European first: The NFL kicks off in London

The NFL abroad. That's the story in the land of London fog on Sunday, when the Miami Dolphins host the New York Giants at Wembley Stadium, in the first NFL regular season game ever played outside the Americas. When the tickets went on sale last February, some 88,000 were sold in 72 hours.

For the NFL's brand-name brain trust, England and its environs are the next logical phase of globalization. They see the oblong American pigskin as a rising symbol of global sports, in an age of live media everything. Click on Tom Brady, from Bristol. Join a virtual tailgate, from Wales. Look out Germany and Spain. Even China seriously considered an exhibition last August.

"Live sport, and great live sport, is one of the unifying things people want right now," argued Mark Waller, head of the NFL's international division in New York. "We don't have an English sports world or an American sports world. My kids navigate every sport on the Internet."

Here, the blokes don't play American football. But they do watch it, party, and pub with it, and in serious enough numbers to get taken seriously. Last year's Super Bowl drew 5 million viewers in the mother country, according to NFL officials in New York. In the run-up to the Dolphins-Giants game, Wembley was dangled by the NFL as a future venue for the biggest single-day TV audience known to humankind.

The NFL doesn't slack on the promotion overseas, either: We've had Dolphins cheerleaders at the House of Commons; NFL owners and former Pro Bowlers floating around Buckingham; photo-ops at the Tower of London for the Giants, who will practice at the facilities of the Chelsea soccer club. There's even a 26-foot walking, talking semblance of Dolphin Jason Taylor, or JT, the 2006 defensive player of the year.

The Dolphins, training at the London Wasps's rugby training facility, might hope that both JT and his alter-ego could line up at kickoff on Sunday. Their exasperating 0-7 record, and the loss of league-leading running-back Ronnie Brown last week, doesn't make this game the most meaningful on the NFL docket.

As Mr. Taylor noted ruefully after last Sunday's blowout by the relentless Hessian army otherwise known as the New England Patriots' offense, "Well, we can't win in America; maybe we can win overseas."

But most Brits are blithely unaware of such specifics. "The Giants are from New York, right?" said a businessman walking past the animatronic "Big JT."

"I was under the impression this is a really important game for the NFL," said Crissy Wisker, a saleswoman in downtown London.

Whether NFL Live from London is a major novelty item a mile wide and an inch deep – or the beginning of a real spread of smash-mouth sports to the earth's far corners, is unknown. Britain itself has spread sports, from tennis to soccer to cricket, worldwide. But American football "is different from anything we watch," says Gareth Davis, an NFL official in London. "We still do a little simple educating. We tell people you have four opportunities to make 10 yards, and go from there."

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