NFL - the new season looms

This is a sport that I am passionate about, despite of course not living in the country that saw it born and grow. That feeling seems to be accompanied by many Latin Americans and of course also by a large part of the citizens of the United States where it displaced baseball as the most watched and followed sport in the country, something totally unthinkable until just a few years ago.

It would be something like football being surpassed by rugby here, for example. That comparison does not enter my head as surely in the United States a large part of the fans of the most traditional sport in its history as a nation do not consider that the NFL has surpassed it. It is enough to see the children, they breathe baseball, it is in their blood; The country is flooded with stadiums, many large and modern, but also those improvised ones on vacant land, like football here, where any available space is used to practice it, regardless of whether the measurements are regulatory, without goals, without a referee, just it is enough to put bags or clothes to identify the goal and there are hundreds and thousands of children playing. The same as "diamonds" in the great northern country.

Honestly, it is difficult to understand a phenomenon of this nature, but the statistics indicate so and therefore it must be believed that American football has surpassed the preferences of the national sport par excellence of North Americans.

The show begins today, the first of many preparatory matches for the new season will be played and those chosen for the kickoff are the New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns.

There is an enormous expectation, not only because American football returns after the long break but also because it will be Aaron Rodgers' debut as a quarterback for the Jets. The historic leader of the Green Bay Packers finally, and after several feints in past seasons, left to end up in a team that at first glance seems weaker than the one he left and in which his mark has been deep, to the point of having been nominated as MVP four times and won the SuperBowl once, something that seems little due to the enormous conditions demonstrated by Rodgers. Coaches who didn't measure up, players who weren't entirely well chosen or who didn't perform as expected, injuries? Many and diverse reasons can lead to not obtaining the triumph that so many seek and that only one achieves. It isn't easy to win the Super Bowl and many particular conditions have to be met to achieve it, Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers could not amalgamate what was necessary, and probably for this reason the relationship wore down to the point of separating definitively.

Now a new stage begins for the Jets, no one knows what to expect, good old Aaron is already a veteran and the team that surrounds him doesn't seem to have what it takes to achieve great victories, but that's just speculation and it will be seen over time. tournament. It must be remembered that the Jets have only won the Super Bowl once, it was number III, that is, they have not reached that defining instance for more than half a century.

A few days ago, reading about the passes, debuts, withdrawals, dismissals, injuries, and various other issues related to the beginning of the tournament, I found out that the New York Jets were originally called Titans, a curiosity that only provides a little history, now the Titans are different and I wondered what name they would have adopted for the Tennessee-based team if the Jets had retained the name.

Tonight, I will be sitting in front of the TV watching the match, surely, I will stop watching it when my time for night rest arrives, the time difference means that these transmissions end very late here, I still have one more day of work left and I have to get up too early.