Cool, I go to college in Dublin :D I'm sure you'll feel right at home with all the american fast food chains that are over here

i like the turn this thread has taken.

can any americans out there explain the superbowl to me? i dont get any of it except the halftime show, possibly.

best part of the superbowl is the commercials.. since companies spend millions of dollars to make them..

What is there really to explain? It's the championship game of America's most popular sport. Its the American version of the World Cup Finals match.

It seems I have a knack for pulling threads OT :/

I liked this year's superbowl. And I did pay a lot more attention to the actual game than to the half-time show (which really wasn't that impressive). The German commentators sucked terribly though. And no american commercials. Oh well.
Handegg rules are simple by the way. The only one thing I will never understand is the amount of breaks in this game. It doesn't feel like watching one single match but like watching a lot of small matches after one another.

Gnull... the breaks are solely for the TV stations. The networks pay $2B US per year for broadcast rights (~7M per game). The crazy thing is that a study showed that of the typical 180 minute broadcast, only 11 minutes are actually of action.

I understand why Europeans don't really get into the Superbowl, but it's our most popular sport. Just as I understand why ya'll don't like American football, I will say I am not a huge fan of football (soccer). Not saying it's bad, I just can't really get into a sport where a) I have no home team to cheer for, and b) a "good" match can be a nil-nil or 1-1 draw. Come on, what kind of sport doesn't have a winner for every game!

even baseball, with it's 3 hour games and 97 seconds of action.. ends in a winner each and every time..

even if it draws out so long they have to finish it the next day..

"Come on, what kind of sport doesn't have a winner for every game!"

Hockey. Or at least it did before they caved to the ignorant masses and instituted a skills competition to decide games.

Oh, and you are aware the football can end in ties, right?

I don't remember the rules to american football that well.. since I don't watch/play much.. but isn't it that 5th quarter is sudden death, whoever scores first wins.. if there is no scoring in the 5th quarter, then the game ends in a tie..

and fyi, to refute my statement.. there have been baseball games to end in a tie.. generally due to time restraints..

when england are knocked out of world cups, i sometimes switch off for the rest of the tournament and i can successfully avoid it for the most part. yet with the superbowl, i dont hear the end of it for a week. i dont understand the whole culture around it. also, is it the only major competition in american football? or is it like the FA cup to the premiership? and why is it called football when they hold the ball in their hands? so confused.

Perrin, you nailed it. The only change is that in the playoffs it keeps going for as long as needed and isn't quite sudden death.

X, it is the only championship. The North American leagues all operate on 4-6 month seasons followed by one playoff (8 to 16 teams) and then 6 months off. No secondary championships or anything like that.

As for the name I haven't a clue. I do know it is an offshoot of rugby so maybe that plays a part in it.

is it football which has local leagues of 4 teams each?

There are 8 geographically-based divisions of 4 teams each, yes. Though they aren't super-close in geographical terms (Boston and Miami? NY and Dallas?) 32 teams total, 12 make playoffs, single-elimination with 4 teams having first-round byes.

Again, not disparaging football. I watch it, occasionally. I understand why Europeans don't like our football, and there is no reason WHY it called football when they rarely use their feet. But there is no way people would allow it to be changed. It is what it is. And it's not the ONLY championship, but it is the only pro championship.

Richard Sharpe wrote:
|> Learn something new everyday... was aware that much of the world uses a period to break up large numbers but did not realize that a comma was used to provide the break to decimals. Interesting. I guess the name decimal point must strictly be an American thing.

Not even all countries group their numbers by three digits, in India for instance, they use: xx xx xx xxx yyy. Here, *x* represents the integral digits and *y* the fractional digits. I can't remember what they use to split the groups though, could be either periods, comma's or spaces, nor can I remember if they use a decimal point or a decimal comma (or, for that matter if / how the fractional digits are grouped).
Funny thing, this is not something which they could really change, because it's not just how they write numbers, it's also how they name them. Where as our names for numbers are based on three-digits-at-a-time (thousands, millions, etc.) they use names (which, of course, I also can't remember ;) ) based on the same subdivision (thousands, hundred thousands, ten millions, etc.).

Moros wrote:
|> Well, we could also start with using the decimal time system
That's already been done / attempted: [Swatch Internet Time](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time)

Ace Windu wrote:
|> Yeah we use the Imperial pint, or as I like to call it, a Real pint.
A while ago I was trying to talk to an English guy about the differences between British English and American English. The moment I dare utter "British English" he interrupts me and, to put it politely :p, objects to that phrase. So, instead we had a talk about the differences between Real English and American English. ;)

[WM] x wrote:
|> i like the turn this thread has taken.
Yeah, we kinda hijacked this thread didn't we? :D

I believe there has been some misquoting

Ah, you just accidentally made your response to the quotes continuations of the quotes, I think?