The NFL juggernaut rolled into Dublin this week as Christmas comes early for Irish fans of American football.
You might have heard that the Pittsburgh Steelers are hosting the Minnesota Vikings at the home of the Gaelic Athletic Association tomorrow.
It's not the first National Football League game at Croke Park – the Steelers played Chicago in a pre-season clash in 1997 – but it is the first regular season match-up, part of the league’s plan for global expansion, which also sees fixtures being played in Sao Paolo, Berlin and Madrid, as well as the now traditional slate of three in London, in 2025.
The most popular sport in the US has been gaining fans on these shores in recent years, helped by the college games at the Aviva, the NFL matches just across the Irish Sea, and a small but increasing band of former Gaelic football, soccer or rugby players, like the Green Bay Packers’ Wicklow native Daniel Whelan.
Not to mention increased live broadcast coverage, primarily on Sky Sports but also on other broadcasters and online media, including the NFL’s own streaming platform - at a cheaper price to see all the games than for American fans. And the longstanding cultural ties between Ireland and the US.
The NFL are masters of marketing: They were putting free highlights online long before the Premier League – their closest sporting rivals in revenue per match - twigged the advantages and the Super Bowl half-time shows are watched by even more than the showpiece game itself. Last February, a record 133.5 million US viewers saw Kendrick Lamar perform (for just expenses, as all the musicians do) while an average of 126 million saw the Philadelphia Eagles deny Kansas City Chiefs a historic three-in-a-row.
NFL games are an audio-visual feast of spectacle and hype but there will be no cheerleaders on the sideline this weekend – Pittsburgh among seven of the 32 teams that don’t have them and, as the designated visitors, the Vikings (mixed gender) squad stayed at home. The Steelers fans like to wave towels instead, though hopefully it won’t be wet enough to need one on Sunday.
The common complaint that they need the razzmatazz because of the slow pace of action is a bit unfair. It’s actually a very fast, aggressive, exciting sport, there are just lots of breaks in between. It’s essentially a game of set-plays (average length around five seconds) and managing the clock, meaning it takes an average of three hours and 12 minutes to play four 15-minute quarters. The ball is only in play for 18 minutes of that hour. But any match seems long if you don’t know what’s going on.
The basic idea is to move the ball forward 10 yards (9.14 metres) in four attempts (downs), whether throwing (usually by the quarterback) or running with the ball. On fourth down, teams generally either try to kick a field-goal for three points or 'punt’ possession back to the opposition, as far downfield as possible. Get high enough up the pitch and you can score a touchdown (six points, with one or two-point conversions) but you don’t actually have to touch the ball down, that term is a holdover from the sport’s rugby origins. The time-outs that allow teams to stop the clock three times per half frequently engineer dramatic finales.
Speed, strength and dexterity are key but players also have to be able memorise hundreds of different sets of precise instructions (plays) as the opposing offensive and defensive co-ordinators try to outfox each other. Think chess but the pawns (linemen) are all 6’6 and 20 stone, or 300 pounds as our trans-Atlantic cousins might say. Let’s not get into kilos.
Thanks to a salary cap that would be impractical in a global game like soccer, every NFL team makes their owners money, though the Packers are (uniquely in US sports) non-profit. The franchise system, which allows holders to uproot teams (most often if the local authorities won't pay for their new stadium), is alien to European sensibilities but six-time champions Pittsburgh are one of the more traditional outfits, having spent their 122-year history in the same city, including a brief stint as the Pirates.
The Rooney family has owned the team for almost all of that time and their County Down ancestry has meant long ties with Ireland, including the late Dan Rooney – father of current majority owner Art Rooney II – serving as Barack Obama’s Irish ambassador from 2009-2012.
According to the NFL, US interest in tickets for the Dublin game was much higher than for those in England or continental Europe this year, as were the hospitality package sales.
An influx of American visitors is the sincere hope of the Government, which has given the world's richest sports league €10m of Irish taxpayer’s money in the hope of a boost in economic activity that was estimated at €64m earlier this year. Expect lots of ads targeting potential tourists watching in the US - almost 39 million said they had Irish ancestry in the 2020 census - though the kick-off time (2.30pm) is 6.30 in the morning in Minnesota.
The amateur GAA’s top brass are absolutely delighted, to use president Jarlath Burns’ words, to be renting out their stadium for the occasion but some of its members are uneasy about the partnership with a sporting organisation that is very much about the Benjamins and so enthusiastically supports the US military that they sell a range of team-branded camouflage gear as part of their ‘Salute to Service’ campaign.
Dublin’s three-time All-Ireland winner David Hickey has said that "The GAA doesn't share a single value with the NFL". However, there will be no (US tax-payer funded) fighter jets flying over the stadium this weekend, as there were at the 2014 College Classic.
READ MORE: 'Disappointed' Michael Darragh Macauley part of NFL Croke Park protest
The ticket prices would make Oasis blush. Though there were a small number available for €85/€100 in the nosebleeds of the Davin Stand, you would have paid at least €250 for an unrestricted-view lower-tier ticket (including the temporary seats on the Hill), that is, if you had the patience for the hours-long queue in June. By comparison, a ticket to the All-Ireland finals, the most in-demand sporting events on this island, will cost you €100 for the stand or €55 for Hill 16.
Of course, nobody is forcing anybody to go. And for 75,000 people, the novelty is well worth the price, whether you’re travelling from the US, elsewhere in Europe or within Ireland. Small numbers of resale tickets were quickly being snapped up during the week. Sunday will almost certainly be a sell-out. But it will be interesting to see whether the same appetite is there if the NFL comes back, which both they and the Government seem keen on. Next month’s London games have not yet sold out, a combination of underwhelming match-ups and eye-watering annual price increases (over 90% for some seats at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium) perhaps finally slowing demand.
But a close, high-scoring contest is hopefully in store in Dublin, between two teams that have 2-1 winning records in the early stages of the season.
Both made the play-offs last year and were eliminated in the first round. Pittsburgh’s response was to get the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer Aaron Rodgers in at the key quarterback position. The four-time MVP and self-described ‘critical thinker’ is giving it a last hurrah in pursuit of a second Super Bowl triumph. Think Michael Murphy, if he made controversial appearances on podcasts. Rodgers has been in decent form, recording an average 97.3 passer rating (good) so far, throwing seven touchdowns and three interceptions.
Rodgers has been keen to talk about his Irish and the Steelers' Irish heritage this week - including a fondness for a certain brand of stout - but the visitors have an O’Connell (Kevin) as coach and a McCarthy (JJ) at quarterback so should feel just at home, though poor JJ missed his entire rookie season with a knee injury and will be on the sidelines again this weekend with an ankle injury.
The new man on the Minnesota Vikings, so to speak, is journeyman QB Carson Wentz, who was solid in last weekend’s hammering of the Cincinnati Bengals. In Justin Jefferson he has one of the league’s star wide receivers as a target, and No 1 running-back Jordan Mason is making more yards per carry (5.3) than the Steelers RB1 Jaylen Warren (3.1).
And if that none of means a thing to you, don’t worry. There’s always the razzle dazzle.
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