Brush Street in Downtown Detroit. Nothing but Honolulu Blue on Game Day. Wembley on Game Day. 5 different game shirts in touching distance of one another.
NFL international game day, 18 October 2026 and I happen to be on the Metropolitan line at midday. Houston Texans play the Jacksonville Jaguars at Wembley in a few hours. Other than, “How the hell did they get anyone to agree to play a big divisional rivalry this far from home?” the other thing that is on my mind, and it has been on my mind for years now, is that the NFL has created a unique experience where the majority of fans in attendance are not supporting either team. In fact, it seems that the majority of people in attendance do not care who wins or loses. In this section of the train alone, there are at least seven different team shirts. There’s Browns, Commanders, Packers, 9ers, Bills, Dolphins and Eagles. I’m passing through and not going to this one. But if I were, I’d not be wearing a Lions shirt or a hoodie. It’s funny how many people go for that look. I’m sure there are more people at Wembley and White Hart Lane wearing hoodies for all these international games than you will ever see in a game in the US.
I get the whole “show your colours” thing. I get the whole “expansion thing” and getting American football to all parts of the world, introducing the game to a new market, selling more merchandise. I can’t deny that the Jacksonville Jaguars had two exciting London games. And that’s what the fans want. They want excitement. They want to be entertained. They want an NFL experience. I wonder if anyone knows that this is actually a watered-down experience. For the full experience, the stadium needs to become a cacophony of bipartisan noise, willing the team on and affecting the outcome of the game. Seattle has the right idea, calling their fans the twelfth man. They are not attending games only to experience an event. They live and die by the result and if making more noise than a jet engine when the opposition has the ball on a crucial third down is needed then that’s what they will do.
The environment that I would ideally want is that the designated home team, whether they play in Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Australia, Paris, Munich, London, or anywhere else that might be mentioned in the 80s pop classic Pop Muzik, is this:
Pick a down and distance. Any down. Any distance to go. Let’s say it’s third and ten at midfield and the designated visiting team has ten to go for a first down. It could be an important play. Preferably it could be any play, any other ordinary third down. The visiting team can barely hear each other as the “home team” crowd makes as much noise as they can. A false start would whip up a frenzy, as though each fan would feel personally responsible for the play. The visiting QB drops back to pass and has a receiver open at the sticks. As the pass comes in the free safety comes up to make a play and he’s early on the play. He’s seemingly half an hour early, as he clatters into the receiver. He may as well have hit the receiver coming off the bus. It’s the most blatant pass interference you could ever see. Flags from the officials come raining in. The QB knows it. The receiver knows it. The officials definitely know it. Even the DB knows it. He’s pleading guilty in a court of law. And yet, despite being the most obvious call they are ever going to see, the “home team fans” boo the decision. They boo and holler as though they’ve been robbed of a legitimate third down stop. To those fans, in that instant, the call is worse than anything that’s been called against the Detroit Lions over the years. It’s worse than the time Calvin Johnson clearly made that catch against Chicago and then tossed the ball away at the end, knowing that he’d scored, and somehow the zebras called it incomplete. That’s the level of indignation of a real NFL home fan. At Wembley, they may groan. The crowd may murmur a bit. Some even applaud the decision. That’s a crowd that collectively doesn’t really care. It’s also a strange atmosphere to be around.
There were Jacksonville Jaguars game shirts being worn at Wembley that day. I’m not going to try to say that there were no “home fans.” There just seemed to be more fans of the 31 other teams. And when I go to the Lions game in Munich later this year, I’m sure there will be Lions shirts. There will be people from Detroit. There will be people, just like me, who have supported the Lions since the Barry Sanders days. But there will also be casual fans. I’m guilty of going to a game and not being a fan of either team. The best I can do in such a situation is pick a side and convince myself for that day that I am a fan of that team. In Dublin in 2022, I went to watch a college game and found myself sat right next to the Northwestern marching band. I went to that game thinking that Nebraska was going to be my team for the day. But seeing those Northwestern kids, enthusiastically living their best lives, was enough to convince me to side with them. Our little corner of the Aviva Stadium belonged to Evanston, Illinois that day.
College football seems to travel well. This year at Wembley, Arizona State University seemed to be very well represented. The University of Kansas had a good showing too. But they were definitely drowned out by the noisy ASU fans.
The Vikings have been known to bring a lot of fans over for their international NFL games. Having a good chant of “Skol” certainly helps bring the atmosphere. I was, however, a little confused to see some impartial fans joining in the Skol chant and then moments later cheering the Jets on. Arguably that’s double duty. You’re bringing the noise for both teams.
I love football. I’d watch anything on TV. Right now, I’m watching a game because I want to see how Kansas QB Isaiah Marshall does. I’m not a Kansas Jayhawks fan. I am a football fan. I was, however, an impartial at the Wembley game. But not for long. My reaction to being sat with people as impartial as myself was to make some noise for Kansas that day. Cos you gotta pick a side.
I know that even in the US you’re going to have impartial fans in the crowd. It’s just that they are a minority over there. Here, in the UK and all points from here to Oz, they are the majority. And it will always be that way, unless we find a way to bring 80,000 die-hard fans to any game. It does make me ask what the league was thinking when they started this international venture. I wonder what they thought was going to happen. Had they planned for a celebration of the sport, but at the cost of a crowd that cares about the result? What does that leave you with? Although you have a number of supporters of the two teams playing, for whom it means something, the collective response of a crowd who has no horse in the race takes some of the atmosphere out of the event. For me, it doesn’t feel like the real thing. And to that end I think the league is doing itself an injustice. We’re not getting the full experience.
From my trip to Ford Field back in 2022, I remember how it felt to be around people who felt the same as me. That was such a vibe. I remember leaving the game feeling despondent and bemused. We were supposed to be good that year. How were we 1-6 after that game? As I walked through the crowds on Brush Street, the ever-popular shout of, “At least we still have the Red Wings!” went out. It got a laugh. We all got the joke. It’s as old as the hills.
The day before I’d been to Ann Arbor and walked into the Michigan Stadium, “The Big House,” as a Lions fan but not necessarily a Michigan Wolverines fan. I left there a die-hard fan of that team. I felt welcome. I felt a sense of belonging. Being with 111,000 people all passionate about their team made me feel like I was ready to invade Columbus, Ohio with them if they’d asked me to.
A day after the Lions game, I’d made it to Cleveland for a Monday-Nighter. Again, the atmosphere was electric. I didn’t care who won, but I went with the home team. It would have seemed rude not to. Once you’ve seen all this, it’s hard to go to Wembley or Tottenham knowing that you’re not going to get that vibe. You’re not going to get everything that you really want out of this NFL experience.
There is a line of thinking that says that the noise and the atmosphere will be there if the game is exciting. Bring the excitement and I’ll bring the noise. That does, however, suggest that sport is about entertainment. If the game is a good one, people will come back. People might become fans. They might pick a team.
It could be that someone at the Eagles v Jaguars game in Tottenham watched a messy fourth quarter culminate with late drama and is now forevermore a Jaguars fan. Philly kicks off having just taken the lead with a field goal. There’s 8 seconds on the clock and the Eagles decide to kick the ball in the field of play, instead of kicking it dead for a touchback. Maybe there’s an idea that returning the kick is going to use up precious seconds. Common sense says: Kick it deep. Let them have their 8 seconds. Let them line up for a Hail Mary. Nine times out of ten you walk away a winner.
Ameer Abdullah receives the kick and runs it all the way back to the Eagles 40. He’s tackled with one second left on the clock. Bizarrely, if he’s tackled five yards further downfield then the clock hits zero and the game is over. Cam Little, who missed an extra point earlier in the fourth quarter and is one of the best kickers in the league, takes his chance and kicks a 57-yard game winner with no time left on the clock.
And maybe some young lad who’s travelled the length of the country to be there in North London that day decides he’s now a Jags fan. Except he isn’t. He looks down at the number on his chest and the colour of his shirt and realises he’s a Chiefs fan. He came here today claiming to love Patrick Mahomes, not Trevor Lawrence or Jalen Hurts. He turns to his dad and says, “Wow what an ending.” But he does not feel it like the Philly fans or Jags fans do.
That’s the thing about growing the sport in another country. If you have a fanbase in any country and you want to take the NFL experience there, then you’re more than likely going to have existing fans with existing allegiances. It was one of the reasons I said that we’d never get a London team. Talk about there being a London team has died down in recent years. I almost feel like no one ever even thought of the idea, that I’d dreamt it. It was, however, talked about for a few years. The interesting thing would have been that some fans have built a connection to a team over the years. I’ve been a Lions fan since 1991. I’m not going to stop now, even if you gave me a London team to support. (An interesting aside to that is that I did follow the London Monarchs in the old World League. I was there in the 90s, even though I knew that it was a farm league and we were mostly watching teams that were filled with practice squad players. As such, I was a Lions fan first and a Monarchs fan second).
I wonder how weird it feels for fans flying over from the US to be at a game and see so many different team shirts. You would never see it at any game in the States. Perhaps that’s the difference. I’ve seen this game played in the States, in its natural habitat. I felt like I was in someone’s home when I went to Ford Field and Michigan Stadium. I was going to where the football was at. The city, the people, the environment, it was all wrapped up in one parcel for me. You can take the Detroit Lions to another country. You’d struggle to take the Detroit-ness with you. You take both teams out of their natural environment, play a game on neutral ground and it isn’t the same. You do not feel a part of that game in the same way. At Ford Field, you can turn in any direction and celebrate with people who feel the same way as you. Outside of Detroit you won’t get that.
For my part, what I’ve taken to doing is bringing the noise myself, chatting to people sat near me, celebrating with fans I’ve never met before, trying to bring the same attitude that I found at Ford Field and in Ann Arbor. Sometimes it falls flat. Sometimes it feels like I’ve played my part in a small pocket of the crowd and done my bit. The other thing I do is not wear any football top to a game if my team isn’t playing.
When I think of the hoodie look, a hoodie worn under a game shirt, it feels like fans are dressing how they think football fans dress. I see it as claiming an identity as a football fan. It just so happens that they’re not claiming to be fans of the teams that are playing at the game that they’re attending. The games are fun. They can be exciting. They can be dramatic. The thing you never seem to get is an intense and passionate collective of fans. Look at the Vikings game where fans were cheering on the Jets but having fun with the “Skol” chant. It was fun to go “Skol!” But were they “Skolling” like they meant it?
At one of the Wembley games, I saw a Washington fan seemingly living and dying with each play. I’m pretty sure he was from the US. What I do know is that he cared. I remember thinking that it would be wild if there were 80,000 people just like him in the crowd. Then it would be like a proper home game. But that’s not what these international games are about. They are a taste of the NFL. And maybe that’s enough to get folks hooked. I hope so.
Where next?
→ If you want to see what happens when you turn up to a game without a team to support, and why picking a side matters, Impartiality is not an option
→ If you want to explore how the things we love become part of who we are, from childhood games to music and American football, You saw Chuck Weatherspoon
→ If you want to discover what happens when the score stops telling the whole story, 90 Point emotional ride
If the writing resonates, stay with it.