So I saw my first Super Bowl match today.
To be more precise, I saw the Super Bowl XLIX featuring New England Patriots
and Seattle Seahawks.
The rules still flummox me for I continue
to correlate the European interpretation of the sport to the Americanised version.
The concept of a totally offensive line-up vis-à-vis a completely defensive one
is novel considering that in European football, one doesn’t get to see a team full of
wingers and strikers lining up against a team full of centre-backs and
half-backs, sweepers and full-backs.
The name is also a misnomer, with the
players mostly not kicking the ball around but trying to pass it through the
opposing team’s defence holding to secure a touchdown to score points. But it
isn’t easy as it sounds. The offence has to be extremely good, the passing of
the ball – which is referred to as throwing – needs to be adroit and the
players need to have a good pair of feet to get their respective jobs done
efficiently.
If paused to consider from this angle, it
is much similar to European football. The offence dictates the game in both
sports; only in NFL, the offensive positions are referred to as quarter-back, wide
receiver, running back, tackle, guard and centre. The names do sound odd when
one first hears them – especially the one about quarter-back, but there’s
nothing odd about the way they take control of the game.
The quarter-back is the back-bone of any
team’s offensive line-up. He has to have a good arm to throw the ball to the
wide receiver and he needs to have a sprightly pair of legs to run through all
the hefty defensive athletes whose main purpose, standing at the other end, is
to tackle him and take the ball away from him.
The contest thus gets pretty even. The
defensive line-up, which consists of linebackers, cornerbacks, tackle, end and
safety, thus cannot afford to be mediocre. And unlike in European football, it’s
thus not the team composition and the formation that matters, but rather the
effectuality of the team’s line-up – in whichever formation it may be – that makes
the difference in the match.
In the final, New England Patriots were
trailing by 10 points in the final moments of the game before their
quarter-back Tom Brady – NFL legend so to speak – came up with a truly match
winning performance to secure a 28-24 win for them. He was acknowledged as the
MVP – in non-American colloquial, as the man-of-the-match – for his inspiring
contribution and, it’s one more facet that isn’t dissimilar to European
football.
The bottom-line however, irrespective of my
continual references to similarities and dissimilarities between the two genres
isn’t to come up with a ‘spot-the-difference’ quiz. But rather, to emphasise on
the fact that American football is a sport that’s grossly underrated outside
the domain where it has a legion of fandom. There are many who mock the sport
for its existence and continual thriving despite not knowing much about it, as
there are many who, while having some idea about it, don’t care much to explore
and widen their knowledge.
But then if one is truly a sports fan, one
can’t really choose which sport to follow and which to let go. A sport, at the
end of the day, is just that. There are no two ways about it. If one really wishes
to develop an interest in a sport, one needs to have an open mind about the
rest as well.
