Question:
In a pub debate, what argument would your character put forth that his or her favorite sport is the best?Answer:
Football is the most popular sport on the planet. It owes it's popularity to the huge amount of skill and teamwork that players need to succeed. Football takes drive. Football takes patience. Football takes training and sacrifice. You can get killed playing, and not because the game forces you to do something inherently dangerous. It doesn't allow for any protection but shin guards. In that field only your teammates and your own skill stand between you and death.
Football is a level playing field. Dozens of countries compete in the World cup and cyberware is still banned (OOC I have no idea if this is true, but I hope so). You have to stand up and succeed on your own merits.
Football is about striving, achieving, and for many people, their dreams. Just getting onto an official team is the dearest goal of hundreds of millions of children across the world. Football can be about making something out of your life where you otherwise would have been without goals or dreams.
Football is about reaching for something beyond the ordinary, whether or not you succeed. It only takes a single battered ball and a dusty field to learn to play and you don't need a great coach to practice hard. For many poor people it is something that could bring them a better life, something to fight for when they have no other hope.
Football is about pride, support, and community. It is about believing in something that is bigger than yourself. It is about standing with the people around you and forming bonds though common desires and goals. It is about supporting your team and they other fans, even if they don't agree with you.
North American football is not even worthy of sharing it's name.