Cowboys/Redskins on for the Sunday Night Game...that's one of if not THE penultimate rivalry in the league, up thee with the likes of Yankees/Red Sox or the old Brooklyn Dodgers/New York Giants/New York Yankees rivalry or Crosby's Pittsburgh Penguins vs. Ovechkin's Washington Captials or the old Montreal Canadiens vs. Quebec Nordiques Battle of French-Speaking Canada games or...well, what's a huge English football rivalry? Name a big one, with more great games than you can count and tons of history on both sides and hugely successful franchises that have a long history of hating each other and a long list of reasons they do...and you have the Dallas Cowboys/Washington Redkisns Rivalry.)



But that aside, there are 32 teams in the NFL; teams that have played in the 44 Super Bowls out of those:

-Green Bay Packers: 4 times, won 3
-Kansas City Chiefs: 2 times, won 1
-Oakland Raiders: 5 times, won 3
-Baltimore/Indianapolis Colts: 4 times, won 2
-New York Jets: 1 time, won 1
-Minnesota Vikings: 4 times won 0 (OUCH...and all before 1978...OUCH!)
-Dallas Cowboys: 8 times, won 5 (Most appearances of any team)
-Miami Dolphins: 5 times, won 2 (1 being the only TRULY perfect, 17-0+SB WIN year)
-Washington Redskins: 5 times, won 3
-Pittsburgh Steelers: 7 times (most by an AFC team), 6 wins (Most SB wins by a team)
-Denver Broncos: 6 times, won 2
-Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams: 3 times, won 1 (Won after move to St. Louis)
-Philadelphia Eagles: 2 times, won 0
-San Francisco 49ers: 5 times, 5 wins (Highest win percentage at perfect in 5 games)
-Cincinnati Bengals: 2 times, 0 wins
-Chicago Bears: 2 times, won 1
-New England Patriots: 6 times, won 3
-New York Giants: 4 times, won 3
-Buffalo Bills: 4 times, 0 win (4 trips consecutive...OUCH, tied for most losses...OUCH!)
-San Diego Chargers: 1 time, won 0
-Atlanta Falcons: 1 time, won 0
-Tennessee Titans: 1 time, won 0
-Baltimore Ravens: 1 time, won 1
-Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 1 time, won 1
-Carolina Panthers: 1 time, won 0
-Seattle Seahawks: 1 time, won 0
-Arizona Cardinals: 1 time, won 1
-New Orleans Saints: 1 time, won 1

Only four teams have NOT ever even BEEN to the Super Bowl, though two are recent, existing less than 20 years:

-Houston Texans, born in 2002
-Jacksonville Jaguars, born in 1995

The Cleveland Browns have never won a Super Bowl but are the only team on this short, 4-team mist to have won a championship, having won 4 NFL Championships in the pre-SB days and 4 championships in brief AAFC league before moving to the NFL, though the latest of these wins dates 1964; the Browns are also the only team to have played in the Conference Title Game, the game that comes before the SB in each conference and decides which of the remaining 4 teams goes on to the SB--the Browns played three such games and lost all three...to the Denver Broncos...which lost all three of their NEXT games, ie, the Super Bowl bid they won by beating the Browns, to three different NFC teams (the Giants, Redskins, and 49ers, in order.)

And the biggest, saddest, most humiliating failure of a franchise among the 32 today is:

THE DETROIT LIONS!

I suspect even those across The Pond have heard of the woefulness of the Lions the same way I don't know half of the rules of English football and I know Man U. are the New York Yankees or Montreal Canadiens or Steelers/Cowboys/49ers/Packers of English football.

Ah, the Lions...

The Lions are one of the oldest teams, starting up in 1929, and in the 80 or so years that have followed have won 4 titles, all before the Super Bowl era, the last in 1957, and have the singular distinction of being so woeful as to never even play in a CONFERENCE title, game, that game that gives you a SHOT at the Super Bowl (the ones the Browns swung and missed in three times, but hey--at least the MADE IT THAT FAR!) and are bY FAR the oldest team to never play in one and thus never to have even sniffed the glory of the Super Bowl.

And, yes, they also had arguably the worst year and worst team in NFL history, the Imperfect Season, an imperfect 0 wins against 16 losses, 0-16.

If you're wondering how many times the lions have won ANY titles at all since 1957, they have won three Division titles, ie, won their division and gone onto the playoffs in stride, in the Super Bowl era, far less than the Cleveland Browns and only one more than the Jaguars who have existed for 55 or so years LESS.

Total trips to the playoffs and shots at the Suoer Bowl for Detroit in the Super Bowl era?

9 times out of the 44 seasons of the Super Bowl era.

Consider:
-The Cowboys almost have as many Super Bowl APPEARANCES as that
-The 49ers had streaks of 8 and 7 years with trips STRAIGHT and were 16/18 in that span
-The Steelers have nearly had TRIPLE that amount with 24 trips, including 8 straight
-A playoff berth this year and the Colts would have a string of 9 straight trips
-Since berth in 1995 the Jaguars already have 2/3 (6) of the Lion's 80+-year total trip

The Detroit Lions: The first and last words on NFutiLity...

And finally, who are the converse of the Detroit Lions? What teams have made the playoffs more often than not or at least have broken even during the Super Bowl era?

Coming into this year only 3 franchises have either broken even in terms of making and not making the playoffs or have made it more often than not, adn they would be...

The Dolphins and 49ers each have 22 playoff appearances in that 1966-present span, making them 22 for 44 in terms of the Super Bowl era and giving them the rare distinction of breaking even.

And now...what is the only franchise to reach the playoffs MORE OFTEN than NOT?

...

*sigh*

Alright, alright, you know it, I know it, altogether now...

The Dallas Cowboys...they have 30 (!) playoff trips in their history, all in the Super Bowl era, making them 30 for 44, meaning that the Damn Dallas Cowboys have made the Super Bowl Playoffs just more than 2/3 of the years the Big Game has been around.



REALLY makes the Lions look terrible, huh?

But with 28 of the 32 NFL teams reaching the SB, the NFL seems to give teams a pretty good chance...

Btw, Blackpool is currently in fourth place, and they just moved up from the second league. The one thing I like about EPL is it allows for more teams, and teams can move up and down I must admit, that the top 2 or 3 is usually the same, but lately there have been some up-and-comer teams from the middle ranks that are looking at a possible second or third place spot, when normally they wouldn't even think about it.

As I said, the NFL ultimately has the better top 3 system, but I think the EPL has a better, broader system, especially with no play-offs and championships.

Also, the two systems are ahrd to compare. The NFL system allows a team to barely scrape by in the season, and then all of a sudden and have an amazing playoff run and have the top team get beat.

Sometimes it is nice to see the underdog, but it is also sad to see a team go down in sudden death, when they have been working harder than every other team for their record all season.

I can't really say that either one is better.

In the 'English' game, clubs have traditionally developed their own talent. This has become much more international in recent years and many top clubs have academies and links to teams in other leagues/countries. The basic principle is the same though: most good teams try to identify and nurture talent early on.

If the English game were to go down the route of the NFL, would the incentive to nurture talent be reduced? I am wondering if, say, a club like Chelsea had seven of the ten hottest young prospects on its youth training books, could it be forced to release some of them because another club, like Man Utd, has had a totally crap season, only just avoided relegation and is now being helped to rebuild?

That's not how the NFL works, though, there's a salary cap, not a communist cap, so to speak...

You don't have to give up some of your best players to struggling teams to balance them out, there's just a cap so the Bill Gates of the football world don't kill the small-market teams and so teams can stay...

Ask the folks in Winnipeg and Quebec who lost the Jets and Nordiques because of no salary cap and runaway spending on players (and bettman's being an asshole, but let's not ge too far into this) if they'd be in favor of a salary cap...which is now in place and hey! the Canadian teams get to stay now, and those cities might even get their teams back.


Just because the Cowboys and Giants have to partake in rEVENUE sharing with teams in, say, Jacksonville doesn't mean they have to give up a Tony Romo or Eli Manning.

To top it off, there aren't really farm systems in the NFL, everyone drafts out of the colleges...and the WORST TEAMS pick first UNLESS they trade their pick for better (supposedly) current players; BASEBALL is the sport that practices a farm system, and the NHL to a degree, and they don't have rules about giving some of your best farm assets away...

So where are you going with this?

I'm a college football fan, not so much NFL. One thing I remember was when Seattle had a really good year and made the Super Bowl (but lost to the Steelers), the next year they had a bad year. I seem to remember that during the offseason after the SB, there were a bunch of players whose contracts were up and after going to the Super Bowl they were worth more and Seattle couldn't afford to keep all of them under the salary cap. So the team got decimated.

Slight tangent, but one thing that I often wonder about is the huge difference in the number of games played.

In the Premier League in england, the teams play 38 league games, plus the League Cup, plus the FA Cup, plus additional european tournament games for some teams. So some Premier League teams will play more than 50 games in a season.

By contrast, in American Football, the teams seem to play about 16 games per season.

How come NFL teams play so few games?

NFL is full of physical freaks - really big, really fast guys, hitting very hard. I doubt the players could stand up to a great degree more punishment. It's more about the punishment a body can take, rather than physical fitness.

The PL fixture list is a holdover from the way it used to be, plus the ridiculous proliferation of European ties.

Now I think you're being a bit unfair to the NFL players, Pete U...I'd argue that a body HAS TO BE pysically fit in order to take so much punishment; if they were frail, the'd be out of the game or dead (or both...and don't tell me it's all padding, proportionate to the punishment of the game PLUS if anything it makes the contact even HARDER--those are flak jackets and metal helmets, these are no sisy shots...)

Why do they play os few games? For that reason--American Football's like a sprint, you go very fast and very hard over a short amount of time, ie, games, whereas a sport like baseball you ahve a 162-game schedule and it's a long marathon, playing practically everyday, and no one day is typically crushing, but the long wear and tear is.

Sorry, lack of clarity - NFL players are (very) fit, but the limiting factor in season length is the amount of punishment they can take, not their fitness levels.

In soccer, the limiting factor is fitness and wear and tear

But rugby union clubs play over 30 games a season, and they take just as much punishment - if not more because they don't have rolling substitutions.

(I find rolling substitutions in american football really, really weird, by the way. Imagine if, in a football match, Manchester United lost possession, and immediately Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov (attackers) left the pitch and two extra defenders came on, but as soon as Manchester Utd had the ball back, Rooney and Berbatov would come back on. Just weird!)

The NFL salary cap and draft system works extremely well, but only because it is an isolated system. If the rest of the world ever became interested in American football (and by this I mean properly interested, and not just tuning in to the super bowl once a year to laugh at the Yanks and their weird sporting ways), and set up their own leagues in the style of European club football, then the best american football teams in the world would soon be solely European. The American system may enforce closer competition in a single season, but it does so at the expense of limiting the best club's potential.

@jamiet: We have rolling substitutions because changes of possession aren't usually fluid. When they do happen fluidly (like with an interception), then the same players stay on the field until the person on defense with the ball is tackled.

@ CM: Yes, I understand that because american football is a very stop-start game with very frequent stoppages in play, it is possible to make rolling substitutions.

I must say, however, that the fact each team has upwards of 46 players completely baffles me. I think there would be something more sporting about the game if players were required to develop a more all-round set of skills, rather than having such a high level of specialism.

The number of commercial breaks in a normal NFL game is just absurd as well. Up to 40 minutes of adverts? In one game? Screw that!

@obiwanobiwan

Quebec and Winnipeg did not lose their teams because of spending on players. They lost their teams because Denver and Phoenix respectively threw a metric fuckload of cash at ownership to get them to move. And no salary cap was going to keep Denver or Phoenix from bribing the owners of the Nordiques or Jets. Don't blame labor when management is at fault.

The world soccer system and the American Football systems are set up differently because they have different goals in mind. Now, we can say that both systems want to make profits, but the truth is that the only goal of the NFL is to make profits. Not as true when talking about the EPL.

First the NFL. The system is set up to try and keep fans at 30 different cities interested. And fans are not going to be interested if they have 0 star player and struggle to win 1 game a year. Thus, the draft system and salary cap. This allows the St. Luis Rams to go 2-14 last year, and still have fans excited about this year because; 1. They just got the #1 pick Sam Bradford, and #2 they have an outside shot at winning 5+ games this year because the salary cap limits the best teams from getting a lot better. This system creates an extremely competitive league, top to bottom. Far more competitive than the EPL.

Now the EPL.They have another goal other than maximizing profits within England. Champions League. To be considered one of the top leagues in the world, the EPL must preform in the top club championship in the world, the UEFA Champions League. And to accomplish that, the EPL needs mega-teams (aka Man U, Arsenal, Chelsea) to compete at the continental level. This is something that the NFL does not consider or have to worry about. The EPL system creates better teams at the top of the standings and worse teams at the bottom. Two different systems, with two slightly different objectives.

@Jamiet: They are two different games, you are trying to get Football to be more like soccer. Football is a highly specialized game, that is why you have 6'6" 350lb lineman and 5'6" 190lb running backs on the field together.

Whereas soccer players are all more similar in build because the game is fluid and every player needs similar skill sets to succeed.

Two different games requiring two different sets of players. If you don't like football because of the specialization, that is fine. But that is part of the game, and it is one reason football creates some spectacular athletic feats.

@Jamiet

1. There's way more than 40 minutes of commercials.

2. Well-rounded players are worse players. Large rosters, and considering the attrition of an average NFL season, the 53 man roster is too small, lead to better play. Specialization has its advantages.

3. I am a huge fan of both forms of football. They appeal to completely different sensibilities, though. At its best, association football is improvisational, the athletic version of a bebop quartet (at its worst, its the Dutch squad in the World Cup Final). Gridiron football is the least improvisational team athletic event I've ever seen; it is more akin to a full symphony. The delight of gridiron is that it is truly the most tactical team sport out in the world.

Also @ obiwan, re: Lions history

You may want to review the results of the 1991 NFL season before you blithely assert that the Lions have never reached a conference title game.

@ Bob, I would say that Barry Sanders made the conference title game, not the Lions.....:)

OK, but I'd also point out that the Lions that year had, umm, something else of value, right? I mean, Bennie Blades was a good safety, and Mel Gray might be the best kick returner of all time, so they had that going for them.

MORE than 40 minutes of commercials in a single sports fixture? Fuck me, I couldn't put up with that. In football (soccer) you get 45 minutes of uninterrupted play, a short advertising break during half-time, then 45 more minutes of play without ad breaks. I could not stomach the idea of having a commercial break 10 times each half.

Specialisation does have its advantages, but the disadvantages seem clear too in that the players are less complete sportsmen. When a team in football (soccer) is awarded a free-kick, they don't (usually) sub on a player whose only role in the team is to take free kicks. If they're awarded a penalty kick, likewise, they don't sub on a specialised penalty taker - one of the players already on the field has to do it.

And believe me, every time the NFL does one of its "extra Point, three commercials, kickoff, three commercials" sequences, I kind of want to stab someone in the league office. College football is better, but also I mind the commercials less because there's usually about 5 games going on at once and with remote control technology, I can look in on other games. When you go to an NFL or a college game in person though, it's glaringly obvious how much time is devoted to selling the home audience shit they don't need.

In fact, I suppose if football (soccer) was like American Football, when a team got a penalty,not only would a new penalty taker come onto the field, but also the defending team would bring on a specialist goalkeeper trained only in saving penalties!

@ Bob: No wonder American Football matches take so long then - constantly waiting for the TV people... Ugh.

@ Jamiet

It is a serious flaw of gridiron football. And yes, if association football was more like gridiron football, there'd be that kind of specialization. They're completely different games, though. Comparing them makes no more or less sense than comparing association football and formula 1 racing; the skill sets and priorities are completely different.

Isn't one of the zebras signals for a commercial time out?

Yes.

The commercial timeouts may be irritating to the viewer, but you are missing one aspect of it. It gives the players a bit more time to catch their breath and the coaches time to talk to their players and make adjustments.

Regarding specialization versus all around athlete, do you prefer Checkers to Chess too? Gridiron football is very much a chess game and the coaches and offensive and defensive coordinators are very much a key to the game. More so in college ball than NFL, but still, you have a good coaching staff and that will allow you to outmaneuver better players with worse coaching staff.

Personally I like the NFl (and college football), but they lack the flow and drama of football (soccer). No other sport combines the team ethic with the individual moment of genius like football. No other sport has the combination of every goal being vital and you never knowing how close you are to the next one. No other sport is as fluid and changing. No other sport is so accessible - a flat(ish) piece of ground and something to kick are all you need. No other sport is (or was) so open to the working man. And a great manager will take an good team and make then great.

And now, money is changing the game beyond recognition - and we're losing something. My team has been the champions, long in the past. They will never be champions ever again unless some multi-billionaire buys them, and brings in a load of high paid mercenaries. Kids growing up today have no idea that they were the first team to bear their suffix. The history of football here now seems to start in 1992. This makes me sad

It seems to me that the NFL, with it's closed system, is designed to protect the interests of the owners whereas the EPL, and other soccer leagues globally, does not. We have seen a some owners lose a lot of money buying EPL teams (Chelsea, Portsmouth, Newcastle, Leeds, and perhaps Liverpool in the near future). Personally I like the way that big clubs can go down and small clubs go up. I follow two teams: one went down to the second tier but is now back near the top of the EPL and the other somehow struggled into tier 4 (bottom professional league) a few years and, more remarkably, is still there. Both play in almost identical strips. I saw one of them play at Wembley in 1970. Answers on a post card please.

If you want to compare like sports, compare association football to basketball. They are much more compatible comparison wise.

The NFL is designed to give every team a chance. Green Bay is the best example of how the NFL gives even the smallest markets a fair chance at winning a championship.

The EPL has no system in place that allows the weaker teams to compete with the likes of Man. United and Chelsea. Teams like Blackpool and Wigan will never be able to outspend or outbid the top teams for the best players in soccer unless the EPL changes their system. It's not a fluke that only four teams have won the Premier League since 1992.

i will admit though that i love relegation and think it would be fun for college sports. think about it you have non BCS teams like BYU and Boise State who have not been able to compete in national championships because of it. maybe a relegation style would help that system. problem is how many college teams there are you would need a bunch of divisions.

Div I-A(FBS), I-AA(FCS), Div II, Div III, and NAIA not enough divisions for you? Well, I guess not since I-A(FBS) is really split between AQ (automatic qualifying) conferences and on-AQ.

The problem with adding relegation to the college football conferences is that the teams that know they'd be relegated but are currently in the AQ conferences want nothing to do it for obvious reasons (money).