However, I (and I say I because it's only my view, not Wide-Right's) am 100% against any such move, and here's why:
1) There are 16 days to play the required amount of games. That doesn't work in American Football. At best, you could play 3-4 games. You'd need a minimum of 5 (3 group games, a semi final, and a final) to make it work. Until that is possible, keep dreaming.
2) That time frame would also preclude any Professional from taking part. The risk in sending a player over for 1-2 games every 4 years would make most coaches balk, so imagine what playing a dramatically increased schedule would do? No, you'd be looking at amateur/college players to make it work. Then once you say that, you'd be eliminating the top tier of players in the rest of the world. A Catch 22 situation and a half.
3) The Olympics should be the pinnacle of your sporting career - not a nice trip and a chance to add a gold medal to your millions of dollars. Football (the one with feet) is in the Olympics, and in truth nobody cares. People are excited that the new Premiership season starts today, but the Olympics generally passes by a lot of people - and that has pro's in it.
4) Fourthly - and most importantly - is that the competition factor would be zero. I'll dwell on that point in a second, after some choice words from the original article:
The question becomes whether the sport can grow beyond our borders to the point that inclusion in the Olympics becomes a no-brainer proposition. Its ability to do so depends in large part on the ability of the NFL to export regular-season contests to other countries. Hopefully, the next collective bargaining agreement will expand the regular season to 17 or 18 games, creating ample opportunities to send games that count to other countries.
- Mike Florio, Sportingnews.com
That the NFL wants to expand is undoubted. However, the idea that this can be achieved via simply showing people the product on offer is laughable. Why do sales of Tennis Rackets pick up when Wimbledon is on? Why do people start playing Golf as soon as the Masters hits our screens every year? The answer is because the infrastructures are in place to allow young kids to play these sports both casually and competitively, regardless of age.
The NFL - and most commentators - seem to be missing the point completely. If I wanted to play American Football, even as a die hard fan who is obsessed, I'd have no way of doing so, and wouldn't really know where to begin. The sport is not available to schools, which limits the amount of players at it's most basic level. I played Basketball at school, and it generated both ability and interest in the sport.
The sport needs funding at the very fundamental level before this idea could even get past the 'Idiot with a soapbox' phase that it is in now. How about instead of putting money into trying to convince the IOC to accept the sport, give youngsters a chance to play football from the age of 7-8, like kids in America. The natural talent pool exists around the world, it's just that for most kids who grow up with a football at their feet rather than in their hands, their dreams lie in the back of the net, rather than the end zone.
Until that grass-roots funding and support is in place, you can forget about the idea of American Football as an Olympic sport.
