A game of four 15-minute quarters for a total of 60 minutes play that is somehow spread over four hours?

No thanks.

In that period I could play a leisurely full round of golf and still have time left over to watch the yank-footy highlights in the clubhouse.

The highlights though, it has to be said, tend to be pretty spectacular. When stuff is actually happening in that game it really is happening.

As it should, I suppose - with 53 players on each team going on and off the park, everybody's completely fresh all the time.

It's about explosion rather than endurance. Spectacle.

For us, the Superbowl this last week marks the one day of the year when Australian sports fans may deign to exhibit a passing interest in football of the American persuasion.

It's not easy.

The first task before you is deciding who you're going to support.

I sorted this out years ago, adopting a rigorously scientific approach which involved this thought process: I once flew into Buffalo. It was late at night, everything was shut and the only thing I could find to eat was chicken wings. Buffalo Wings. They were brilliant.

So I support the Buffalo Bills.

The Bills are most famous for having lost four consecutive Superbowls and have never won the thing.

So, it turns out that a particularly delicious bit of poultry has led to me being a supporter of the NFL equivalent of pre-2014 South Sydney.

So, alas, I had no dog in this 2020 race, but victory, when it comes, as it must, will be sweet.

Speaking of chicken wings, I read last week that it was estimated that for the Superbowl and all its associated palaver, Americans would consume 1.4 billion of them! That is a lot of wings by anyone's count, particularly when it accompanies the 10 million pounds of ribs to be gnawed on and then the 75 million pounds of avocado required for the accompanying ocean of guacamole.

It's their second biggest food event behind thanksgiving.

Corpulent people stuffing themselves while watching elite athletes perform remarkable feats... It's as old as sport itself, I suppose.

Anyway, once you've picked your team you've now got to grapple with the rules - and who knows how they really operate.

The general mechanics seem simple enough, but then once you think you've got a handle on things you get side-swiped by some bit of minutiae which chips away at some other bit that you thought you understood, but obviously you didn't, and so then you have to rethink that and ... on it goes.

It's such a strange game. And so specifically unique to, more or less, a single continent.

In some ways, in that regard, it resembles Aussie Rules - a predominantly national game.

But then Aussie Rules has distinct roots in the Irish Gaelic Football. The games are similar enough that we and the Irish can blend the two, formulating international rules so that we can play against each other. There is a heritage.

Gridiron just exists on its own.

An isolated mutant ... which somehow became America's number one game.

It shares its origin with our own code of kings - rugby league - in that they both grew out of union.

But the American version, which began in the late 1800s, somehow convoluted itself with more soccer-leaning ideas of ball movement which led to the biggest departure - the legalisation, somewhere around 1906, of the 'forward pass.'

Interestingly, despite it being newly allowed in the rules, forward passing took a while to take off.

Coaches of the time advocated against it, reckoning that more often than not it just gave up possession.

This was probably due to the players then still passing underhand.

It wasn't until they started using the overhead torpedo type throw with its far greater accuracy that the style of play changed to more resemble what we see today.

Our respective codes have, surprisingly, cross-pollinated to a small degree.

When we needed to do something about the problem of St George's domination in the '60s it was to the American idea of limited tackles (downs) to which we turned.

In exchange we've given them Jarryd Hayne, and a bunch of goal kickers.

A fair trade?