When it comes to American football, everyone knows that the National Football League in the United States of America is the main one that everyone looks towards. Just because that is the case, however, doesn’t mean that other leagues around the world don’t still have something of their own to offer.
In the case of American football lovers in the United Kingdom, the main leagues that people are going to look towards for their games and the associated enjoyment are the BAFA National Leagues, which can be dated back to the 1980s and have grown in size and dominance ever since.
The History of the BAFA National Leagues
The very name of American football, at least when you talk about it in the United Kingdom, tells you exactly where it comes from. Although it’s simply called ‘football’ in the US, with association football known as ‘soccer’ over there, we refer to it as ‘American football’ to help differentiate between the two codes. You probably won’t be all that surprised, therefore, to learn that it was first introduced to the UK in the early part of the 20th century when American service personnel were posted over here and decided that they wanted to play the main sport from their homeland.
We can even point to an exact game, which took place at Crystal Palace in London on the 23rd of November, 1910 between a team made up of crew members from the USS Idaho taking on some crew members from the USS Vermont. Although other, less formal games will’ve taken place before then, that is the first time a properly organised American football match took place on British soil. By the time the Second World War came about, matches had begun to be played between both American and Canadian servicemen, with one of the best-known being the ‘Tea Bowl’.
That was obviously a clever player on the Super Bowl but with a uniquely British twist and was played at White City Stadium in 1944. Two years later and the Americans who remained in the UK after the conclusion of the Second World War formed the United States Armed Forces Europe League, which was made up of sides from American military bases throughout Europe. One of those leagues was made up of teams based in the United Kingdom, with those sides winning the league championship 13 times. Eventually, the competition stopped taking place in 1993.
The First League Is Formed
It was a decade earlier that the first teams that were open for British players to join had first formed, which led to the creation of the first British American Football Leagues. As the years went on, the league became more and more serious, and other divisions were added to it. In 1985, the British American Football Association was formed, adding a degree of formality to the world of American football in the United Kingdom. A big part of the reason behind the sport’s growing popularity in the country was that Channel 4 began broadcasting NFL highlights in 1982.
The first British teams tended to be created close to Air Force bases that boasted a strong American presence, with the likes of RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire being one of the first to be set up. The first ever game involving two purely British teams was played in 1983, seeing the London Ravens win 48-0 over the Northwich Spartans. It was after a meeting of 35 teams in February 1984 that the idea of setting up a formal association was discussed, followed by the creation of the British American Football Federation and the American Football League United Kingdom.
New Leagues Added & a Liquidation
A year later, a conference was formed in order to discuss the merger of the two leagues, largely thanks to the fact that teams struggled for funding on account of the recession. When the leagues were unable to solve their differences, however, a third one, the United Kingdom American Football Association, was formed. Soon, the American beer company Budweiser came on board, putting forward a £300,000 fund in order to try to grow the game in the UK. Then, in 1986, the Birmingham Bulls beat the Leicester Falcons 32-18 to become the first British side to play in Europe.
Later in the year, the British American Football League announced huge losses, beginning the process of liquidation. Suddenly, 102 teams across 18 divisions found that they were under the Budweiser banner for the next season, whilst the Chicago Bears and the Dallas Cowboys became the first US sides to play an official game at Wembley Stadium. That gave the sport an added sense of importance in the country, with more interest following and the game becoming even more popular during the 1990s, leading to the eventual creation of a governing body for the sport.
The Foundation of Modern-Day BAFA
The British American Football League had been reformed in 1998, continuing to govern the sport until its collapse in 2010. That led to the formation of the British American Football Association, which was created in order to take on the role of governance for the National Leagues as well as the national team. Having previously been known as the UK American Football League, the Budweiser League and the British National Gridiron League, as well as the British Senior League between 1998 and 2005, the new divisions were to be known as the BAFA Community League from then on.
In 2011 a rebranding took place, which resulted in the organisation becoming known as the BAFA National Leagues, which has remained the case ever since. From youth to university and senior level, hundreds of teams have been formed and disbanded in the years since, playing both full-contact and touch variations of the sport. Although some of the older teams are still in existence, many are not the same as the ones that began playing the game in the UK during the 1980s and numerous different sides chose to merge in order to avoid completely collapsing.
The League’s Format
Teams from England, Wales, and Scotland play in the British American Football Association National Leagues, with American Football Ireland being responsible for sides based on the Emerald Isle. The regular season is split up into the two conferences: Northern Football Conference and Southern Football Conference. Within each of the two conferences, there are then three levels of competition, which differ from their American counterparts insofar as there is relegation and promotion between the divisions. The top-flight is the Premier Division, going down to Division One and then Division Two.
Which of the conferences a team plays in depends on its geographical location and the geographical location of other teams in the conference from season to season. If there is an overabundance of teams from the North, for example, then teams in the Midlands may end up being moved to the Southern Football Conference. In fact, in years gone by, if Division One saw a wealth of teams from the Midlands playing in it, then it would’ve been known as the Midlands Football Conference. It is a summer sport in the United Kingdom, running opposite to the NFL.
The format as things currently stand sees ten matches played by Premier Division and Division One teams, whilst Division Two sides play eight games. At the end of the regular season, the winners of the two Premier Division Conferences as well as the runners-up go into the play-offs. They go up against one another in order to qualify for the Britbowl, which is the British equivalent of the Super Bowl and officially took place for the first time in 1985. There are similar Championship Bowl games for the sides that play in Division One and Division Two that are played over Britbowl Weekend.
As well as being declared the winners of the BAFA National League, the winners of the Britbowl also qualify to play in the following season’s IFAF Europe Champions League, making it an extremely important game to win. European American football games run alongside the domestic season, much as the Champions League runs alongside the Premier League in football. Meanwhile, there are also regional leagues underneath Division Two that the bottom team can find itself relegated into come the end of the season, thanks to the system of promotion and relegation that is in place.
The teams outside of the BAFA National Leagues don’t gain automatic promotion at the end of the season, however. Instead, much like during the early days of the Football League, they must apply for membership to the British American Football Association, with several different criteria laid out for them to meet. Any BAFANL team can be relegated down to the associate level if it is felt that the club is failing to meet the standards set for teams in the various leagues. In terms of how the sport is run in the UK, it follows the latest National Collegiate Athletic Association rules.
That has been the case since the 2005 campaign. As things stand, there is no limit on the roster size of each club, which differentiates it from the rules in the NFL that have a maximum limit of 53 people per team. It means that teams can have a large number of players associated with them who come in and out depending on whether or not they are needed.
An Amateur Sport
Another big difference between the British and American versions of American football is the fact that it is strictly amateur in the United Kingdom. That also puts it at odds with most European leagues, where the teams are either professional or semi-professional. In order to keep operating, clubs usually tend to work via a mixture of player subscriptions and sponsorship deals. It is only the coaches that can be paid legally at present, whereas the players have to pay a fee to BAFA and to their club. This is the case even if the player has been a professional somewhere else previously.
When it comes to transfers, the window tends to open in October and close midway through the season, which usually puts it at around July. There is an online portal registration system through which the transfers of players are handled. The player will log in to the portal and request a move, at which point they need to wait for the team they’re currently playing at and the team they want to move to to agree, with finalisation for the move then being sent on to BAFA for it to be officially confirmed.
BAFANL Players
Teams that play in the British American Football Association National Leagues tend to be British. Having previously seen American professionals play for teams, the fact that players can no longer be paid for their services means that this doesn’t usually happen. There is a minimum age in place for the players of 18, although players are allowed to play youth football until they are 19. At present, female players can play in the BAFA National Leagues as well as in the Women’s National Football League, which is also run by BAFA.
The teams in the Premier League and Division One tend to offer try-outs when they are looking to recruit new players, which take place over several training sessions, whereas Division Two and associate sides operate an grassroots approach that sees players play for them as long as they are fit enough. In terms of where players come from, it is usually rugby union players that make the transition over. A new rule was introduced in 2019 that saw BAFA confirm that any non-British player playing within the league had to have a permanent residential address in the UK and needed to have lived in the country for at least six months.
This rule was brought in after the Leicester Falcons signed an agreement with the US college team, the Baker Wildcats, that saw numerous US athletes come over to the UK to gain some experience with the Falcons. The Tamworth Phoenix flagged it up after one of Leicester’s players told them they had agreed to pay them £1,000 per month and give them a free Master’s degree. There have been some famous players who have appeared in the British American Football Association National Leagues, such as Efe Obada, Aden Durde, and Jason Brisbane.
Stadiums
The more observant amongst you will be aware that there aren’t really any American football stadiums on offer around the United Kingdom. Even the likes of Wembley Stadium and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, both of which host National Football League games on a semi-regular basis, are association football grounds that are adapted to be able to have NFL games played at them. The same is true when it comes to British American Football Association National League games, with the use of stadiums limited by the budgets that the teams operate under.
Most of the clubs that operate in the BAFANL tend to use pitches more commonly associated with rugby union clubs, although sports fields at universities and schools are also used. The Britbowl, as the most important game of the season, has taken place at numerous different venues such as the Allianz Park and the Sixways Stadium. It isn’t uncommon for teams to share grounds with other sides, such as the fact that the Halton Spartans use the Select Security Stadium, which is the home of the rugby league side the Widnes Vikings.
BAFANL Media Coverage
If you don’t know much about American football in the United Kingdom but would like to find out more, you may decide that you want to watch some matches. The good news is that you will be able to do so, but the bad news is that finding coverage isn’t the easiest thing in the world to do. Onside Productions launched in 2016 when it started streaming the games of the Nottingham Caesars, calling itself Caesars TV, then it was brought on by DblCoverage.com in order to allow for the broadcasting of both the national finals and the Great Britain American football team matches.
As well as showing games that had in-game coverage and interviews, broadcast on YouTube, DblCoverage was also the largest media outlet and community hub in the UK that focussed on American football. That meant that it offered the likes of editorials and other articles on the sport. It was taken down in 2019, with Sportank stepping up to take on the mantle of being the UK’s largest provider of coverage of the sport. That includes weekly livestreams of American football games played in the United Kingdom, whilst there are also several other online media platforms for the sport.