Americans understand the English.  Bob Glauber rode the tube two years ago.  Dan Shaughnessy can unleash an arsenal of ethnic stereotypes.  Greg Walsh knows his “tea and crumpets.”  With our perfect knowledge, we know an NFL franchise will never work in London.  We just know.  It’s obvious.  Why bother to analyze it?

There’s a common element to this type of ungrounded, conventional wisdom.  It’s stupid.

Americans are often ignorant of other countries.  That does not mean other countries are equally ignorant of us.  The NFL has been televised in the U.K. since the 1980s.  In the last year, NFL ratings have risen 55 percent on Sky and 75 percent on Channel Five.  As Paolo Bandini of the Guardian writes, it is no longer just a curiosity.

But, if one common complaint does not stand up, it is the suggestion that the league’s ability to sell out these games rests solely on, as Pasquarelli put it, “curiosity” among Britons. There is a core of knowledgeable American football fans in Britain that existed before 2007 and who have continued to ensure that – as a one-off at least – this game sells out.

The NFL won’t supplant the English Premier League.  It doesn’t need to.  A London franchise needs to sell tickets to eight games and earn a television deal.

Common wisdom says “the English” will never take to the NFL.  Who are the English?  London is one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the world.  Forty-two percent of the population are nonwhite or non-English.  Niche populations number in the hundreds of thousands.  Characterizing millions of people under Victorian stereotypes is callous and unfair.

Need Americans?  There are 182,000 Americans living in Britain, nearly double the population of Green Bay, Wisconsin.  There are 57,000 Americans stationed a short trip away in Germany and thousands more stationed throughout Europe.

Football can be esoteric.  Britons may struggle to break down the Cover 2 defense.  So would most American fans.  So would most American writers paid to cover the sport.  It affects neither entertainment value, nor opportunities for drinking and gambling.

Football can be simple.  The idea of carrying a ball across a line or kicking it through an upright is understandable.  It’s especially understandable for the English, since they invented the sport, Rugby, American football directly descends from.  Much of the terminology, “Halfback, fullback, flanker” still exists.

English media have been covering the London NFL games.  The only thing they seemed perplexed by was why post-game interviews must be conducted naked, which is a valid question.

An NFL franchise in London may be a failure.  It may fail dismally.  But, it’s worth examining.  However unfeasible expansion to Britain may be, it will be easier than getting public funding for a stadium in Los Angeles.