Worldwide Football

Because the Olympics and the NFL training camps schedules coincided, much of the chatter in the sports world revolved around the two.  The question of American football as an Olympic sport has been brought up in the past, and it will continue to be a topic for debate in the future.

Besides the Sarconomist's absolute disdain for any team sport making its way into the Olympics, there are other reasons for pessimism that such an event would ever occur.

The first step for such an unlikely scenario to occur would be for football to become a worldwide sport.  Everyone that I have ever talked to about the topic are quick to point out the sheer expense of the sport.  From pads and salaries to training facilities and infrastructure, it is easy to see how such an undertaking would be overly aggressive and fiscally irresponsible.  

My biggest concern would be that of education.  Most sports in the Olympics require no manual to understand.  Anyone can watch soccer for the first time and within five minutes, they will have a basic understanding of how the game is played.  Same is true for basketball, baseball, water polo, handball, lacrosse, and checkers.

I spent several weeks trying to teach a Chinese man the basics of football.  I failed.  The complexities of the game and its rules were to much for him to comprehend.  Add in the fact that the individual nuances of the game are complicated enough to make Bobby Fischer's head spin, and my student completely lost interest by the time I got to defense.  

Football in its primitive form played more like rugby than what we are familiar with.  The evolution of the game has created a set of rules that are far more complex than any other sport.  We had the advantage of being raised in it and we understand it as if it were a second language.   Football has essentially become a chess game on green grass.  Individual pieces with a completely different skill sets create the ultimate team sport.  Teaching foreign athletes this concept would be monumental task.  Educating the prospective fans would be borderline impossible.  

If the world is somehow able to overcome that hurdle and the popularity of the sport pushed it into the Olympics, it would be a short lived stint.  Softball was yanked as an Olympic event because the U.S. team kept winning, seemingly toying with the rest of the world.  No competition meant no excitement or purpose for having the event altogether.  If Michael Phelps found the fountain of youth, I'm sure his events would be excluded at some point as well.  

And then there is the time issue.  Trying to cram a football tournament into two weeks would be next to impossible.

Essentially, the introduction and reintroduction of football to the rest of the world would be like the path that 3D TV has taken.  Introduced, reintroduced, and rereintroduced, and it has failed every time.  History can only repeat itself so many times.