Warbler, I did not mean to ridicule or put down north american football, a sport I also enjoy watching (I wasn't able to watch for the past couple of years due to a busy schedule and being on different locations). I was just showing the key points of both and why some are popular in the United States, and some around the rest of the world.
It is intriguing to me on why football has not being popular among north-americans, and I agree with boon23, if it was there would be no competition. The US women soccer team is the best of the world! Then again, it's a culture thing. Football was never really introduced into the USA and was never popular. Among the audiences, it was seen as dull. When I say people dosen't have that emotion to support their teams, and even knowing there is such emotion between sports fans in the US, it is still different compared to how it is on South America and Europe. Maybe because on those places, the teams are not linked to an specific city, and people actually defend their teams as they would they own honor, thus explaining the sad part of all this: holligans.
Still, NO sport is better than the other. North American football is fun and I hope I can get back to watching it again. I loved playing basketball on high school. And ironically enough, I never really liked PLAYING football (soccer). But I was never really athletic, I was that outcast geeky kid who got beat up for being different.
I just wished football (*sigh* soccer) was more popular among other audiences, and not put down and ridiculed like the author of that "The-Rest-Of-The-World Cup" article did.