Someone all the way from Germany took me up on my offer to post guest comics! Want to give a special thanks to Leon Häfner, The German Guy, who promptly sent this in for me. I’m happy to post it, Leon, thanks for making this week not a total haze of snot. I’ll link Leon’s words below, so you can hear the description of the comic from the man himself.

First of all, let me just say that I’m a great fan of your webcomic and that I’ve enjoyed your work since 2013. The last time you offered to publish some guest comics I was not able to send my idea in, so I’m glad that I have a second chance now.
The comic is about watching an NFL game here in Germany. If I’m lucky, my Steelers play the early game, so that means kickoff is at 7 pm CET. The 4 pm EST games are ok too, If I’m unlucky and it goes into overtime, I’m up until 2 am.
Where it gets hard sometimes is the night games, and that is what my comic is about. Most of the time, those games are great and thrilling until the final moment. If the Steelers are ahead and win by 20 points, that’s ok, too, but you still wished that the game could have been closer.
The hardest part is when the Steelers are behind and it seems that they will lose that game. Besides ruining my mood because they will lose the game, I’m also upset that I stayed up so late just to watch them getting defeated. I often go to bed before the end of the game in that situations, and thus I have already missed some memorable moments (e.g. the Steelers comeback win against the Giants are few years back).
Hope you enjoy the comic.
I did. I find this comic pretty amusing because it more or less defined a big thing I noticed when I spent week 1 in Scotland. The time difference is just so wide and it’s kind of an impossible hurdle to overcome. I have a lot of international fans who read this site. I couldn’t tell you why, my running theory is fans outside the US probably have limited media dedicated to football. Kind of a weak theory in the age of the internet but eh, all I got. Any European commenters feel free to chime in on that. I find this funny because I feel like I’ve been a fairly vocal opponent of NFL expansion into Europe. Not because I hate the fans or want them to be unhappy, but mostly because I just don’t think the logistics are gonna work.

Like it’s show in Leon’s comic, the time zone difference is just so much. It’s a massive barrier for entry. Our Sunday early games are basically prime-time games for Europe. The late games are beyond acceptable time-frames for your average working joe, and our prime-time games? Our all important games? Our special moments? 3 times a week? Played in the wee hours of the morning. That kind of timing makes it hard to impossible to really build a dedicated fanbase. Even if Europe gets a team and have 8 home games a year, what happens when they are playing in the USA, during any time not Sunday early? Are they gonna bother watching? What about the playoffs, when pretty much every game is super important and is played late? Almost every European fan I’ve talked to has a similar story to Leon, I can’t imagine how hard it is to stay up that late for games, I had trouble with some Sunday night football on the east coast and that ended by 12. Once I got out of college and into the real world  those kind of hours were pretty much off the table.

It just feels like the NFL in Europe will never manage to break through niche status, and the NFL doesn’t settle for niche, the NFL wants to own everything.

I don’t really have a say in the matter though, so it doesn’t really matter. NFL is gonna go forward with it or ditch the concept no matter what any of us think. If I do have some sort of sway I don’t know about, please Roger, give me money.

Thanks again Leon!

I still have an open slot for Saturday if anyone wants it!