Watching Football In Germany – Guest Comic by Leon Häfner
Someone all the way from Germany took me up on my offer to post guest comics! Want to give a special thanks to Leon Häfner, The German Guy, who promptly sent this in for me. I’m happy to post it, Leon, thanks for making this week not a total haze of snot. I’ll link Leon’s words below, so you can hear the description of the comic from the man himself.
First of all, let me just say that I’m a great fan of your webcomic and that I’ve enjoyed your work since 2013. The last time you offered to publish some guest comics I was not able to send my idea in, so I’m glad that I have a second chance now.The comic is about watching an NFL game here in Germany. If I’m lucky, my Steelers play the early game, so that means kickoff is at 7 pm CET. The 4 pm EST games are ok too, If I’m unlucky and it goes into overtime, I’m up until 2 am.Where it gets hard sometimes is the night games, and that is what my comic is about. Most of the time, those games are great and thrilling until the final moment. If the Steelers are ahead and win by 20 points, that’s ok, too, but you still wished that the game could have been closer.The hardest part is when the Steelers are behind and it seems that they will lose that game. Besides ruining my mood because they will lose the game, I’m also upset that I stayed up so late just to watch them getting defeated. I often go to bed before the end of the game in that situations, and thus I have already missed some memorable moments (e.g. the Steelers comeback win against the Giants are few years back).Hope you enjoy the comic.
Like it’s show in Leon’s comic, the time zone difference is just so much. It’s a massive barrier for entry. Our Sunday early games are basically prime-time games for Europe. The late games are beyond acceptable time-frames for your average working joe, and our prime-time games? Our all important games? Our special moments? 3 times a week? Played in the wee hours of the morning. That kind of timing makes it hard to impossible to really build a dedicated fanbase. Even if Europe gets a team and have 8 home games a year, what happens when they are playing in the USA, during any time not Sunday early? Are they gonna bother watching? What about the playoffs, when pretty much every game is super important and is played late? Almost every European fan I’ve talked to has a similar story to Leon, I can’t imagine how hard it is to stay up that late for games, I had trouble with some Sunday night football on the east coast and that ended by 12. Once I got out of college and into the real world those kind of hours were pretty much off the table.
I don’t really have a say in the matter though, so it doesn’t really matter. NFL is gonna go forward with it or ditch the concept no matter what any of us think. If I do have some sort of sway I don’t know about, please Roger, give me money.
Thanks again Leon!
I still have an open slot for Saturday if anyone wants it!
As an Australian the games start at around 5am Monday, perfect timing when I worked Tuesday to Saturday, but not so much in the real world.
I wish I could remember how I found this site, but I’m glad that I did, it’s amazing my favourite bit of NFL related internet stuff!
It’s kind of already broken through from niche status in the UK, at least in London (for obvious reasons). My sister bloody loves the NFL, having previously shown zero interest in any sport despite growing up in an otherwise sport-obsessed household.
The atmosphere at the London games is excellent because it’s so friendly, something that I’m worried will be somewhat lost if a team moves here permanently. There’s something great about the huge range of jerseys you see at those games (except the Browns) and everyone is really there just through a love of the game rather than a specific team. We’re extremely lucky to be getting 4 games here this year, and it’s great because that covers 8 different teams, giving many more people a chance to see their team play. I think a lot of fans feel this way, and the only people pushing for a team to be moved here are those who will benefit financially. Obviously that means it will happen, because that’s how it works.
NFL Europe worked as a small farm league, especially in Germany, but I don’t think a single NFL team (London Jags) in Europe could work. They only way I see Europe working is if the NFL expands to 40/36 with 2 teams moving that way there could be a full European division.
Also, the Europe teams would have to be limited to 9:30am EST (which would exclude west coast fans) or 1pm EST games.
Maybe if the NFL restarted NFL Europe as a full, independent conference rather than a minor league, it might work. Other than that $2B+ investment, no.
They’ll shift the Jags, I agree, with the whole Khan also owning Fulham FC thing, but how can they not rename them to the Monarchs? That 1991 team was iconic, and the push that launched my late-teen fandom from ‘yeah, this is alright’ to ‘HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME’.
The comic’s ‘blue pen on paper’ reminds me of the first 100 Brawl in the Family comics. I miss BitF
I forgot all about that series
As a UK fan, I feel this pain too. My least favourite words are “This game has been flexed to primetime”, taking my nice civilised Sunday evening (early game in US) to a late night – and as a Packers fan this happens quite a lot.
Realistically, unless it’s postseason, I’m avoiding all media for Monday and watching it on Monday evening.
I’m a Swedish 49ers fan and I also try to avoid media on Mondays and watch most games on Monday evening. But a good thing about the Niners being crap nowadays is that they’re playing a lot of early Sunday games. The bad thing is because the Niners are crap nowadays, they’re losing most of the time…
In the dim and distant days before the internet, I used to love the extended highlights package at 9pm on Monday evenings on Channel 4. The show was about an hour and a half long, had a round up of all the weekend’s action (except the Monday Night game, which was still to kick off) and then extended highlights of a ‘game of the week’. It was the only outlet for NFL football except for Armed Forces Radio and First Down newspaper. Ironically that was also the era when I could have stayed up late to watch live games, but now, with jobs and kids and responsibility etc, that’s just not possible for me.
Despite the London games being a great atmosphere (and sometimes even a great game) I don’t particularly want a London franchise. Over here ‘American football’ is just that. different from our dreary domestic game. Anyway, I’ve run out of steam and I’m at my desk at work supposed to be working so ta ta for now chaps.
This reminds me of the 1st time I decided to watch a full football game.. It was back when the Colts played the Patriots in the AFC Championship in 2006.. I was favouring the Colts (just because the name Manning sounded familiar – still don’t know why).. And when they were down 21-6 for a new guy who lives in Israel (add an hour or two to those in this comics) I had to call it quits.. Woke up the next morning to understand I missed a great 2nd half..
On the other hand.. We actually get more live Football games a week than Champions League (soccer) live games so at least I can’t complain about that
“That kind of timing makes it hard to impossible to really build a dedicated fanbase.”
If staying up until early in the mornings, until 1-2 hours before you have to go to work, just to watch a game isn’t “dedicated”, what is then?
The NFL fans in Europe are as dedicated as it gets.
It’s just that there aren’t many. And there’s good reason to believe that there never will be many. But dedication is one thing you can’t deny.
Dedicated was probably the wrong term to use there, what I meant was more casual fans. Very few people are going to want to put in the time and effort to support a sport at weird times, and it will only really get love by these outliers who love it. Kind of like American soccer fans, they either go all in and love it or just barely care. The massive chunk in the middle needed to really support and grow the sport is missing.
Long time fan here from Hungary. Been watching the game since 2005, im a huge Colts fan. I want to move to the US in the future, but i have to say, it wouldn’t be the same watching the games at 1 pm or 4:30 pm. Im just used to the sunday evening marathons, though this is gonna be the first season as a full time employer.
YEAHH GO STEELERS
I couldn’t tell you why, my running theory is fans outside the US probably have limited media dedicated to football. Kind of a weak theory in the age of the internet but eh, all I got.
i will say, the sports networks are particularly good at smashing any–and usually, all–unofficial links to sporting events. watching a game going on a few miles away that’s been blacked out is a giant exercise in proxy hopping, and that’s while still having an official subscription to espn / nbc sports / etc.
Another Aussie fan checking in here.
Getting up early on a Monday morning to watch some games, then head to work either deflated from a loss with lots of coffee or ecstatic from a win and full of energy.
The “Thursday Night Football” games are ok, as they usually screen around 12:30 lunchtime on a Friday. As I work in an office, I usually grab my lunch, find a stream site, and watch the game at my desk.
Raiders are getting more and more “prime time” matches these days, which make it easier for me as those games usually kick off around 8:30am on a Monday morning, so I stream the game at work with some coffee.
GO RAIDERS!!!
Also forgot to add, LOOVEE the comic!!
Apart from wasting time at my desk watching NFL streams, the other half of the time I spend reading a whole bunch of webcomics, and around 2013 I was excited to find a web comic dedicated to NFL, and a friken funny one at that!
Keep up the good work!!
It reminds me of the hardcore soccer fans in the US who go to a bar at 6am to watch the early Premier League games.
ah yes the prime time game dilema.
Go to sleep after the early games ended (my saints usually play early) and wake up at 2:15 to watch the game live, or sleep normaly and watch it mondays (tuesdays, fridays) after work?
When you watch it live you may get a bad game and you wish you are still asleep. At least the Saints mostley show up for primetime so I wont have to suffer through a blowout.
When you watch it later you have to avoid the final score (easy to do in Germany) and the gamepass automaticly skips commericals (awesome!), but I got punished once watching broncos@patriots in 2013. Broncos were up 24-0 at the half and I gave up on the game and just looked up the final score. 34-31 in Overtime for NE (pats won the toss, decided to kick off and Welker muffed a punt at the end).
Sind Sie auch Deutscher? 🙂
ja, bin ich
Yeah I’m from Brazil the country of soccer (football here) and I love NFL, I found your website through a Football blog here and I like it your humour. The schedule in the begining of the season it’s ok, games starting one hour after New York, however in October change to 2 hours (Daylight saving here) and in November the games start 3 hours (some change in USA timetable I guess) after New York. So any prime time games after october it’s almost impossible to watch (There is a famous slogan in ESPN from here for these games starting so late: “Sleeping is for the weakest”) so for most of the time I’m having fun watching mediocre teams playing on Sundays 1pm and my “prime time” It’s 4pm USA timetable.