After two hours talking X’s and O’s in the classroom and another hour of walking his players through those plays in a gymnasium, Wayne Hill gathered his defensive squad at center court.
“Let’s go out this week and get excited about playing football,” Hill said one night last week.
“And if you score, I’m going to throw some shapes with you in the end zone,” he added, using the local idiom for dancing.
Photo: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY
After some laughter, the players raised their hands together, screamed: “One-two-three defense” and left the gym with their friends.
This was no US high school or college, but the University of Birmingham Lions, one of the best collegiate teams in the country.
With the start of the eight-game university season on Saturday, Hill and his coaches were rushing to prepare his team to play the Imperial Immortals, who visited from London.
The practice paid off. The Lions won, 47-0, helped by six takeaways, including a fumble recovered in the end zone for a touchdown.
Hill did “throw some shapes” with the defense, he said later in an e-mail.
Few would mistake the games in England for a showdown between Ohio State and Notre Dame. Many players grew up playing rugby and soccer and picked up football only in college. Almost no universities offer scholarships. Some games are played on rugby fields, where players often outnumber fans.
However, thanks to the efforts of coaches like Hill, football is slowly taking hold is Britain. The sport has been played there for decades, thanks partly to the US soldiers and airmen stationed here as far back as World War II.
Given the dominance of more traditional sports played in Britain, like soccer, rugby and cricket, football has always been a niche activity. However, the sport has received a lift from the NFL. The league began playing regular-season games in London in 2007, and its games in the US are broadcast in the UK every week. The popularity of the Madden video game and fantasy football has also drawn in younger fans.
There are now more than 4,000 adults playing football in Britain, 18.1 percent more than a year ago, according to figures from the British American Football Association. The number of players 17 and younger has grown 38.8 percent, and the ranks of youth and women’s flag football players jumped as well.
While football will very likely never challenge soccer’s predominance, the growth of the game is critical to the NFL’s efforts to plant firm roots there. The league has sold out all but one of its games at Wembley Stadium, including the game between the Detroit Lions and the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday.
The games resemble all-star spectacles, with fans paying $100 or more to see a rotating slate of teams.
If the league puts a franchise in London — something owners have discussed but remain wary of for now — that team will need fans who have not only the money for tickets but also an understanding of the game that comes from playing it.
“If the NFL puts a team in London by 2020, you’re not going to have the conveyor belt of fans who’ve played the game at 7,” said Andy Fuller, the former director of the British American Football Association, who also worked for the NFL in Britain. “It’s not there yet. In the short term, the NFL is developing fans, but it needs player development at the same time.”
The NFL holds workshops like Play 60 and Heads Up Football, which train coaches how to teach “safe tackling,” and some players who visit England take part in community events before their games.
Efforts by Hill and other coaches may hold the greatest promise, because as Britons who grew up playing the game, they are authentic role models for younger players.
In the late 1980s, Hill, a bear of a man with a soft voice, first learned about the NFL from his father, who watches the games on television. When he was 12, he began playing touch football with the Birmingham Bulls, a club team. When Hill was 14, his father forged his birth certificate to let him enter a tackle football league a year early.
“I wanted to try something new,” Hill said.
An offensive lineman and a linebacker, he eventually played in Spain and on Britain’s national youth team. By 19, he had severe headaches that he now attributes to concussions, and he had to stop playing.
Still enthusiastic about the game, Hill, who works as an assistant headmaster at a primary school, took up coaching. He read One Knee Equals Two Feet, a book by John Madden. In 1998, he became the defensive coordinator of the Lions and was promoted to head coach the next year, the only time during his tenure that his team missed the playoffs.
Hill has studied with coaches at Texas Tech and Florida, and one of his assistant coaches befriended Pete Carroll, who gave the Lions a pep talk on Skype before they played for the national championship a few years ago.
Though a volunteer, Hill spends countless hours each week developing game plans and building an organization that can recruit players to a sport many of them know little about. Hill has also been instrumental in developing youth and women’s teams that are affiliated with Lions.
“It is probably the most comprehensive club, and done almost entirely by volunteers,” said Chris Anthony, the club development manager at the university. “We use American football here as an example of what other clubs should do.”
The Lions, which won national titles in 2009, 2010 and 2013 and were runners-up in 2011, 2012 and last year, are the fourth-largest club at the university, with 125 members, up from 86 five years ago. Many players are drawn to its open-door policy.
“We don’t cut players, but what you put in is what you get,” said Jeremy Hasson, a linebacker who is in his third year in the physiotherapy program. “I went to a rugby tryout, but the football team was friendlier. It’s a great outlet for physicality and aggression, but the biggest thing is the social atmosphere.”
The highlight of the season is xpLosION, the game that coincides with Guy Fawkes Day, the holiday that recalls the 1605 plot to blow up Parliament. The game draws thousands of students — more than attend the national championship — and includes a halftime show by the university’s cheerleaders.
“Playing in front of 3,000 people is different than playing in front of your mom and someone walking their dog,” said Tunde Adelekan, a wide receiver and a third-year law student.
Hill hopes that the excitement of the big game and the competition and camaraderie on the field motivate others to join the Lions.
“For us, it’s about trying to convert those fans into players, coaches and administrators,” Hill said. “We deliver youth programs and the players may move away, but if they had a positive experience, they’ll remain engaged in the sport.”
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