NFL Wants a Chinese Player...Bad
The National Football League is embarking on one of its strangest projects yet.  The league is actively recruiting Chinese athletes to play in an NFL game during the 2007 season.  That's right, the NFL is searching China, a country with absolutely no knowledge of American football and no trained players, to find the right guy to be thrown to the wolves that are today's NFL athletes.  The search is part of the NFL's broader goal of grabbing the interest of the Chinese and establishing a Chinese fan base.  A Shanghai-based marketing executive said of the search, "It's the same issue, whether it's Major League Baseball or the National Hockey League: it's the Yao factor."  No doubt, Yao has done wonders for the NBA in China.  However, the Chinese have been playing basketball for 100 years.  They know the rules.  They know the history.  As for the extent to which the Chinese know NFL?  In Mandarin, American football translates to "olive ball."  Which is strange because I didn't know they had olives here either.  The NFL has aggressively been pushing its game in China.  The league has supervised the establishment of 200 flag-football leagues on the mainland.  Furthermore, the 2007 NFL season kicks off August 9th in Beijing as the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks will square off in an exhibition game.  According to a Chicago Tribune article Saturday, NFL executives want their "NFL Yao Ming" by kickoff in Beijing.  Is this not the most ridiculous thing you've ever heard?  While I'm picturing a 150-pound Chinese guy trying to make a tackle, this isn't quite how it's going to work.  The NFL hasn't totally lost its mind.  The league wants to recruit a Chinese kicker.  NFL scouts recruited 23 Chinese rugby and soccer players and had them try their hand at kicking field goals.  One scout said of the trial, "These guys were shanking the ball 5 yards.  And we're thinking, 'This is a failure.'"  I wish I could have seen this.  The scouts were happy with one kicker, Gao Wei, a Shanghainese college soccer goalie, who demonstrated he could at least kick the ball through the uprights.  He went to Germany for an NFL Europe training camp and said of his kicking there, "the opponent will try to disturb you when you try to kick a goal."  Uh yeah.  The NFL sees Gao as the Chinese frontrunner to be a kicker for either the Patriots or Seahawks on August 9th.  Maybe the NFL has totally lost its mind.

•Chicago Tribune: NFL Hopes Familiar Face Sells 'Olive Ball' in China

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