American Football
From Frikipedia
Rugby for wimps.
The Rules
The rules are based around the idea of scoring touchdowns, although it is not necessary to actually "touch" the ball "down" anywhere. Usually a faintly silly dance will convince the referee that you deserve some points.
In "football", the foot may not actually be used to touch the ball at any point in the game, unless you have a field goal, in which case you can drag some bloke who has spent the last 79 minutes picking his nose on the bench to kick an always straightforward goal from right infront of the posts. This is because kickers have issues with angles, and it looks better on TV.
Winners
The winner of the Superbowl wins the American Football cup thing. As with most American sports, teams from America have dominated the Superbowl of late, though Friki assumes some svelte bunch of Canadians won it at some point before they were banned.
American Football, UK Style
Tickets go on sale tomorrow for the first ever American Football game over in the UK, at the new Wembley stadium, in which the Albuquerque Razorblades will face off against the Pennsylvania Carwelders, in a game that most people are already referring to as "happening next year". Early press releases from Wembley HQ claim that Charlotte Church herself will sing the anthem before the game starts, while Ken Dodd and The Krankies are pencilled in to do the half-time show.
Interest in the game has been bafflingly high, with 500,000 people pre-registering for tickets (to put that into perspective, that's 15 times the population of Chipping Sodbury). Though around 98% of those sold will doubtless find their way onto Ebay within 10 minutes of the phone lines closing.
Friki can't help but feel that the end result will be a somewhat odd experience, akin to staging an Ashes test match in Beijing. Doubtless everyone will cheer, with only 19 people having the faintest idea what is going on, while the rest of the crowd will harbour a similar kind of look to a group of maltreated infants staring at an episode of the Teletubbies after accidentally quaffing away half their parent's stash of anti-depressants.
