Coming soon :American Football League in India!

[Runcie]

Yes, you heard it right! American Football, one of the most physical games in the world, is coming to India in the form EFLI(Elite Football League of India). They are planning to start the league with teams from 8 Indian cities and four teams from sub-continent countries in Nov 2012.
Their website :http://www.efli.com and their page in Facebook :http://www.facebook.com/EFLIFootball

[PKBasu]

Madness! American cultural imperialism gone utterly insane! Who is going to play? And, more importantly, who will watch?!

[jayakris]

I take that as just humor. There are still people who talk about "cultural imperialism"? Really, PKB? ...

They are trying to make money, like everybody is. More like investing in something for money down the line, though in this case this is just a bad investment. I even wonder if India has even 10 guys anywhere of weight over 120 kg who can run below 5.5 or even 6 seconds in a 40 meter dash, to be linesmen to play American football [let alone about 65 to 80 such guys needed for 8 teams].

Jay

[Runcie]

I even wonder if India has even 10 guys anywhere of weight over 120 kg who can run below 5.5 or even 6 seconds in a 40 meter dash, to be linesmen to play American football [let alone about 65 to 80 such guys needed for 8 teams].

I expected this question and that is exactly why i want American football to be here. To show us the real physical power of Indians. I cant guarantee the sprinting part but I can give you hundreds of massive wrestlers and kabaddi players from Punjab and Haryana alone to make all these 8 teams.
You can check out our wrestlers here:

http://kushtiwrestling.blogspot.com/-- This is very good site to know about Indian mud wrestling and I was amazed at the sheer physicality of these hardworking athletes.
http://www.youtube.com/user/kushtiwrestling: This his Youtube channel where you can see the videos of various dangals happening in India
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 471&type=1- This has pics of kabaddi guys from a fan page of kabaddi in facebook
http://www.efli.com/photos/athletes-in-india.php- EFLI's own photographs of the big guys they currently have


I have watched the recent Kabaddi world cup in Punjab which mainly consisted of Punjabis and Punjabi-origin guys from other countries since the kabaddi style was circle style. There were enough big guys to make an American football team at-least by the looks.

Jay,I full agree to you that we may not get 10-12 guys of the American football- standard, but we have enough big guys whose speed and agility is good enough by Indian-viewers' standards which is actually the money spinning thing.

That is exactly what EFLI guys are doing. They are recruiting big guys from kabaddi,wrestling and even Rugby and training them in the basics of American Football.You can see all those in the pics here:

http://www.efli.com/photos/practice-with-gear.php

Now, why I belieive they can atleast have moderate success:

1) Everyone Loves Physical games: Contrary to the perception, Indians do like watching physical sports especially in North-India where crowds throng for local kabaddi and Mud-wrestling or Pehlwani Dangals. I work in an IT company and almost every single guy who has gone to US from our company and has seen NFL, is in love with its sheer physicality even though they don't understand much of the rules. Who wouldn't love to see 6 feet +, 100 kg+ guys running and fighting it out in the middle for a small ball . Even a typical calm Mallu like myself is pretty much a sucker for real physical sports.

2) Popularity of kabaddi World Cup and WSB: The popularity of kabaddi world cup in Punjab and Mumbai Fighters of World Series of Boxing is a proof that if marketed well , physical sports can garner the attention of Indian viewers. The second edition of kabaddi world cup was watched by millions of Punjabis in Indian and abroad and had an opening ceremony by Shahrukh khan which is very rare for a non-cricket sport. Mumbai Fighters on the other hand had full house for all their bouts till now in India and is gathering pretty good support from media and sponsors too. EFLI can also follow this path.

3) Grassroot training and awareness: EFLI has properly planned their methodology in India. They are conducting proper training and awareness classes for both coaches and players for various colleges all across the country. Colleges are best places for a sport to grow and they have done it in more than 16 colleges till now.

Why I want this league here is because i want Indians to realize their potential. Many of us think that we are physically inferior to others( which may be true on an average but there are enough exceptions in a 1 billion populace ) and we cant be good at real physical sports. Lot of the people I know were actually flabbergasted to see the powerful spikes of late Jimmy George in Youtube ( which is recently uploaded by his bro, Sebastian George and is doing a world of good for the renaissance of volleyball in Kerala) and were wondering how an Indian can have such good physical ability. I want us to change this mindset and believe in ourselves.Also, I hope this league will bring modern strength training and sports medicine techniques to India and give our neglected tribes like Siddis an opportunity to show their worth.

OffTopic:
Also Jay, Indians are getting taller nowadays,atleast Mallus are. I can see that in the small sample space around me. In my Church, five years ago, there very few ppl above 6 feet height. Now,almost 90% of the guys in 18-22 range are 6 footers. I know a junior who is 175cm tall at 15 years of age who went for SAI selection camp for volleyball in Pathanamthitta district. He said, there was a rush of 190+ cm guys there and even 195+cm guys were not that rare, all at around age of 15-18. I hope similar is the trend in other states also

[jayakris]

I even wonder if India has even 10 guys anywhere of weight over 120 kg who can run below 5.5 or even 6 seconds in a 40 meter dash, to be linesmen to play American football [let alone about 65 to 80 such guys needed for 8 teams].

I expected this question and that is exactly why i want American football to be here. To show us the real physical power of Indians. I cant guarantee the sprinting part but I can give you hundreds of massive wrestlers and kabaddi players from Punjab and Haryana alone to make all these 8 teams.

But the issue is indeed foot speed (quickness, to be more precise). American football really needs quickness of feet for the linemen without which they are really useless, however big or heavy they are. In the US, what happens is that the heavier kids with relatively good quickness are identified at age 12-14 (They really don't play much Am.football seriously before age 12 or 13). They are the ones who end up on the offensive or defensive lines andthey would not have become that big in a natural way. It's because they start following diets (generally eating a lot too, purelyf or football reasons) as they go through their high school years with coaches following their development closely. In other words, only a very small fraction of the high school seniors playing as linemen would be ones who would naturally become of that size. There is no scheme for making physical specimens like that in India. It's not the quick-footed guys who end up as big guys in India. Simply the guys who are naturally getting big. Those big guys, even the great wrestlers and all, would be absolutely ineffective in Am.football. There are easily 100s of thousands of 125 kg guys in India of age 18-30 who are candidates to play as football linemen, but not even 100 out of those guys may be able to play Am.football without looking stupid because they can't do a thing against even a bad high school team from the US because their 80 or 100 kg defensive or offensive linemen can just run around them and blow up plays constantly.

I agree with the rest of what you say. Things are indeed changing in India on a lot of these things. I just don't see it changing in a way conducive to producing the kind of big bodies for Am.football - that's all. It needs a really big system, which has not developed anywhere outside the US. That is why Am.football (unlike baseball) is not happening in Europe and other places either. It's not going to. The NFL is just trying to create some news in India and trying to see if people would get interested in watching it on TV, even if nobody can play it and no serious teams are there. The TV viewership idea without serious local playing has worked to some extent in Europe (though only for Superbowl). I doubt it is going to work to any extent at all in India, even if they try for the next 20 years.

Jay

PS: Having said that, India may produce some good offensive linemen, who can be slightly slow-footed. But defensive linemen are probably an impossibility.

[Sandeep]

I am very excited about the league. Going by the website, they seem to have a comprehensive plan about how to develop current and future players. If they can spend enough money on the players, they will find a good number of national Rugby players willing to play in the league. And in any case, Americans don't really enter unless they see a good opportunity. All in all a good professional league in the making, and Dec 2012 is going to be very exciting.

I would like to see a bit more marketing done to promote the league and educate people about the rules. That is going to be a major challenge for the league owners!

[suresh]

Sandeep shows up out of the blue and comments in this thread when there a lot of interesting threads -- Gurusai has finally showed up, Saina is doing well, God is yet to reach a useless landmark and so on.

[jayakris]

Hey, sandeep first came to the Saina thread. Calmed my nerves a bit there too, after I was getting all wound up, arguing with people about how my confidence had gone low on Saina's being champion-material. As for God's thread, I don't know. I think sandeep is not so religeous these days... Or perhaps God is boring him now.. Jay

[Sandeep]

Sandeep shows up out of the blue and comments in this thread

Lol , it is just that I get excited whenever a league starts in India, I really think India has a lot of potential in terms of hosting world leagues and with a billion population can't go wrong if a sport is interesting.

As far as God is concerned, read an SMS (sent by Sachin from England after the Lord's test to a close friend of his) from the great man himself "body is ageing, not able to negotiate swing"!!! I was devastated and am still hoping that Sachin is wrong!! Australian series is going to be an all important one!! Clearly will tell us if it the beginning of the end of the most revered sports person in the history.

[Runcie]

More updates on EFLI

They have uploaded new training pics in their FB page (Which has now 2843 likes compared to the 700 odd when we started this thread!) and they have got some big guys in their teams(atleast by Indian standards )
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set= ... 930&type=3

Also, they have got former NFL player and coach, Doug Plank coming down to India to coach players and coaches.
http://www.efli.com/news/former-nfl-pla ... d-players/

One interesting thing is that they have got some hot cheerleader girls already. Enough to attract some despo Indians to watch this game

[prasen9]

I hope they ban head-first hits and have stricter doping standards. The NFL is debating those but there are issues with players union, etc. Here there are no established player unions or owners yet. So, they should make these rules standard. We don't want more Indians concussed. We already have a full parliament for that.

[Saniapower]

Call it Indian Football and set desi rules for that. No doubt It will be popular.
Just find out those disciplines rest of the world is least inteserted and you have full control over it. Like Kabaddi & Cricket. You have also the luxury of changing the rules of the game anytime in your favor through Indian Cricket Council (ICC)

[Sin'dorei]

I find the contents of this article a bit funny:
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... -to-india/

India has Rugby players already, why not stick with it? I don't see the need to switch sports since the country already has a (somewhat) of an equivalent sport. Plus, reading the comments of that article doesn't seem like the Americans are particularly happy about it either.

[prasen9]

So, this elite football league had one season in 2011 and maybe a second season in 2012. Then, they focused on universities and schools and had a tournament in Jaipur in 2018, much smaller and university level I think. Any idea of what happened and did not (failure)? Jaipur Cup