Since the Broncos are on a bye week, are 6-0 and the NFL is coming to London, I thought I'd take the opportunity to have a look at the Past, Present and Future of the NFL in the UK.  While this won't be completely Broncos based, I will try and weave in some of my Broncos memories.  This is a three part series.  Today I will concentrate on the beginnings of the NFL in the UK and Europe.  Thursday I will look at the impact that Satellite TV and the Interweb has had on the game and in the final part on Sunday, I will look at the future possibilities of expansion and possibilities the NFL has.

It all started in November 1982 when the Channel 4 logo morphed from a number 4 into a stick figure man holding a pigskin, donned a helmet and grunted.  At that time, televised sport was in the doldrums.  The two main networks were lagging well behind.  The BBC went for a radio like presentation with lots of talking and very little action and their rival network ITV's main show was Professional Wrestling back when people thought that it was real.

Channel 4 was a brand new network and had been given a charter to be different and to do things that the other networks wouldn't.  It feature a lot of TV aimed at people aged between 14-24 and relied heavily on political satire and hard hitting dramas.  They picked up American Football and ran with it.  Its weekly highlights show was on Sunday around 5:30.  It was going up against the Antiques Roadshow and Songs of Praise.  It was really no contest.

The show itself was a nice mix between highlights of the previous weeks games and a magazine style reporting on anything from NFL rules or to American Culture.  It celebrated the "Americana", the cheerleaders, the fireworks, the hard hitting, the explosiveness.  The complete over-the-topness and slick presentation of the sport was completely different from the stats based sheep-skin coat style of the BBC's John Motson.

This was also a dark time for Football.  The English game was in between the two biggest defining points of the modern era.  The Heysel Stadium Disaster in 1985 led to English clubs being banned from playing in European competitions and the Hillsborough Disaster in 1989, led to complete changes in the way the game was governed, watched, policed and managed.  There was a partial blackout of football games on the main UK networks in 1985 because of an argument over rights.  These disasters, coupled with rising hooliganism, were ones that it would take football nearly twenty years to recover from.

The NFL was the only way to go.  And it had stars.  The 1985 Superbowl, with the William Perry leading the Bears, was broadcast live and was probably the first time that the NFL slipped into the national consciousness.  ITV’s head of sport John Bromley, said "suddenly The Refrigerator was a bigger name than (England Football Captain) Gary Lineker".  The 1986 American Bowl was a massive event.  I can remember watching the game and just being enthralled.  The match program was sold in newsagents like a magazine, I bought it on my way to school and I had a crowd of friends who read it during our breaks.  Lawrence Taylor's hit that broke Theisman's leg was almost celebrated in a sick way.  Taylor became another household name.

The important thing in our school was to pick a team.  My friend Neil Lomax picked the Cardinals because of Neil Lomax.  Andrew picked the Jets because he like green.  I was undecided.

From 1986 Channel 4 had bought the rights to the playoffs and were going to show them, edited, immediately after they had finished in the USA - the producers didn't think a UK audience was up to sitting through all those commercials.  My Dad and I, like the rest of the nation started tuning in seriously.  I remember getting up the morning after the AFC championship game - it finished around midnight, I was 9 - and my Dad just sitting opposite me at the breakfast table and said, "Make sure you watch the highlights program - that game was something special".  And that game was of course The Drive (you didn't need a link for that did you!)

That was it.  I was hooked.  He was my hero.  I had an orange NFL football because that was the Broncos colour.  I demanded an Elway shirt before I got a Manchester United shirt.  In fact I was given my first United shirt, but I saved up for my Elway one.  Everyone was talking about American Football.  Everyone was buying the UK based NFL magazine First Down - you could read reports and get results a whole two days earlier than by watching the TV.  I was turning down invites to parties on a Sunday night so I didn't miss the NFL.

It was huge.  There was only one way for it to go.  The bubble burst, pretty spectacularly.

(As well as having an amazing personality and being drop dead gorgeous my Canadian Girlfriend said she always remembered when we first met that I was able to translate everything for her from British into 'American'.  She'd open her lunch at work and someone would say "Move over Deilia Smith!" and she'd look at me blankly and I'd say "Martha Stewart".  We'd talk about kids TV shows and I'd be the only one who'd describe them for her.  But I've drawn a blank on translating this one.)

In 1987 for some reason, rather than the intelligent and knowledgeable American presenters like Frank Gifford, Channel 4 decided to have the show presented by "comedians" the Vicious Boys.  Their humour was misplaced and cringeworthingly bad.  I don't think they understood the game and maybe they were out of their league but all of a sudden people just stopped watching.  Personally I'll never forgive the one of them that was 0 and Hundreds making predictions (on pre-recorded games!) when he picked the Broncos in the Superbowl.

I've taken advice and she says the guy from Full House - Bob Saget.  Imagine what would happen to Soccer if he presented it.

Not even the first live regular season game in 1988 could stop the slide.  The early-90s brought UK born ex-NFL place kicker Mick Luckhurst, Bob Golic and later Gary Imlach.  Imlach's enthusiasm was infectious.  He hosted a regular magazine program - Blitz! - that began on Saturday morning where the NFL highlights were secondary, he would travel America giving you an insight into culture.  The featured game, for example would be Denver vs Kansas City and he would spend a day or two in going round a ski resort and visiting the Grand Canyon etc.  And they would weave the highlights around this.  Although by this time, the NFL was never going to reach the heights of late 80s, this program certainly helped bring back some casual fans.  For most people, Gary Imlach is still the face of American Football.  His defining moment - standing on the sidelines of a game at Half Time doing a piece to camera and getting flattened by a New York Giant.

1991 brought the World League of American Football and then NFL Europe.  If you've never seen the WLAF uniforms, I recommend checking them out but turning the monitor brightness down.  With hindsight, the leagues were never going to be successful.  The NFL and Channel 4 had spent years building up the NFL, they had invested time and money giving you a product, building teams and personalities and then all of a sudden they expected everyone to drop everything and start supporting and following teams just because they are local.  Also, Britain is not a relatively big country and we're not used to having to travel for our sports.  Within 45 minutes drive of my house, I have 8 Premier League football teams and probably three times that if you include all professional football teams.  Although traveling a few hours to watch a professional team in the Americas may be common-place, like driving from Toronto to Buffalo, its not in the UK.  Finally, naming the only team based in the UK - London - and basing them in a single stadium was a stupid decision which wasn't corrected until NFL Europe was born in the mid 90s.

The America Bowl however, traveled the world and fans would regularly sell out the stadia but watching potential practice squad players playing special teams and making hits on poor 49er returners wasn't enough.  In 1997 the pre-season games would stop.  The Broncos have traveled to London, losing 28-27 to the L.A. Rams, John Elway even appeared on the UK sports Quiz, A Question of Sport.  At the time, my Dad worked at the BBC and tried really hard, but failed, to get my jersey signed.  The questions, which were based on Guest's sport, were nice and easy, including one mystery picture of a 49er stood in his helmet with the number 16 jersey on.

During the early 90s Channel 4 was in a bit of a mess sports-wise.  They had invested in British Basketball, Horse Racing, Italian Football, International Athletics, Sumo and bizarrely Kabaddi.  Apart from Horse Racing and occasionally Italian Football, all failed.  They tried to get the rights to Cricket but the governing body were too conservative to move away from the BBC - a decision they would reverse in 2000.  They bought live coverage of the Seoul Olympics which ran through the night and played to a tiny audience.  Soccer had finally got its act together and was everywhere, it had - ironically - learnt about marketing its  "product" from the NFL and it was reaching a fever pitch that hasn't really subsided since 1992.  American Football was no longer a priority and was merely part of the channel and the culture because it had always been there.  Come the end of the 90s that was about to change.  Blitz! and The American Football Big Match ended with the 1998 Superbowl.