RG3: College Football must bring ‘all the fixings’ to London

By Simon Carroll

Speaking with the UK media ahead of the first ever college football game at Wembley Stadium, Robert Griffin III believes the sport has an opportunity to make an even bigger impact in the UK than the NFL – but says the Union Jack Classic needs to deliver the full American football experience to win over a new audience.

And, according to Griffin, that starts with one thing; Points.

“I don’t think a seven to six football game is going to get people excited in London about college football,” Griffin told UJC ahead of Saturday’s meeting between Kansas and Arizona State. “I’ll just be honest with you.

“I think you want to see points scored. I’m not saying the defenses need to go home, but I think the way to encourage fandom is to create moments. Seven to six, in my opinion, is not a moment. You want to see a 35 to 28, or a 49 to 42 type of football game because that presents something different to the fans in London.”

It is not simply about chasing a high-scoring box score, though. For Griffin, the Union Jack Classic represents an opportunity to introduce British fans to an entirely different sporting culture, and that requires the full experience.

“If you’re at Thanksgiving dinner, you don’t just want turkey and some mashed potatoes,” he said. “You want collard greens. You want mac and cheese. You want the cornbread.

“We need to bring all the fixings over with us to London.”

Fortunately, Griffin believes the two teams heading to Wembley are capable of doing exactly that.

Both Kansas and Arizona State have offenses capable of producing explosive plays, with Griffin particularly excited by the talent available in the passing game. He pointed to Arizona State’s receiving duo as one of the reasons he expects the Sun Devils to provide plenty of entertainment for a British audience.

“They know how to make big-time plays in the passing game. They know how to get open and they know how to bring excitement,” Griffin said. “To me, that is the goal.”

The goal for the two teams, of course, is somewhat different.

“They’re just trying to win,” Griffin acknowledged.

But for the long-term future of college football in the UK, Saturday has the potential to be about considerably more than the result.

A game built for the UK

Griffin believes college football may actually have an advantage over the NFL when it comes to establishing itself with an international audience.

Having travelled extensively in Europe through his wife, Griffin says he has noticed a fundamental difference in the way sporting crowds interact with the action.

“In America, you’ve got the cheerleaders and the yell leaders in American football that kind of lead the crowd through the stuff that they need to do,” he explained. “Whereas in Europe, it’s the crowd that leads it. So I think that is more similar to college football in the environment of how crazy it can be.

“I think there might be an opportunity to connect better with the world population.”

That connection could also be helped by the sheer scale and variety of the college game.

The NFL has 32 teams. College football offers hundreds of programmes for fans to discover, each with their own identities, traditions and rivalries.

“There’s more teams. In the NFL there’s 32. In college football, I mean, it feels like there’s 400 different teams that you can fall in love with,” Griffin said.

“I think that gives more variety and allows them to maybe even narrow in on different regions.”

That variety, combined with the intensity of college football fandom, is what Griffin believes could make the sport particularly appealing to British supporters who have already fallen in love with the NFL.

His advice to those fans is simple: go one level deeper.

“If you want to be a real NFL football fan, you have to be a college football fan because that’s the feeder system into the league,” he said.

“You get to know these guys at a much younger age. You get to see them grow and develop, and I think that’s what actually builds true fandom.”

From College to the NFL

Griffin believes following players from their college careers into the NFL creates a much stronger connection between fans and the professional game.

He used Patrick Mahomes as an example. Rather than simply knowing Mahomes as the quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, understanding his journey at Texas Tech provides another layer to the story.

“You actually sink your roots deeper into the ground by becoming a college football fan so you can truly follow these guys,” Griffin said. “That jersey that you put on, that you buy, that you spend all your hard-earned money on actually means more to you because you’ve been following those players longer.”

It is one of the fundamental differences Griffin sees between college football and the NFL.

“The fandom around college football is better,” he said. “It just is. The traditions and all that stuff are definitely more deep-rooted. The rivalries are better than the NFL rivalries and I just think it adds to it.

“There is no NFL without college and there’s no college football without the NFL.”

That pathway from college to the professional game was also at the heart of Griffin’s answer when asked about players who may not necessarily arrive in the NFL surrounded by the same hype as the game’s biggest prospects.

He highlighted BYU quarterback Bear Bachmeier as a player UK fans should keep an eye on, describing the sophomore as a physically imposing quarterback who could develop into an NFL prospect despite not possessing the obvious size or athletic testing numbers that traditionally attract attention.

“Bear isn’t going to run a fast 40-yard dash. He’s not going to blow you away by being 6’5,” Griffin said.

“But in two years he could be a guy that goes in the second or third round that ends up being a franchise quarterback.”

An experience for players and families

While the spotlight will inevitably fall on the players at Wembley, Griffin is also conscious of what the trip means to the people who have helped them reach this point.

For college players and their families, Saturday represents an opportunity that would have been almost unimaginable when many of them first picked up a football.

“The name on the front of the jersey means something to the guys,” Griffin said. “They want the fans to have a good time and enjoy the process. And then the name on the back of the jersey means even more to them because these are the people that sacrifice for you to help you get to where you wanted to be.”

Griffin knows that feeling personally.

He recalled how his own parents travelled to support him during his playing career and explained how much it meant to him to be able to honour his father through his famous ‘III’ jersey.

Now, with NIL allowing college players to earn money from their name, image and likeness, Griffin believes travelling internationally is also more accessible for some players and their families.

“They probably never thought 10 years ago that they’d have an opportunity to travel across the world and showcase their talents to a whole new audience,” he said.

For the players themselves, Griffin believes it is important that they embrace the occasion rather than simply treating Wembley as another stop on the schedule.

Both teams travelled early enough to acclimatise to their surroundings, and Griffin believes they should enjoy the experience that comes with playing the first college football game at the iconic stadium.

“It is an experience and these are college kids and they deserve that experience as well being over in London,” he said.

“It’s a business trip. They’re going to win a football game. But it’s a very unique moment and having it be the first college football game at Wembley Stadium is something that they should embrace and not shy away from.”

RG3 the believer

There was also time for Griffin to address one of the biggest names in college football: Arch Manning.

The former NFL quarterback believes Manning’s development over the last 12 months has justified much of the hype that surrounded him before he had established himself as a starter.

Griffin admitted that he felt Manning struggled early last season, particularly with his mechanics, vision and turnovers. But the quarterback’s response to those difficulties changed his opinion.

“Midway through the year, he turned it around,” Griffin said. “And that, to me, speaks to his ability, his championship mindset and his resilience.”

Manning then finished the season strongly, including a comeback victory over Ohio State after Texas had fallen 20 points behind in the fourth quarter.

For Griffin, that demonstrated the quality that matters most.

“I do think that he has earned the praise,” he said. “He’s probably not the first pick in the draft yet, but he’s well on his way to be in that.”

And it is that attitude towards players which Griffin says UK fans will see from him when he takes his place as Fox’s game analyst at Wembley.

“I’m not a hater. I want all these guys to be successful,” he said. “When they’re not, I will always be honest and shoot you straight. But I’m not ever preying on anybody’s downfall.”

For Griffin, Saturday is therefore about much more than Kansas against Arizona State. It is a chance to give British fans a first proper taste of college football — the explosive offense, the personalities, the traditions, the atmosphere and the connection between players, schools and supporters.

In other words, all the fixings.

And if Wembley gets the feast Griffin is hoping for, perhaps the first college football game in London will leave plenty of people hungry for more.

BE A PART OF COLLEGE FOOTBALL HISTORY

Tickets to watch the Sun Devils against the Jayhawks in the inaugural Union Jack Classic on Saturday September 19 can be purchased now via the Union Jack Classic website

Mock Draft

SIMON CARROLL

Lead Writer, Head of Content

PREVIOUSLY THE FOUNDER OF NFL DRAFT UK, SIMON HAS BEEN COVERING COLLEGE FOOTBALL AND THE NFL DRAFT SINCE 2009. BASED IN MANCHESTER, SIMON IS ALSO CO-CREATOR & WEEKLY GUEST OF THE COLLAPSING POCKET PODCAST, COVERS THE JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS FOR SB NATION and is A college football writer for dazn.

Twitter Envelope Linkedin Spotify Apple
Rated 5 out of 5
BoyleSports NFL