Dos horas. The play clock is 25 seconds. And most games take 3 hours. It is far more important for me to see play than it is for time to run off quickly. I actually enjoy watching games, not looking at my watch unlike Europeans I guess. Last year, the NCAA tried to speed up passage of play by having time run off immediately after change of possession and once the ball was kicked on a kickoff until the ball was received. It resulted in about 10 less plays per game I think and games being about 10 minutes shorter. It was universally hated by the fans cause there was less chance for a close finish as the clock could be ran out more effectively by the team winning and because they saw less plays. You can hate it all you want, but at the end of the day if 99% of the fans say something, the governing body better listen and do what they say. Football as it is now is far and away the #1 sport in this country. It's of course your right to not like it. However, if you want more people to like rugby in this country, I am telling you that the easiest converts would be American football fans that would cross over and like both sports. And I'm telling you to try and recruit people to like rugby instead of whinging about the sports those people do like. The majority of Americans don't care if a 60-minute game lasts three hours. We grew up watching it that way, we're used to football games taking three hours, that's their natural time length. The football games my high school played were 3 hours and they had no TV.
I see 3 pages have past but I thought I would answer anyway... until the winter all I knew about rugby was a few of my friends played it at school and they had awesome parties, but with my girlfriend being from England she demanded we go to the pub last winter to watch Six Nations so I did, and she explained it all to me...I love watching it and was impressed with the US team as well...the loss to Tonga was close in my eyes, considering what The Shelts posted is quite true. Rugby is not known by many and everyone I talk about rugby with is either English or Irish (Boston has a few of them). If you think soccer is not well known here, rugby is a conversation killer with joe six pack American. That said, I enjoy the information provided about the league here, I did know the Wolfhounds existed here in Boston as my friend plays for another team here and said they were damn good. so to answer the question, I don't know tons but I am learning and honestly wish I knew about it earlier and could have caught a RWC qualifier sometime
Yet another reason to date cute English girls.....................discover rugby. I just hope someone, somewhere puts good quality rugby on the tv here at normal times. This is exactly why Fox Sports World and Sportschannel America were great.
I got really exposed to rubgy back in the late 70's when I was a missionary in Southern France. Narbonne, Beziers and Toulouse pretty well ruled back then. Although I still like a good football game (Go Redskins!), all the timeouts and stoppages of play kind of grate on my nerves after awhile. Rugby is pretty well play until the final whistle blows which I like since I know that the game won't last more than two hours. I also like when the there is a scrum or lineout on one side of the field and the ball gets passed from back to back until the last back runs it in for the score. A long pass from a quarterback just doesn't have that build up. I think Rugby would be more popular here in the US if it got more television exposure by showing the European leagues and the Heineken Cup the same way that English/Italian soccer and the Champions League is broadcast over here. As soon as more and more Joe Six-packs realized that it's almost like american football without the passing and pads, things would start taking off. I also think that for rugby to really be much more popular, we would need a real professional league. I have often thought that it would make sense for the MLS to sponsor a professional rugby league (MLR?) and have them play in the soccer stadiums that are being built around the US. It would start out small, like the MLS did, and the could grow to something more noticable.
I love Rugby. That being said the advantage of American Football taking 3 hours+ to be played out, is that you get more time at the stadium with your buddies and out of the house!!
Slightly off-topic, but I hope you'll find that it fits in. (For purpose of this post, I use soccer to distinguish it from gridiron, and avoid the term football altogether). Back in the early 80s when ESPN was just getting started, they were hungry for content. Lo and behold, a staple offering then was Australian Rules Football. Great, Great stuff, I wish they still showed it. I played D-1 soccer, and grew up with that sport from age 6 (VERY much in the minority in my smallish midwestern city). My university also had a club rugby team, and the soccer team's assistant coach played for the rugby team. He made a point of extending invitations to the soccer players to come out and give it a try (no pun intended). I had a peripheral knowledge of the sport before that time, as many of my town's "founding fathers" of soccer were Irish and English, so they who also liked rugby. While I enjoyed my limited exposure to playing the sport in college, I was also coming off my second knee reconstruction, and at the time weighed a strapping 155 lbs. My future as a rugger was obvious and grim. I was then, and still am, not entirely up on the rules. Then again, I've watched gridiron all my life and couldn't possibly tell you all the rules (apparently, neither can many of the players in the NFL). A broadcast that combined some basic education (but not to the ad nauseum level that so often happens in U.S. soccer broadcasts). The first time I was aware of rugby's availability on free TV was fifteen years after, the '95 World Cup in South Africa. The matches were doubtless on delay, but given the lack of media coverage, the WC might as well have been live. I also encountered it in Austin, TX while traveling there on business during the '99 WC. Austin, however, is a very cosmopolitan, internationally influenced city, so a rugby WC broadcast there didn't surprise. Having also dabbled in Gaelic football, I expect that those of us with a background in "British" sport are more inclined to check it out than those steeped in traditional US sports. That said, I expect that a gridiron fan/player would, with an opportunity to see matches and a bit of televised coaching on the rules, be able to appreciate the game. Throw in some of the sport's culture (the All-Blacks' pre-match haka is, IMHO one of the great rituals in all of sport), and I think you could really grab an audience. The pay-per-view approach, however, virtually guarantees that you'll continue to see rugby only at "world sports" bars, rather than as an alternative free offering at the traditional US "sports bar" where it could gain some ground.
I would say that in America, rugby is more of a post-college participation sport than a spectator sport. In America, we generally like to watch sports rather than participate in them after, say high school for most and college for athletes. To be honest, I only got into Rugby after I was old; too slow and unskilled for the higher-level soccer teams and beer-company-softball wasn't exactly 'athletic.' Rugby allows adults to maintain the ideals of "team" and "sports" and "effort" that is often lost in one's adult life in America. The amateur status of Union Rugby until very recently means that the World Cup of Rugby, while terribly entertaining, isn't at the status of Soccer's World Cup, even in America. The rules are also a little confusing (especially compared with soccer, which has maybe one or two confusing rules) to the newcomer, although it is entertaining. I would expect that interest in Rugby in America will continue to be a weekend participant sport in college and beyond, and may peak with the Rugby World cup if it is televised. With the continuing expansion of cable offerings, I suspect rugby will gain in popularity.
I love the game. Hell I grew up playing with a college club team and wish I still had the knees to play on the club level. One exciting thing about Rugby and the Denver, Co area is the new park opening up here that is being billed as the first dedicated rugby stadium in the US. I don't know if it is true, but watching the Men's Nats Sevens tryouts was pretty cool. Here is a link for the park. It's a pretty nice pitch, but the complex is far from finished. http://www.glendalerugby.com/
Thread cleaned up from the trolling and its consequential posts. While some punishments have been issued, another such outburst like that which I just edited will result in closing of this thread.