While Northern Ireland laments "the first Irish League football match
on a Sunday", an American can only look on sadly and hope that the
predominantly Protestant country does not emulate America in moving
its sports to Sunday.

America has the NFL, the National Football League (we use the word
"soccer" for what the rest of the world calls football), which airs
most of its games on Sunday. (Not all of them, since there are some
Monday night, Saturday, and rare Thursday broadcasts, but most are on
Sunday.) Practically speaking, this is America's religion. All week,
people anticipate the Sunday games and talk about them (radio and
television coverage is 24x7 with talk shows and the like). People are
riveted to their televisions on Sunday watching the games (and the
advertisements). Because local broadcast channels show only regional
games, people spend large sums on satellite dishes and TV packages to
pick up "the big game" that is not shown on local broadcast
television. People even go to a "church" in a sense, going to sports
bars that have large-screen television where people commune together
watching the NFL.

The NFL even has a remarkable month-long holiday season. They shrewdly
have expanded their playoff structure so that half the teams qualify,
which makes games involving also-ran teams with losing records
fighting to get into the postseason, trying to qualify. This makes a
good number of previously meaningless games become "the big game" in
December. The multiple rounds of the playoffs, which stretch on for
weeks, lead up to America's national holiday, Super Bowl Sunday.

And this has happened to America in a couple of generations. Even in
my own parents' generation, this national holiday was unknown. My
mother tells me how she used to dress up to go to church, with hat and
gloves. I read about the Civil War era, and they observed the sabbath
even in the armies if they could.

All I can say to the people of Northern Ireland is to not take the
path America has taken!