Have you seen Randy Moss? He is an underachiever, but his speed and ability to get to the ball wherever it is, and then his awesome hands, make him an awesome athlete. It looks he's from the Matrix, the way he moves. I'm sure you've seen clips of Barry Sanders, that guy is amazing. Ricky Williams hurts people when they try to tackle him. I don't even have to mention Michael Vick! He's just a blur. You have to see him. They are different sports, and rugby does seem a lot rougher. But the amout of injuries in American football is amazing. A college kid had his leg bent backwards, possibly ruining his caeer. Concussions are pretty common also. How common are injuries in rugby?
the whole point wasn't too slag the NFL guys...but to point out that claling yourselves 'world champions' is freaking ridiculous when there are tougher, faster, more skillful footballers on the planet...none of who are arrogant enough to call themselves world champs. a guy like Andrew Johns in League is so mutil dimensionally skilled it makes an NFL quarter back pale in comparison. Jonah Lomu would destroy any wide reciever. Guys like Moss and Owens wouldn't last 5 minutes in Rugby or League. No disrespect in that...but just don't say "we are the best" etc. Check out Lomu yourselves...be in AWE. http://www.jonahlomu.com/
hilarious. our best guys wouldn't last 5 minutes in rugby but your best guys would dominate the nfl. of course. a guy like Andrew Johns in League is so mutil dimensionally skilled it makes an NFL quarter back pale in comparison? like mike vick. or mcnabb? and an nfl quarterback would be able to read defenses and throw pinpoint passes so well it would make johns pale in comparison. same as a 300 lb lineman wouldn't belong in rugby, a rugby player doesn't belong in the trenches of an nfl game. we could go on and on i suppose. but saying your game is so much tougher, so much faster, so much more skilled, your players are better is easily as arrogant as you made americans out to be. and like RM95 said, if you don't want us to be world champs, make a team and beat us.
Outsiders look at American football Super Bowl: in your face, and a tribute to marketing genius Matthew Engel in the USA Thursday January 23, 2003 The Guardian Every major national sporting event is in some sense a reflection of the country's character, but there is nothing quite so in-your-face about it as the Super Bowl, the apogee of Americanism. Part of this is very obvious indeed: there is the obsession with both violence and money, and the exploitative eroticism represented by the cheerleaders. Some aspects, however, strike one a little more slowly. It is presumably the same unexpected phlegmatic side of the American character that both enables them to shuffle obediently into line at airports and to endure the constant interruptions of an American football game. There is the uniquely hierarchical nature of the sport, which elevates the quarterback, ex officio, to unique importance on the field and reduces everyone else to the status of helots and bodyguards. The game is also an outlet for the nation's verbosity. The referee in last week's play-off between Oakland and Tennessee explained his decisions far more coherently, rationally and at greater length than President Bush explaining his reasons for war. It seems very bizarre; imagine a British referee trying to tell the crowd why the whistle had gone. Above all, though, the Super Bowl is a tribute to American marketing genius. And when the Oakland Raiders play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in San Diego on Sunday, even those who don't care much for the sport itself can just sit there and marvel. For the contest between the football teams is merely part of the show. This is the Super Bowl for advertising: not only the most expensive night of the year - an in-game advert costs $2.1m (£1.3m) for 30 seconds - but also a showcase. It would be very naff indeed for a company to run a routine ad; they are expected to confect something bespoke and classy, or look pathetic. In comparison, the pressure on the players is secondary. American football is so weirdly socialistic, with all the game's regulations rigged to ensure that last year's losers have the advantage the following year, that no one expects to win the Super Bowl. If it happens, it is a lucky break. Nike and Coke do not organise their corporate affairs on that basis. It is that national genius that has enabled an event without deep historic roots to become quite overpowering. The Super Bowl began only in 1967, when two competing leagues merged. At first the competition was lopsided, but in 1969 Joe Namath, the New York Jets quarterback, "guaranteed" an upset victory over the Baltimore Colts and then delivered it, and so the legend began. Super Bowl XXXVII does look like a promising addition to the annals, partly because it pits the league's best offence (Oakland) against the best defence. Oakland are the favourites because irresistible force always seems more compelling in sport than the immovable object. The Raiders' owner, Al Davis, took a conscious decision to forgo long-term objectives and buy short-term success and glamour; old English soccer fans might recall the way Stoke City once gloriously built a team round the ancient Stanley Matthews. The Raiders' quarterback, Rich Gannon - the league's MVP this season - is 37 and was presumed to be on the scrapheap. His wide receiver, Jerry Rice - a legend across the bay at the San Francisco 49ers - is 40 and ditto. The safety Rod Woodson and linebacker Bill Romanowski are also old Super Bowl hands. The one old hand not on Davis's side is his former coach, Jon "Chucky" Gruden, who left Oakland last season for the more downbeat setting of Tampa Bay. But he discovered, to his surprise, that he had a credible quarterback, Brad Johnson, and a remarkable set of defenders. And by the time he had imparted something of his own intensity and attention to detail (he is said to get up every morning at 3.17am) he had a bunch of winners in a city whose teams have never done anything. In contrast, his successor at the Raiders, Bill Callahan, is about the lowest-profile man in Oakland. It looks like being quite a night. Tentatively, the prediction is for Gannon to maintain supreme aerial and passing accuracy to ensure a narrow Oakland win, and for Pepsi to beat Reebok for the most innovative ad. We do have a tentative winner in the traditional preliminary: weirdest media question of the week. Teenage reporter from Nickelodeon to Woodson of Oakland: "Who has the worst breath on your team?"
Give us 10 years of practice with the Australian rules, and bring it. I don't buy all of this Rugby>Football talk. I have friends that have sort of started a rugby club at school...Most are ones that couldn't cut it on the football team... Arrogance is all the Aussie talk that football players couldn't last two seconds in rugby because its so different. If it's so different, then why compare? That's like saying that rugby players wouldn't last on a basketball court. I call BS.
I'd hardly call that representative... The games are NOT that different in defence. It's just that the NFL applauds a guy who makes three 'big tackles' as though he's the defensive super star of the 'world' when we have hundreds of guys doing 30 + such tackles each game. And as the original point asked...why call yourselves 'world champions' when your not. It just seems this kind of logic is embedded in your pysche / culture... that you must be better than everyone else because your Americans.
I don't understand the problem of calling the Super Bowl Champions "World Champions". First, the Super Bowl is broadcast by how many different countries? Although American football is not played in many parts of the world, it's still followed. If not, why would those other countries show the event? Yes, only Americans play the game but the world cares about it. Second, the US has a professional soccer league. I doubt whoever wins that claims they're the "World Champions" because that's ludicrous. The reason the US claims World Champions in baseball, basketball, and football is because we have the best players (as an aggregate whole) in the world in those sports. Just as in hockey. Whoever wins the NHL could make the case that they are the world champions because the best players in the world play in the NHL and whoever wins the Stanley Cup has the best team within that talent pool of players. If all the best rugby players play in Australia, I have no problems with the winner of that league calling themselves the World Champions. The victor of any competition in which the top players participate have every right to call themselves the best because theyve beaten the best.
So why aren't you playing all the NFL Europe teams as part of this 'world championship' then? Answer me that one! Oh, and Mr. Clutch, if you 'doubt we have guys as athletic as the NFL', try this sometime: make your guys play for eighty minutes straight, no time outs, no swapping offence and defence, no pads, and no helmets. *Then* maybe we could call it a comparison. (I'm sure some of them could do it, too. I'm not saying all gridiron players would suck at rugby, at all.) SRJ's argument is a perfectly valid one, you know. Why call yourselves 'the best' when you don't know *anything* about other players elsewhere? You guys don't even know who Jonah Lomu *is* and you're trying to say he isn't as good as your players! Why don't you watch some rugby and maybe then you can start talking in an informed way. (Rimmy: I knew that about WWII and the national anthem. But it's impossible to reach Nomar with history, as we all know. )
I'm sure it is much easier to be awed by a guy like Jonah Lomu when you are watching him perform without pads. Sure, you can argue all you want that the pads make them pansies. Okay, fine. But they are only playing the game as it is designed. If you took the pads off of Terrell Owens or Michael Vick, I can just about guarantee you he could hold his own, if not flat out destroy, just about any Rugby player you can think of, athletically. There's a reason guy's like Vick don't happen very often in football...it is because they don't happen very often ANYWHERE. The idea that the Rugby players are that much more athletic than that sounds like a tall tale to me. By the way, I couldn't find any videos of this Lomu guy on his website.
Dimsie, The NFL Europe teams are comprised of NFL scrubs. As far as calling the American teams the best- The best players in basketball, American football, and baseball play in the US. A very high pct of Baseball players are from latin countries. A high pct of hockey players are European and Canadien. An increasingly large pct of NBA players are from European countries with Yao Ming obviously from China. The best players in the world play in this country because they offer the best competition and the most money. If you have competition from the best players from wherever, the winner of that competition has a legitimate right to call themselves the best in the world.
None of our best players played in that championship. Tim Duncan Shaquille O' Neal Kobe Bryant Tracy McGrady Steve Francis GaryPayton Jason Kidd Kevin Garnett Allen Iverson etc. etc. I don't think any of the Top 10 players played on that team. The Olympics will be a totally different story.
Even so, I think had the Lakers taken their full team and played in the World Championships, they would have done much better than the random assortment of all star players that were sent. Team chemistry and cohesiveness really do count for something.
Oh, so your losing doesn't actually count? You're still 'the best' even though you lost? Lame, lame, lame.
the question isn't if the american national basketball team is the world champ, it is if the nba team is the world champ. all of the best players in the world are in the nba (no other league compares) and thus it's best team is the best in the world. why are people arguing this. we aren't even saying the best teams are all american teams, simply that the best people in all of those sports play in our country in our league and thus the winner of our league is legitimately the world champion. and as someone said, call the rugby champ the world champ if you want, we won't complain.
The point is - as we keep repeating over and over and over - the rugby world cup actually involves teams from many different countries. You guys don't even bother inviting them. I mean, obviously you'd probably wipe the floor with us in any of 'your' sports. But it would be nice to be asked, and then you could legitimately call yourselves 'world champions'.
I still wear my '94 NBA World Champions T-Shirt with pride, so screw you all! Honestly, I think the only reason they do it is because "World Champions" sounds better than "National Champions." It's something that television and newspapers and anyone else looking to sell something do for added effect, nothing more.
I don't know if he can still do this, but at one time, Warren Sapp could run a sub 5 40, I think like 4.8. Now remember, this is a 300 pound man who is like 6'3" or so. I think he could handle Lomu.
