Research paper
Just as diverse as the two different cultures themselves, professional sports in the United States of America and England have evolved into two very different entities, and not just in the fact that they both have different ideas as to popular, “national” sports. Ironically, both have the same name in their own country, “football”. However for simplicity, I will refer to soccer in England versus football in the United States. So while some people argue over what sport holds the title as the best, they ignore differences in the playing of the sports such as organization and league setups between the American system and the English system. With more than just a few differences, neither one can truly be crowned as a better-functioning sports league without bringing into question matters of opinion. In this research paper I will examine what differentiates how football is played in the United States versus how soccer is played in England, and see how these differences stack up against each other. This paper will not delve into the popularity of the sport played, but rather the way that the sports themselves are played such as league organization and seasons. Having done that, I shall compare the differences and see whether either of the two systems is considerably or definitely better than the other.
Actual league setup and organization, one of the most obvious differences that arises when it comes to league differentiation in England and the United States, has several aspects that make the leagues so unlike each other. In this paper, soccer in England shall be represented by the English Football system, specifically the English Premier League (EPL), while football in America, in turn, will be represented by the National Football League (NFL).
The NFL took shape back in 1920, and is currently comprised of 32 teams divided into two different divisions, the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). Each conference is further split into four groups of four teams, for each region, North, East, South, and West. The NFL is a closed sports league where a set number of teams, or franchises, all from major metropolitan cities, compete for the “Super Bowl” every season. The “Super Bowl” is the championship title of the NFL, and marks the end of the season. The conference championships, which act as semi-finals, decide who from the AFC will play who from the NFC in the Super Bowl.
On the other hand, the English football system differs in both league gameplay and setup when compared to the NFL. Soccer in England which has been going on since the second half of the nineteenth century, is composed of four main professional leagues and many other lower leagues, with the EPL at the very top. The EPL has 20 teams, with the following three leagues having 24 teams each. The English football system is organized as an open sports system, unlike that of the NFL. While a closed league has a limited number of teams or franchises that can compete, an open league allows any team or club to join the association, the Football Association (FA). In England, the FA runs most professional association football (soccer) competition. All league, and the teams in them, must answer to and abide by the rules setup by the FA.
Unlike the NFL, the FA may have the power to setup rules and run several competitions, but it does not have unlimited power over the teams that belong to its association. Clubs can act independently and organize matches between themselves without the FA. Not only that, but while the NFL answers to no one, the FA has to abide by rules setup by: UEFA, the European soccer association, and FIFA, the global/world soccer association. This creates a hierarchal effect in which the FA can only exercise little to any real authority.
In regards to league gameplay, the NFL has a 17-week, 16-game season that determines who from each conference gets to move on to the playoffs. A team plays twice against the other three teams in their division, one home and one away game, once against the four teams from another division within their conference, once against the four teams from a division outside of their conference, and once against two teams from their own conference whom they have yet to play. The total of 16 games plus a bye week, begins around September and ends around December. At the end of the season, the postseason, also known as the playoffs, begins. Twelve teams go on to compete in the playoffs. Eight of those teams are the teams that won each division (teams win by having the best record, win-loss ratio), and then two teams from each conference that have the next best records overall get to continue as wildcard teams. The six teams of each conference then play knockout games against the other same-conference teams with the winner advancing, until only one AFC team and one NFC team remains. These two teams then face each other in the Super Bowl, deciding the champion of the NFL for that season.
Professional soccer in England, in contrast, is played in two ways, league gameplay and tournament gameplay. In league gameplay, an EPL club for example, plays the other 19 teams twice, one home and one away match, over the season, which lasts from August to May. Teams then gain points depending on their performance: three points for a win, one point for a tie, and zero points for a loss. At the end of the season, after all the teams have played a total of 38 matches, the team with the most points wins the league. The league is the main form of competition, but the cups and tournaments are still very prestigious. Cups/ tournaments, organized like playoffs, are primarily held during the season of regular league-gameplay, and are played in a knockout manner with losing teams being eliminated while winners progress to the next round. Although teams can play in multiple cups, some of the tops clubs in the EPL even compete in continental cups, the most prominent cup in England is the Football Association cup (FA Cup). Unlike playoffs in the NFL, the FA Cup has no seeds, and each draw is randomly chosen ahead of the match. In the FA Cup, teams of different levels, whether from the EPL or from lower leagues, can compete and try to win, which adds a certain excitement with the possibility of a lower league team beating an upper league team. Due to there being two major competition in English football, every season usually crowns two champions, with the exception being a team/club winning both competitions, also known as winning the double. However, when it comes to EPL winners, the EPL has an issue.
A key difference that sets apart professional soccer in England from the NFL, is the concept of relegation and promotion of teams. This allows the teams that performed the best in a lower league to move up, while the poorer performing teams have to go down a league. This helps keep leagues competitive with teams vying to move up, while others compete just to avoid relegation. Teams attempt to retain or gain a spot in higher leagues, mainly because of the fact that there is a considerably larger amount of revenue made by teams in higher leagues, specifically teams in the EPL. Players on teams in higher leagues also make a noticeable greater amount of money in wages, with players in the EPL making not just more than in lower leagues, but also when compared to other soccer leagues in Europe. According to Nick Harris in his article “Premier League wages dwarf those around Europe with top-flight players in England earning an average of £2.3million a year... almost 60 per cent more than in Germany” for dailymail.co.uk, the average EPL player earns around £2.3 million, compared to a second-tier league player earning around £486,000.
Generally, the NFL has the advantage that in regards to winning the “Super Bowl”, multiple teams actually have a realistic chance of winning. In the EPL, while there is always the possibility of a dark horse team coming in and winning the league, the same three or four teams win practically every year. In the last ten seasons of the NFL, nine different teams have won the Super Bowl, compared to the EPL, in which in the last ten seasons, only three teams have lifted the Premier League trophy. Tony Evans in his article for Economia titled, “NFL v EPL: A league of their own”, explains the EPL’s imbalance. “In the [last] two decades, only five teams won the title. Just three teams have topped the division in 17 of those seasons”. So despite the EPL’s attempt at keeping competition “competitive” through their system of relegation and promotion, the NFL edges out as a more competitive league.
The imbalance in the EPL could be attributed to the acquiring of new talent. Youth players develop at any of numerous youth academies all over Europe. In the EPL, when a club sees a new starlet whom they believe has great talent, the club will try and sign him to their team no matter his age. Thus, he will either play on the youth team or start playing professionally at an early age. The teams that usually sign the best new prospects are the richest teams that already win regularly. By contrast, the process for a person to join an NFL team involves more complexities. As Evans narrates the process, players have to start off by going to play college football:
There is no youth system in American football. The most talented young players leave high school and go on to play at college level, the best of them winning scholarships to prestigious universities. Those with the potential to perform at the highest level attend a Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, where they are put through a series of physical and mental tests under the watchful eyes of reps from all 32 NFL teams. Then, three months later, the hopeful recruits gather in New York City for the draft. (Evans)
The draft, a process which officially introduces players into the professional game sees all 32 NFL teams go one by one and choose a college player to draft into the team. But the draft has a catch as Evans explains. “The least successful team has the first choice. The Super Bowl winners take the 32nd pick. Put simply, the bad teams get the chance of employing the best players.” While the NFL’s regulation of the procurement of new young players can seem as burdening, it helps even out the league, and has proven to be effective at avoiding outright dominance by any specific NFL team(s).
The differences that exist between the NFL and the EPL may seem as minor matters but do have varying effects. While an NFL team would play a maximum number of 25 games during the season, when including preseason, actual season, and post season; an EPL team plays exactly 38 games during the league, which does not include preseason matches, cup matches, or random friendly matches. Even though the NFL has 12 more teams than the EPL, the English football system of multiple leagues allows a large amount of professional teams to exist and compete versus just 32. This also allows for a longer season, nine months of EPL while the NFL only goes on for around five months. The idea of relegation of and promotion also allows different teams a chance to be in the limelight and allows the EPL to have variety. It also means teams can face other teams at the same supposed level of performance. Meanwhile in the NFL, the same 32 teams play over and over again every year. However, the NFL does have the draft to help out poor performing teams, and has proven itself to be more competitive than the EPL.
Season length, differs greatly between the NFL and the EPL, and impacts not only players, but also the fans. While the NFL lasts a short while, the EPL allows fans to get excited and cheer on their team for most of the year. It also helps that the occasional loss will not greatly affect the season as a whole, but in contrast, the importance of every game in the NFL helps keeps things interesting. According to Zach Law, in his Bleacher Report article “5 Reasons NFL's Regular Season Isn't Too Short, and Is Actually Just Right”, the short length of the NFL season is designed that way on purpose, because of reasons such as recruiting, training new players, and avoiding injury. While it may seem that NFL fans get the short end of the stick when it comes to a short season, Law explains the many virtues fans get from it, ranging from having time to research teams, players, etc. to having time to recharge emotionally and be able to build up the anticipation again for opening day and the famed “football season”.
There also exist a few preferential differences. Differences that don’t actually affect the way the leagues play, or would affect if switched, differences like team records/ranking. The NFL uses the win/loss style, with teams rankings drawn up in order of teams with most wins/least losses at the top, while the EPL uses the points system, in which teams are higher up on the table(EPL term for league place/rankings) based on how many points they have (points awarded based on performances). Ties, not included in the NFL, may affect the points system, since in soccer, draws are common and a critical part of the sport.
International players also do not affect the NFL and EPL too much, yet remain as a major difference. The EPL currently has its percentage of English, or “homegrown” players decreasing. Agence Frances-Presse in his NDTV Sports article “FA may limit foreign players in English Premier League” presents the issue of decreasing “homegrown” players in the EPL. “A BBC study published in October found that English footballers accounted for just 32 percent of the minutes played in the Premier League” (Frances-Presse). Compare this to the NFL, where out of 1,947 NFL players examined by Bleacher Report analyst Scott Kacsmar in his article “Where does NFL talent come from?” only 56 were born outside of the United States. Most of these cases, however, do not mean the players are international, since a lot of these “foreign” players are just US citizens that happened to be born overseas. While the nationalities of players does not really affect how the two leagues are played, and is more of a reflection of the sports’ international popularity, it definitely forms an interesting difference.
At the end of the day, when it comes down to which league setup is better or worse, it all comes down to a person’s matter of opinion. I like many things about the EPL. The long season, the numerous teams, and the multiple competitions. The multiple competitions also mean teams have to decide where to focus their teams, with some teams dedicating themselves to mainly the league or the cups. The numerous teams in the English football system adds an experience that is really lacking here in the US with the NFL. Every city, every borough, has a team, and everyone always supports the local team, no matter in what league the team plays in.
On beginning this research paper, I was really biased against the NFL, and believed the EPL a superior league by a long shot, however, my point of view has changed to a more neutral point of view. The NFL excels at being competitive, which in the end, matters a lot. The fact that when the NFL season begins, one truly has little knowledge about who can or will win the Super Bowl, just adds a lot more excitement. Despite only having 32 teams, fans really do have a variety of options on who to support, with at least one team being somewhat close enough to be considered a local team. Having an exact number of the same teams also helps with clearing any confusion on who's who, and who’s competing where. All in all, both the EPL and the NFL, function to the best of their ability. While both leagues have both differences and advantages over each other, both provide top-class sport entertainment, in which their fans are generally content.Works Cited
Evans, Tony. “NFL v EPL: A league of their own.” Economia.icaew.com. Economia, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 8 Nov. 2014.
France-Presse, Agence. “FA May Limit Foreign Players in English Premier League.” sports.ndtv.com. NDTVSports, 8 May 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
Harris, Nick. “Premier League wages dwarf those around Europe with top-flight players in England earning an average of £2.3million a year... almost 60 per cent more than in Germany.” dailymail.co.uk. DailyMailOnline, 14 Nov. 2014. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Kacsmar, Scott. “Where does NFL talent come from?” bleacherreport.com. BleacherReport, 16 May 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
Law, Zach. “5 Reasons NFL's Regular Season Isn't Too Short, and Is Actually Just Right.” bleacherreport.com. BleacherReport, 14 Feb. 2012. Web. 6 Dec. 2014.
Actual league setup and organization, one of the most obvious differences that arises when it comes to league differentiation in England and the United States, has several aspects that make the leagues so unlike each other. In this paper, soccer in England shall be represented by the English Football system, specifically the English Premier League (EPL), while football in America, in turn, will be represented by the National Football League (NFL).
The NFL took shape back in 1920, and is currently comprised of 32 teams divided into two different divisions, the National Football Conference (NFC) and the American Football Conference (AFC). Each conference is further split into four groups of four teams, for each region, North, East, South, and West. The NFL is a closed sports league where a set number of teams, or franchises, all from major metropolitan cities, compete for the “Super Bowl” every season. The “Super Bowl” is the championship title of the NFL, and marks the end of the season. The conference championships, which act as semi-finals, decide who from the AFC will play who from the NFC in the Super Bowl.
On the other hand, the English football system differs in both league gameplay and setup when compared to the NFL. Soccer in England which has been going on since the second half of the nineteenth century, is composed of four main professional leagues and many other lower leagues, with the EPL at the very top. The EPL has 20 teams, with the following three leagues having 24 teams each. The English football system is organized as an open sports system, unlike that of the NFL. While a closed league has a limited number of teams or franchises that can compete, an open league allows any team or club to join the association, the Football Association (FA). In England, the FA runs most professional association football (soccer) competition. All league, and the teams in them, must answer to and abide by the rules setup by the FA.
Unlike the NFL, the FA may have the power to setup rules and run several competitions, but it does not have unlimited power over the teams that belong to its association. Clubs can act independently and organize matches between themselves without the FA. Not only that, but while the NFL answers to no one, the FA has to abide by rules setup by: UEFA, the European soccer association, and FIFA, the global/world soccer association. This creates a hierarchal effect in which the FA can only exercise little to any real authority.
In regards to league gameplay, the NFL has a 17-week, 16-game season that determines who from each conference gets to move on to the playoffs. A team plays twice against the other three teams in their division, one home and one away game, once against the four teams from another division within their conference, once against the four teams from a division outside of their conference, and once against two teams from their own conference whom they have yet to play. The total of 16 games plus a bye week, begins around September and ends around December. At the end of the season, the postseason, also known as the playoffs, begins. Twelve teams go on to compete in the playoffs. Eight of those teams are the teams that won each division (teams win by having the best record, win-loss ratio), and then two teams from each conference that have the next best records overall get to continue as wildcard teams. The six teams of each conference then play knockout games against the other same-conference teams with the winner advancing, until only one AFC team and one NFC team remains. These two teams then face each other in the Super Bowl, deciding the champion of the NFL for that season.
Professional soccer in England, in contrast, is played in two ways, league gameplay and tournament gameplay. In league gameplay, an EPL club for example, plays the other 19 teams twice, one home and one away match, over the season, which lasts from August to May. Teams then gain points depending on their performance: three points for a win, one point for a tie, and zero points for a loss. At the end of the season, after all the teams have played a total of 38 matches, the team with the most points wins the league. The league is the main form of competition, but the cups and tournaments are still very prestigious. Cups/ tournaments, organized like playoffs, are primarily held during the season of regular league-gameplay, and are played in a knockout manner with losing teams being eliminated while winners progress to the next round. Although teams can play in multiple cups, some of the tops clubs in the EPL even compete in continental cups, the most prominent cup in England is the Football Association cup (FA Cup). Unlike playoffs in the NFL, the FA Cup has no seeds, and each draw is randomly chosen ahead of the match. In the FA Cup, teams of different levels, whether from the EPL or from lower leagues, can compete and try to win, which adds a certain excitement with the possibility of a lower league team beating an upper league team. Due to there being two major competition in English football, every season usually crowns two champions, with the exception being a team/club winning both competitions, also known as winning the double. However, when it comes to EPL winners, the EPL has an issue.
A key difference that sets apart professional soccer in England from the NFL, is the concept of relegation and promotion of teams. This allows the teams that performed the best in a lower league to move up, while the poorer performing teams have to go down a league. This helps keep leagues competitive with teams vying to move up, while others compete just to avoid relegation. Teams attempt to retain or gain a spot in higher leagues, mainly because of the fact that there is a considerably larger amount of revenue made by teams in higher leagues, specifically teams in the EPL. Players on teams in higher leagues also make a noticeable greater amount of money in wages, with players in the EPL making not just more than in lower leagues, but also when compared to other soccer leagues in Europe. According to Nick Harris in his article “Premier League wages dwarf those around Europe with top-flight players in England earning an average of £2.3million a year... almost 60 per cent more than in Germany” for dailymail.co.uk, the average EPL player earns around £2.3 million, compared to a second-tier league player earning around £486,000.
Generally, the NFL has the advantage that in regards to winning the “Super Bowl”, multiple teams actually have a realistic chance of winning. In the EPL, while there is always the possibility of a dark horse team coming in and winning the league, the same three or four teams win practically every year. In the last ten seasons of the NFL, nine different teams have won the Super Bowl, compared to the EPL, in which in the last ten seasons, only three teams have lifted the Premier League trophy. Tony Evans in his article for Economia titled, “NFL v EPL: A league of their own”, explains the EPL’s imbalance. “In the [last] two decades, only five teams won the title. Just three teams have topped the division in 17 of those seasons”. So despite the EPL’s attempt at keeping competition “competitive” through their system of relegation and promotion, the NFL edges out as a more competitive league.
The imbalance in the EPL could be attributed to the acquiring of new talent. Youth players develop at any of numerous youth academies all over Europe. In the EPL, when a club sees a new starlet whom they believe has great talent, the club will try and sign him to their team no matter his age. Thus, he will either play on the youth team or start playing professionally at an early age. The teams that usually sign the best new prospects are the richest teams that already win regularly. By contrast, the process for a person to join an NFL team involves more complexities. As Evans narrates the process, players have to start off by going to play college football:
There is no youth system in American football. The most talented young players leave high school and go on to play at college level, the best of them winning scholarships to prestigious universities. Those with the potential to perform at the highest level attend a Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, where they are put through a series of physical and mental tests under the watchful eyes of reps from all 32 NFL teams. Then, three months later, the hopeful recruits gather in New York City for the draft. (Evans)
The draft, a process which officially introduces players into the professional game sees all 32 NFL teams go one by one and choose a college player to draft into the team. But the draft has a catch as Evans explains. “The least successful team has the first choice. The Super Bowl winners take the 32nd pick. Put simply, the bad teams get the chance of employing the best players.” While the NFL’s regulation of the procurement of new young players can seem as burdening, it helps even out the league, and has proven to be effective at avoiding outright dominance by any specific NFL team(s).
The differences that exist between the NFL and the EPL may seem as minor matters but do have varying effects. While an NFL team would play a maximum number of 25 games during the season, when including preseason, actual season, and post season; an EPL team plays exactly 38 games during the league, which does not include preseason matches, cup matches, or random friendly matches. Even though the NFL has 12 more teams than the EPL, the English football system of multiple leagues allows a large amount of professional teams to exist and compete versus just 32. This also allows for a longer season, nine months of EPL while the NFL only goes on for around five months. The idea of relegation of and promotion also allows different teams a chance to be in the limelight and allows the EPL to have variety. It also means teams can face other teams at the same supposed level of performance. Meanwhile in the NFL, the same 32 teams play over and over again every year. However, the NFL does have the draft to help out poor performing teams, and has proven itself to be more competitive than the EPL.
Season length, differs greatly between the NFL and the EPL, and impacts not only players, but also the fans. While the NFL lasts a short while, the EPL allows fans to get excited and cheer on their team for most of the year. It also helps that the occasional loss will not greatly affect the season as a whole, but in contrast, the importance of every game in the NFL helps keeps things interesting. According to Zach Law, in his Bleacher Report article “5 Reasons NFL's Regular Season Isn't Too Short, and Is Actually Just Right”, the short length of the NFL season is designed that way on purpose, because of reasons such as recruiting, training new players, and avoiding injury. While it may seem that NFL fans get the short end of the stick when it comes to a short season, Law explains the many virtues fans get from it, ranging from having time to research teams, players, etc. to having time to recharge emotionally and be able to build up the anticipation again for opening day and the famed “football season”.
There also exist a few preferential differences. Differences that don’t actually affect the way the leagues play, or would affect if switched, differences like team records/ranking. The NFL uses the win/loss style, with teams rankings drawn up in order of teams with most wins/least losses at the top, while the EPL uses the points system, in which teams are higher up on the table(EPL term for league place/rankings) based on how many points they have (points awarded based on performances). Ties, not included in the NFL, may affect the points system, since in soccer, draws are common and a critical part of the sport.
International players also do not affect the NFL and EPL too much, yet remain as a major difference. The EPL currently has its percentage of English, or “homegrown” players decreasing. Agence Frances-Presse in his NDTV Sports article “FA may limit foreign players in English Premier League” presents the issue of decreasing “homegrown” players in the EPL. “A BBC study published in October found that English footballers accounted for just 32 percent of the minutes played in the Premier League” (Frances-Presse). Compare this to the NFL, where out of 1,947 NFL players examined by Bleacher Report analyst Scott Kacsmar in his article “Where does NFL talent come from?” only 56 were born outside of the United States. Most of these cases, however, do not mean the players are international, since a lot of these “foreign” players are just US citizens that happened to be born overseas. While the nationalities of players does not really affect how the two leagues are played, and is more of a reflection of the sports’ international popularity, it definitely forms an interesting difference.
At the end of the day, when it comes down to which league setup is better or worse, it all comes down to a person’s matter of opinion. I like many things about the EPL. The long season, the numerous teams, and the multiple competitions. The multiple competitions also mean teams have to decide where to focus their teams, with some teams dedicating themselves to mainly the league or the cups. The numerous teams in the English football system adds an experience that is really lacking here in the US with the NFL. Every city, every borough, has a team, and everyone always supports the local team, no matter in what league the team plays in.
On beginning this research paper, I was really biased against the NFL, and believed the EPL a superior league by a long shot, however, my point of view has changed to a more neutral point of view. The NFL excels at being competitive, which in the end, matters a lot. The fact that when the NFL season begins, one truly has little knowledge about who can or will win the Super Bowl, just adds a lot more excitement. Despite only having 32 teams, fans really do have a variety of options on who to support, with at least one team being somewhat close enough to be considered a local team. Having an exact number of the same teams also helps with clearing any confusion on who's who, and who’s competing where. All in all, both the EPL and the NFL, function to the best of their ability. While both leagues have both differences and advantages over each other, both provide top-class sport entertainment, in which their fans are generally content.Works Cited
Evans, Tony. “NFL v EPL: A league of their own.” Economia.icaew.com. Economia, 2 Sept. 2014. Web. 8 Nov. 2014.
France-Presse, Agence. “FA May Limit Foreign Players in English Premier League.” sports.ndtv.com. NDTVSports, 8 May 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
Harris, Nick. “Premier League wages dwarf those around Europe with top-flight players in England earning an average of £2.3million a year... almost 60 per cent more than in Germany.” dailymail.co.uk. DailyMailOnline, 14 Nov. 2014. Web. 18 Nov. 2014.
Kacsmar, Scott. “Where does NFL talent come from?” bleacherreport.com. BleacherReport, 16 May 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2014.
Law, Zach. “5 Reasons NFL's Regular Season Isn't Too Short, and Is Actually Just Right.” bleacherreport.com. BleacherReport, 14 Feb. 2012. Web. 6 Dec. 2014.