I am frequently made to feel that I am in a minority of one but I simply cannot take American Football seriously. Any spectacle (and I use the word dismissively) in which a 1.88m, 173.4kg mountain of blubber like William Perry can become a superstar is, to these wearied eyes, a freak show rather than an athletic contest. A Super Bowl winner with Chicago Bears in 1986, Perry was affectionately known as 'The Refrigerator'; twenty-three years on, I forget whether this was in acknowledgement of the fact that he was as immovable as one of those humungous freezing cabinets so popular Stateside or that he came was stuffed with assorted layers of ice cream and pancakes, burgers and hot dogs, doughnuts and nachos. While Sunday's Super Bowl XLIII in Tampa Bay is expected to attract a global TV audience of 100 million or thereabouts, this lad would rather creosote the garden fence than watch the Tallahatchie Toucans knock seven bells out of the Amarillo Armadillos or whoever. Curiously, however, I very nearly became a television phenomenon in the US via my unrivalled ignorance of gridiron. Aware of my total lack of interest in the NFL, when the Minnesota Vikings and St Louis Cardinals pitched up at Wembley to engage in a pre-season rumble one Saturday afternoon in August 1983, my former sport editor at Reuters - the mischief-making Steve Parry, who sadly passed away recently at the age of 64 - thought it would be a jolly wheeze to dispatch his football correspondent to cast a jaundiced eye over proceedings. The scoreboard read Minnesota Vikings 28, St Louis Cardinals 10, so someone, somewhere at Wembley must have had a vague idea what was going on... ran the opening lines of my report on what resembled a battle scene from El Cid played out with a rugby ball. Embarrassingly, my witterings pitched up on the teleprinter of the CBS studios in New York where the news editor Ed Baumeister (funny how some names stick in the mind) decided it would be amusing to invite yours truly to share his wit and wisdom with the American nation. Persuaded that the interview would be conducted over the phone and, in the event of a slip of the tongue, could be re-recorded, the Sunday morning found me (suitably dishevelled after an all-night party) being wired for sound in the CBS offices in London's Knightsbridge. It was only when the make-up girl went to work on my haggard visage that I was blithely informed there had been a change in plan; namely that I would now be interviewed live - on camera! - by Diane Sawyer on CBS's flagship breakfast show. "You're on right after an item about Ronald Reagan approaching 1,000 days in the White House," trilled Mary-Beth or some such moniker while I slithered down in my seat in fear and trepidation. "You're gonna just love Diane - she's been voted one of the 10 most powerful women in America." What can I say? Perhaps it was my roguish humour, seductive Scottish burr or rakish charm (well, it must have been something...) but I was a smash hit of the small screen.
True, some children of a nervous disposition had to be led away from their nutritious triple-chocolate-chip coco nuggets to lie down in a darkened room but, in all modesty, America adored me. To such an extent, that my new pal Ed inquired if I might consider making my sporting address to the nation a weekly event. Alas, Mr Parry decreed that I was much too important to Reuters' global operations to sanction such a time-consuming sideline - ("You make the best pot of tea on the sport desk ...") - and so my brief flirtation with celebrity and untold riches was cruelly extinguished. Several of my fellow Britons enjoyed a more lasting impact upon gridiron, however. Gavin Hastings, for instance, may have surrendered his position as the Rugby World Cup's leading points scorer to Jonny Wilkinson, but the former British Lions' fullback played a leading role in the Scottish Claymores' World Bowl triumph at Murrayfield in 1996, a season during which big Gav slotted home 23 of his 27 extra-point conversions. The Londoner Scott McCready was a member of the New England Patriots' squad who won Super Bowl XXXVI in 2002 and the Scots-born Celtic fan Lawrence Tynes won a Super Bowl ring in the blue and white of the New York Giants 12 months ago. The best-known Brit in the NFL remains Mick Luckhurst, who graduated from the school cricket fields of rural Redbourn to play in OJ Simpson's farewell game; as a specialist kicker for the Atlanta Falcons in the 1980s, Luckhurst boasted the third-highest average in history at the peak of his career. He discovered gridiron as an English public schoolboy on a one-year exchange to the University of California, Berkeley, where he persuaded the coach that his kicking prowess on a rugby union field might be of some use.
"With my long hair, cut-off jeans and sandshoes, I looked like a latter-day hippy. I'd no idea what I was doing so I asked the two guys who had been sent out to supervise me where I should start. One of them told me the longest field goal ever converted in the NFL was 63 yards, so I said: 'Right, let's start from there...' I kicked two or three from that distance and was immediately dubbed 'Thunderfoot'. It was one of those wacky days when everything I tried came off. Even when I was told to try to hit the crossbar, I pulled it off." After two highly successful years at Berkeley - during which he once played in front of a crowd of 115,000 at Michigan - he was avidly pursued by 18 NFL teams before signing for Atlanta. Were there advantages to being a Hollywood-handsome foreigner in the NFL? "Oh yes. Kickers tend to become famous anyway, but I suppose being English made me even more of a curiosity. On one occasion we were playing the Oakland Raiders and I met a Raiderette - and, of all the cheerleading troupes, the Raiderettes were something else - and when I looked on the back of the photo she'd included her phone number with the message, 'Please call me the next time you're in town'. I'm sure it was a ploy by the Raiders but things like that would happen... " Perhaps I was a little hasty in turning my back on a sport with such obvious charms. rphilip@thenational.ae
