Column: It's Not Just American Football - It's Our Football

In September 2013, I was meandering around my university’s fresher’s fair eating free pizza when I heard a sentence that would go on to change my life.

“Hey mate, you’re quite tall, you look like a wide receiver. Have you thought about playing American football?”

“No, I haven’t,” I replied, and started to walk away. But then I did think about it. I’d been looking for something new to do. Why not this? I turned around and signed my name on the sheet of paper, and I’ve never looked back.

I don’t really know what I had been expecting, but I know the reality was nothing like that. Far from the pint-snorting LADs of the rugby world, I found a group of people with a great spirit, a great bond, and a great desire to win.

But what fascinated me more than anything about British American football was how bizarrely underground it is, considering the popularity of the NFL over here. As I got more involved, I started discovering these pockets of people all over Britain dedicat­ing themselves to a sport hardly anyone knew existed on their doorstep. For example, the London Olympians - one of the most successful teams in the history of the sport in this country - had been training and playing within walking distance of my house for 20 years and I’d never even heard of them.

As it turned out, I wasn’t the best wide receiver my team ever recruited. But I loved every minute I spent playing, and I fell in love with the weird, underground world of Brit Ball.

Sure, everyone who plays an amateur sport does it out of passion, but I sense something unique in British American football. Determination. Will. Genuine love.

At Football America UK, we want to tap into those emotions as we help you engage with the leagues you play in, but on top of that, we want to showcase them to people who don’t play.

"It's Not Just American Football, It's Our Football, And It's Time To Put It In Front Of As Many People As Possible"

You guys spend hours and hours in the gym, you run route after route after route in practice, you eat 5000 calories a day and travel the length and breadth of the country and come home on a Sunday evening battered and bruised and covered in mud. You hold first down chains in the freezing rain and charge through tackles in helmets that don’t fit and put up with soccer pitches without proper mark­ings, because you love the sport.

And yet, while the NFL’s International Series sells out Wembley Stadium three times a year, you do all this in a relative vacuum.

This sport boomed in popularity in the 1980s after the introduction of televised NFL games, but then the novelty wore off and the people lost interest. Now, after years in the wilderness, it’s growing again. Participation is up year on year and the quality is improving rapidly.

There is reason to be proud, and there is reason to be excited. It’s not just ‘American’ football; it’s our football, and it’s time to put it in front of as many people as possible.

As for this blog? We’re the same as all your teams were at one point or another: starting small, dreaming big.