Not so friendly: NFL sends real deal to Europe

LONDON -- Four months after the Hamburg Sea Devils nudged the Frankfurt Galaxy, 37-28, to win the NFL Europa title, whereupon the NFL folded NFL Europa to render the Sea Devils eternal champions, the NFL returns to Europa with a fresh tack.

This strategy, the commissioner feels, is a better strategy, Miami Dolphins owner Wayne Huizenga said, referring to the Dolphins-New York Giants game today at Wembley Stadium, the first NFL regular-season game outside North America.

It’s but an opener Europe-wise, NFL owners having approved two international games in each of the next five seasons.

Rather than plying Europe with NFL hopefuls in an obscure league that reportedly lost money, the NFL will try the Giants (5-2) seeking a sixth straight win, the Dolphins (0-7) seeking to avoid an eighth straight loss, and the league seeking to heed Bob Dylan.

The old road is rapidly aging. You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday, crediting Dylan.

Not quoting Dylan, he said, while the NFL is the No. 1 sport in the U.S., its future successes will depend in large part on its ability to globalize.

At least for a one-off, to use British terminology, the globe did pay attention, making a widely reported 500,000 requests for the 90,000 seats within the first 48 hours and selling out the game.

The game the English call gridiron might even divert a few TV viewers with supple cable packages from the Liverpool-Arsenal match that begins one hour earlier.

It’s the first NFL game in London since eight straight years of preseason games ended in 1993 with a 13-13 overtime tie between the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys. The eight games included a 28-27 win over Denver in 1987 by an NFL franchise with a bizarre name: Los Angeles Rams.

Jason Taylor, the Miami defensive end and American-football pitchman, explained that in those exhibition games, the top players play only about five minutes, then exit for preservation. Dolphins-Giants, however, will be the NFL, as a whole, for 60 minutes.

He promised the British viewers the speed and grace and athleticism of soccer with the ruggedness of rugby.

Improbably, one of the starting quarterbacks has NFL Europa on his resume, as once did Kurt Warner as he veered from the Amsterdam Admirals to the NFL MVP award. Cleo Lemons’ path from Arkansas State to the Dolphins’ quarterback job he reached after Trent Green’s concussion, crossed through a stint on the Berlin practice squad.

From Europe, he remembers a lot of whistle-blowing, a lot of drum-banging, just a lot of commotion during the game.

He said fans probably didn’t know what happened, but at the same time there’s a lot of cheering and a lot of fun.

With a 26-foot animatronic statue of Taylor roving around town and the Dolphins’ cheerleaders hanging out briefly at Parliament, the NFL’s arrival has dredged from various London newspaper writers the rare noun “razzmatazz.”

Paul Kelso in the Guardian: “Gaudy, glamorous, occasionally thrilling and until now utterly parochial, it encapsulates all that is good and bad about U.S. sport.” He noted the “three-hour matches studded with ad breaks” and “gridiron’s unique mix of razzmatazz and raw athleticism.”

The Sun: “It’s a fair exchange, after all we gave them the biggest name in proper football, David Beckham.”

Derek Mcgovern, the Mirror: “Don’t these mugs realize a dismal sport is a dismal sport wherever it’s played?”

The Daily Telegraph offered a bluffer’s guide with a description of all the positions.

It’s almost an afterthought that Miami, winless on that other continent, will try to heal itself mildly abroad, while the Giants will try to continue a surge that began suddenly after an 0-2 start and a 17-3 halftime deficit at Washington in Game 3.

With Dolphins fans relieved of one home game just one week after a Tom Brady torching of 42 first-half points, Miami kicker Jay Feely said, “This game is really important in Miami.”