Times Sport editor John Hutchins offers his personal opinion on the events, topics and personalities in the world of sport.

I MUST admit as a sports fan (please note — ‘sports fan’ not ‘sports nut’) games of the American variety do not really quite do it for me. 

It does makes me smile whenever I hear those in the United States getting in a froth about their teams competing for the  ‘World Series’ in baseball. When they say ‘world’ they actually mean the United States of America, a few Caribbean countries and Japan — the latter probably having the game imposed upon them as part of the terms of  surrender in the Second World War. If the Japanese had surrendered to the British instead, at least they would have got football or rugby as their national sport — both of which today they show a real passion about.

To me, I can’t tell the difference between baseball and rounders — the only one being I see in the USA version the players wear pyjamas and a peaked cap.

Which brings me to American football and its grand finale – the Superbowl. Now a Superbowl  to me  is for me to eat three shredded wheats in one morning —  a shreddie too far, I’m afraid!

There is no doubt Americans love their sporting spectacular - and  an incredible average of 113.7 million people in the USA watched the  Super Bowl the other Sunday — the second highest ever.

Now history tells us that in 1776 when the British famously won their war of independence to be separated from their American cousins and since then, to paraphrase the great Anglo-American Winston Churchill (who was quoting Irish writer George Bernard Shaw) — ‘Britain and America are two nations divided by a common language’.  Too true — why, those over the Great Pond can’t even get the name of their sports’ right! They call football ‘soccer’ and the game they call football is more ‘hand’ ball than ‘foot’. It’s sort of rugby in  padding. As for ‘grid iron’ – I thought that was an instrument you used on a barbecue.

Having said all that I hear their recent ‘football’ Super Bowl LI was a classic. The American Football Conference (AFC) champions New England Patriots beat the National Football Conference (NFC) champions Atlanta Falcons 34–28, in the first Super Bowl ever to go into overtime — overcoming a 25-point deficit to win after trailing 28–3 with two minutes left in the third quarter. By all accounts it was a phenomenal performance comeback. Sporting drama at its best.

I read this week that with proposals for an American football franchise in the UK, a Superbowl final could be on the cards for London’s Wembley Stadium in a few years. Now I am sure there are many American football fans out there in the UK who would welcome such a spectacle.

Not me, though. It’s taken me 45 years to just about grasp the rules of rugby and cricket – and don’t get me on the ever changing football offside rule —  let alone learning an alien sport like AF.