At just after 11 pm London time, in about half an hour or so as I begin to compose this posting, NFL Super Bowl XXXVII will blast off, in San Diego, Southern California – and I will be watching it on British Channel 5 TV. In the last few years, Channel 5 have shown lots of American football, but not the Super Bowl itself. Sky TV would nip in and buy the Super Bowl, leaving Channel 5 with a stupid little highlights show the day after, and I eventually stopped bothering about any American football. But this year, probably because Sky has finally devoured all its adversaries in the shark tank that is British pay TV and doesn’t need to spend money on such things any more, regular Channel 5 is showing the Super Bowl as well as having shown lots of the preceding games. They of course flagged this up loudly beforehand, which means that this time around I’ve been paying attention to the entire NFL season.
Something similar has happened with rugby. All of the Six Nations games this year are about to be shown by the BBC. For the last few years regular TV only showed highlights of the England home games at Twickenham, but now I’ll be able to see all the England games in their entirety. Deep joy.
I don’t much care who wins the Super Bowl. I’ll be watching for the Americanness of it all, for Shania Twain at half time (although ST’s recent album is a huge disappointment to my ear), for the astonishing skill of one guy chucking a ball forty yards, and another guy running full tilt and catching it without breaking his stride, which means that the ball must have been thrown exactly right, several seconds earlier, at a completely blank piece of pre-selected grass. Being a successful NFL quarterback must be about as easy as being a First World War fighter ace. Amazing. And I’ll be watching because I like it when the people I hated at school inflict pain on each other instead of on me. The crowds that watch these games are exuberant, but not psychotic. The commentary is expert, but good humoured. The game itself combines immense intellectual complexity with raw human muscle power. The dancing girls on the touchline are great, as is the aerial photography of the stadium and its surrounding localities. Channel 5 TV reception in my home is very bad, but I don’t care.
I do, however, have my criticisms of American football, most of them centred on what is called “parity”, and when rootling around for a website link to include here I discovered that my doubts are shared by some Americans. Here’s what a certain Tony Hawley of News Tribune has to say about parity:
The NFL thinks it’s the best pro sport because any team can win a championship in any given year. While that’s an admirable trait in a league, it also makes it tougher to care about who wins the Super Bowl.
Since there are no superpowers any more, there are no teams you can count on rooting against. Since there are no perennial doormats, there are no underdogs to root for. Because any team can win a Super Bowl in any given season, it no longer seems like a great accomplishment when you pull it off.
Parity is achieved by such devices as imposing a “salary cap” on all the teams, so that they must basically all spend the same amount on player salaries, and by giving the worst teams last year the pick of the following year’s best new players.
I don’t like this. As Hawley says, it drains the meaning out of things.
Maybe Americans are religious. Maybe that’s it. If God can’t fix life, he can at least, in the person of the NFL, be made to fix American football to give everyone an equal chance. Maybe that’s what is going on.
In English football (“soccer” – which, I learned the other day, is because our football is As-SOC-iation Football) the rule is: to them that have shall be given. If you get to be Manchester United, or Arsenal, or Liverpool, it’s because you are based in a great and ancient city with a past glorious enough to have assembled a decent number of people to buy the season tickets and the shirts and the merchandise, and because with that foundation you also did everything else right as well. You built a good stadium. You bought good players and not just overpriced big names. You gelled your team of multi-national internationals into a team of team players, and when you got to the top you didn’t get complacent but kept on improving. You have a good youth set-up. You find a really good manager, and you stick by him through bad patches.
Over here, God definitely takes sides. Currently He swithers between supporting Manchester United and supporting the current best team in London, Arsenal. So if some small town team knocks Manchester United out of the FA Cup, that’s a miracle which, on those rare occasions when it happens, will be fondly remembered for decades. And if some non-major city team wins the Premier League, ditto.
What actually happened today was that Man U thrashed one of the lesser London sides, West Ham United, who are currently bottom of the Premier League and looking like being relegated, 6-0 in the Cup. And Shrewsbury (from a far lower division – total team cost £90 thousand) were beaten 4-0 in the Cup by Chelsea of the Premier League (total cost of team £80 million). Which of course is the way these things usually work out. It isn’t fair. It is like life. But occasionally, just occasionally, and again like life, the game doesn’t go with the form book. The big battalions and the big money don’t always win the day.
(Oh-my-god! Celine Dion is singing an anthem. Did any of you see the send-up The Simpsons did of American football anthem-singing? Well, of course you did. Actually, God Bless America wasn’t too bad. Now it’s the National Anthem sung by … The Dixie Chicks! With jet airplanes! God bless America!)
They’re off. The players are reading their names and alma maters to camera, and Oakland, all in white, look like they’re going to open the scoring. Yep. Gannon gets sacked but Janikowski kicks the field goal.
I always have to wait until the game starts before I find out which team I want to win. And this year I find that I am supporting: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That’s in Florida, right?
Good choice. Tampa Bay, the underdog, is slaughtering Oakland 34-3 in the 3rd quarter.
You are dead-on about the downside of “parity”. Total randomness is far less interesting than beloved patterns, which can go bewitchingly awry.
I don’t care for football much, but in the instances that I do, I have no probs expressing extreme displeasure towards the Raiders. 15-20 seconds before the game’s over and the Bucs just got another touchdown. Score: 48-21. Oh, yeah!
No perpetual doormats? Who the hell does he think the Detroit Lions are?
As a 30 year resident of Tampa, Fl I assure you that the Bucs had long been the doormats of doormats. Football is boring, but…yeah!
Translate “Manchester United, or Arsenal, or Liverpool” to “Yankees, Braves and Dimondbacks”, drop the “and ancient” and change “youth set-up” to “farm system” and you’ve got the current state of American pro baseball pretty darn cold.
From the Toronto Star: “Prior to the opening kickoff, Quebec diva Celine Dion sang God Bless America, arranged by 14-time Grammy winner David Foster, also a Canadian.”
I’ve never been a fan of Celine Dion, but in spite of myself I was moved by her rendition of “God Bless America” tonight. And I know it had a lot to do with my awareness that she is Canadian. A kind word from a Canadian means a lot these days.
Well, you also have the old state of baseball. In fact, just substitute “Yankees” and you have essentially every non-’80s decade starting with the ’20s.
Don’t try to tell me that the D-Backs have some glorious history of baseball, though. I’ll concede that they are over .500 for their history, the only team formed since 1901 of which that is true. (Since the Royals slipped below last year. The Astros and Blue Jays are also close. Actually, most of the teams are from 46%-52%. The only teams above 52% are the Dodgers, Giants, Yankees, and D-Backs. See.)
My main criticism of American football is that it’s really boring. Of course, I think that about watching any sport, so perhaps I’m a bit biased. I just don’t get a kick out of watching others do something I wouldn’t care about doing myself.
My main criticism of association football is why Sutton Utd are hated by Epsom and Ewell FC.
The “chocolate and amber scum” is a most ungentlemanly epithet and you don’t get any dancing girls at a windy nonleague side.
Brrr!
I once lived in a squat in North London with a business-studies student & tennis coach who was the only British Green Party member I’ve ever met, had a German girlfriend with whom he always spoke German — and was and still is the only English person I’ve ever met who was truly passionate about American football.
I gather there are more these days, but it does seem to be quite an acquired taste. He made me watch a big match with him, and I found it rather confusing. Mind you, I’m Yankophile enough to feel there aren’t enough goals in Association Football. I’m sure the Americans could have made that game a bit more fun with [say] wider goalmouths and four quarters instead of two halves.
–
Brian,
I agree with your point about parity, but the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were the perennial doormats since they came into the league almost 30 years ago. This Super Bowl victory will be remembered for decades.
I made it to half time before starting the video and turning in at 1:30. I would be bummed that I now knew the result but it was heading that way when I went to bed anyhow.
Where was Hung Donkeyman of the Brooklyn Benders anyway?
Thanks for all this guys.
Yes, the Celine Dion thing is interesting. Normally I can’t stand the way this woman sings. I think what I hate is that she performs every damn song she ever sings, invariably about her troubled relationships with her boy friends, as if she was singing God Bless America in a huge and packed football stadium, and what sane woman would do a thing like that? But this time she was singing God Bless America in a huge and packed football stadium.
It also helped that she toned it down a bit from her usual level of total hysteria.
The boy was right – football is boring. So why not watch hockey?
Much faster, much more exciting, you occasionally get good fights (amongst the players, not the spectators, this isn’t soccer after all), and their rules for payment and selection are more free-market, so you do get long-term great teams like The Avalanche and the Redwings.
You can get NHL on Channel 5 too – every Wednesday night during the season.
After a good hockey game, even a junior one, believe me football looks like ballroom dancing.
First Superbowl I’ve watched in years, as I do not own a TV let alone have Sky… but that is another story. It was like a Thanksgiving dinner delivered, still hot, in a Red Cross parcel to a castaway in the lost reaches of the Pacific.
Parity or not, there was no parity in that game. I grew up playing football in the streets and yards of Western Pennsylvania (if you want to prove your teenage manhood, play full contact football after school with your mates with no padding on a brick street my friends!) at a school were football was religion: we were usually in the WPIAL C Division finals. *EVERYONE* went to the stadium. Particularly for the annual non-division grudge match against Moon Township (A school roughly 5-10 times our size).
So. When I see a quarterback under that sort of pressure in the first quarter, I know that team is in very, very deep trouble. It only gets worse. With less time available, the quarterback has to fire with less thought. That means fewer completions. With that prickle in the back of the neck and that bit of retraction in expectancy of getting hit by a 350 pound back, he’s trying to get rid of the ball before he gets sacked, and that means bad throws, misjudgements and interceptions. You might end up with a quarterback getting carried off in a stretcher. Quarterbacks are often smaller guys, and if you give them enough punishment…
But even with the outcome pretty clear, Oakland really did pull a few spectacular rabbits. That kick block was fantastic.
Of course at the end of the day, I enjoy watching Oakland get beaten. You see, I’m a bred, born and football raised, Iron City Boilermaker swilling native Pittsburgh Steelers fan of the Bradshaw-Harris Era.
Business Week magazine ran a smashing (I love using British slang 🙂 article on the NFL business machine and why they shoot for parity, how they do it, etc. The NFL is very very socialist in how it runs things. I put the URL for the article(s) in. Check it out.
Hold on. You listen to Shania Twain? I’m sure she’s good, but I wasn’t paying attention to the vocals 😉
I, for one was rooting against the Buccaneers. I’m a fan of the Packers, and after what happened in this year’s Packer/Buccaneer game, I have more hatred of the Bucs than ever before.
For you non-Americans, here’s what happened: Late in the third quarter, Packer quarterback Brett Favre threw an interception. Tampa Bay defender Warren Sapp, who had made *NO* tackles during the game, was some 30 yards away from the ball. Since he was out of the play, what did he do? He left his feet (illegal) and made a helmet-to-helmet hit (illegal) on Packer offensive lineman Chad Clifton. The hit was so brutal that Clifton ended up with a seriously separated pelvis *before he hit the ground*. Sapp celebrated the hit (a big no-no when players get injured. A few weeks later, one of the San Francisco 49ers injured Philadelphia quarterback Koy Detmer — a freak injury, to be sure — and everybody from both teams showed concern in checking on Detmer to see how he was doing.), so at the end of the game, Packer coach Mike Sherman told Sapp he thought Sapp’s celebration was “chickenshit”. If Sapp were clearly in the right, it would have been easy for him to brush off this comment. Instead, Sapp started screaming, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” over and over at Sherman, and even challenged Sherman to put on a jersey and take on Sapp. In the locker room after the game, Sapp told reporters Sherman was lucky he (Sapp) has a kid (actually, several kids by different women) and wasn’t 25, or else he would have beaten Sherman up then and there.
More amazing was the league’s reaction to all this. Earlier this year, the league was being heavily criticized for handing out overly large fines on unnecessarily rough hits (including on people who had the ball and weren’t 30 yards away from it!). In this case, the league came out immediately (normally, it takes them three or four days to announce fines) and said Sapp wouldn’t be fined. If the league isn’t going to be consistent in determining what is unnecessary roughness and what isn’t, how can they expect players to know when they should be making hits?
And the media reaction to Sapp has been just as bad. Sapp hasn’t been the Buccaneers’ best defensive player by a long shot this year. That honor would go either to Simeon Rice, who IIRC led the league in sacks this year, or to Derrick Brooks, who was named the league’s defensive player of the year. Yet whenever the games are being shown on TV, the camera focusses on Sapp. (Probably because he gives them good sound-bites, and in the incestuous world of sports and entertainment reporting, reporters need to keep sucking up to the celebs who give them good sound bites.)
Apologies for the rant, but I have *really* been soured by the league’s complete lack of consistency this year, as well as the media’s toadying of sleazy, trashy players.
For one of the more interesting lessons in transatlantic differences, spend Super Bowl sunday in a British pub. I predict much drunken-ness, good-humored piss taking, and scratching of heads among the locals.
Also, prepare to:
– Explain why American football players are NOT women (“They wear all those pads!”). We Yanks are born with the knowledge that a 350 pound, 6′ 7″ lineman crashing into a 215 pound, 5’10” running back is ugly. Sadly, the Brits didn’t grow up watching this every weekend so it doesn’t immediately occur to them.
– Run should you decide to call European “football” by its proper name: Kickball. Somehow this seems to cause offense and invites derision.
– Also run should you compare Kickball to “an oversized game of tennis with too many players on the court.” I mean, all that back and forth with final scores similar to those in hockey (with none of the charisma, fighting or pure athleticism).
– Run again should you suggest to the party organizer (and devoted Raiders fan and all-around Very Big Guy) that Oakland wasn’t necessarily *losing*, they just weren’t *winning*.
– Express sympathy to British football fans embarassed by the phenomenon of hooliganism. Way to go, Raider Nation! My only complaint is that you didn’t make it across the bay to riot in San Fran.
Along with the previously mentioned Celine Dion, be advised that Shania Twain is also Canadian. And Sting, of course, is a Brit. The “Americaness” of it all indeed! Hrummph.
The fact that the performers were mostly foreigners exemplifies Americaness. We don’t care where you are from, or what you are, just how good you are at what you do.
A metaphor: Sting and Gwen Stefani singing “I’ll send an SOS to the world” together while Shania was somewhere under the stadium. (And Jon Bon Jovi was not heard from at all until after the game was over.)
First off, Shania…Dear God. Love those canuck “country” singers (right..country).
2nd, To Ted S. – I understand you probably bleed cheesy green, but Sapp’s hit was a clean one. I think it’s a case where neither side was “wrong”. Sherman, probably got many points in that locker room by taking on Sapp, but Sapp had every right to take offense. He’s not a dirty player. Just a very loud player who made a hit that was job to make.
And the TV guys focus on him because of his antics and his quotability. Brooks and Rice should certainly get more press (as should Barber & Lynch), but think of it in terms of Terrell Owens and Randy Moss. The way the press cover them, you’d never know the best receiver in football the last 5 years has been the quiet and professional Marvin Harrison. Sometimes, the TV guys aren’t fair.
3rd – My big pet peeve. The NFL is NOT a socialist entity. And I certainly hope Brian isn’t saying what’s best for sports is that the cities with the richest NON-sports history and biggest populations should be rewarded with the winning franchises?
The NFL is the equivalent of McDonald’s franchise owners vying for the company award of “top restaurant in the McDonalds” family. It is not socialist. It is a very shrewd business model. It would be socialist if all teams were forced to finish 8-8 with no championship being rewarded. The NFL franchises compete in win and losses. They do not compete in revenues and profits.
Back to the McDonald’s analogy. My local McDonalds could care less, from a financial standpoint, what the McDonalds in downtown Atlanta is doing. It cares much more about now many people are visiting the Wendy’s across the street. That impacts it’s bottom line. Just like in the NFL, the Atlanta Falcons may be competing with the Saints and Bucs in wins and losses, but it’s competing with the Braves and Hawks (local teams in OTHER sports with different owners), not to mention the local movie theater.
It’s competing for the entertainment dollar. And the NFL and it’s franchises are top dog and quite capitalistic in the way it has achieved it’s status as THE American Sport. And Parity has HELPED this, not hurt it. The lack of dynasties is something that only sportswriters and a few fans in Dallas and San Francisco really have a problem with. Most fans know their team can end up in the Super Bowl (except for those poor souls in Cincinnati) and that’s why the NFL rules. And we’ve had much more entertaining Super Bowls since the salary cap and free agency was put in place in the early 90s. Before that, the underdog may have been fun to root for, but with the exception of Super Bowl 3, they never won. What fun is tat?
Anyway, it is not socialism to impose financial rules on sports franchises in the same league, rules agreed to by those very same franchises (to quote Airplane…”They bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into”). The salary cap, free agency, the draft, and all the other mechanisms of parity are simply rules that teams have to live by. Which is why a small town like Green Bay can have a chance against a team from New York. When Green Bay beats out New York, the history and populations of the town have little to do with it. It’s entirely due to the competence of the ownership, management, coaches and players. In other words, success is entirely up to those who actually have their livelyhood tied to the sport.
To call the NFL socialist, especially when you know that socialism typically HURTS an industry is quite simply a slur when thrown at the brilliant businessmen who control the gridiron. End of rant.
Like I said, that’s just a pet peave of mine.
Finally, look out for Michael Vick! It’s his world, we only live in it. Go Falcons!!! Can’t wait for Next Season!!
And can someone please explain to me what the NFL & ESPN/ABC’s fascination with Jon Bon Jovi is? Only regular American viewers of ESPN will appreciate that question. Before this football season, I thought Bon Jovi was just a washed up hair band whose lead singer was trying to remake his career as some boytoy on Ally McBeal.
And again, Shania. Dear God.
Oh, yes, poor Tampa Bay, a “doormat” that was founded in 1976 and won division championships three and five years later. Six playoff victories in a “long” 27 years. Yes, that’s below average, but that isn’t doormat territory.
Detroit, however, definitively qualifies as a real doormat. The Lions have won *one* postseason game since 1957. One playoff victory in 46 years.
HA!! Shania didn’t even sing, she lip sync, and smiled/almost laughed when she screwed up (the bit with her walking amongst the fans).
At least Gwen and Sting actually performed live!!
Seems fitting that the “Pirate Bowl” had a record number of interceptions.
“AARRRRR, we’ve got the ball now, mateys!!!”
Good point about the the NFL’s alleged socialism; it is actually an immensely successful uber-capitalist entity, and is to be admired for satisfying tens of millions of customers on a regular basis.
Brian makes a very good point, however, regarding the uniquely challenging aspects of playing quarterback in the NFL. No task in sports requires the extreme athleticism and complex decision making under extraordinary time pressure as playing quaterback in the NFL. Imagine playing chess when your every move must be made within seven to eight seconds, you must throw your piece accurately to the desired square, on a moving board, while you attempt to avoid very large , fast, opponents who are trying to do you bodily harm. There are great athletes who cannot recognize the patterns in order to make the right decision, and there are great athletes who are extremely intelligent who simply cannot recognize the patterns quickly enough, while under great physical and psychological pressure. An extreme cool under pressure is required, and mere athleticism or intelligence, even in great amounts, is often insufficient. A story about perhaps the greatest QB ever, Joe Montana of the 49ers, told by one of his offensive linemen, Harris Barton, is illustrative: The 49ers were playing the pre-pathetic Bengals in the Super Bowl, the game had been close, and now the 49ers, trailing by 4, needed to drive 90 yards very quickly in order to prevent defeat. The 49ers offense took the field during the T.V. timeout, and as they formed their huddle, while waiting for the officials to signal a resumption in play, a nervous silence fell over the group. Montana, looking around, turned to Barton, and remarked, while pointing, “Hey look, Bart, there’s John Candy!” Barton was incredulous; here they were, in the most tension-filled moment of their careers, and Montana was so relaxed that he was scanning the crowd and noticed a fat comedian chowing down some popcorn. The entire huddle erupted in laughter, and when play resumed, Montana led his squad down the field, making one sound decision after another, one accurate throw after another, often while running at nearly full speed, until his team had scored a touchdown, and won yet another championship.
HAHAHAHA! Won $100 w/2 seconds left. That extra point did it!!!!!!
And the hubby won the same.!!!!!
I meant socialist in the way that the organization itself is run; it’s quite clear that the NFL makes huge coin doing what they do (they are very very capitalist). But the way the organization is run with revenue sharing, salary caps, etc. is extremely socialist. The owners of each team make more or less the same money and have more or less the same expenditures. This is vastly different than baseball where a deep-pocketed team in a large market (like the Yankees) completely dominates in every category on the field and in the business office.
This “socialism” is how the NFL is acheiving its parity that is driving some people nuts.
Stopgo:
When you compare Association Football to hockey, do you mean real hockey, which as we all know is played on ice, or field hockey?
Russ:
What made Sapp’s hit cleaner than all the other hits that drew fines earlier in the season? Just because Chad Clifton was an offensive lineman doesn’t mean he’s any less valuable than the wide receivers that were involved in the other hits. (A few weeks later, Packer Antuan Edwards got fined for running over a Minnesota wide receiver who was trying to take a knee at the end of the game; this player actually had the ball and Edwards didn’t leave his feet or lead with his helmet. If Edwards deserved a fine, than clearly Sapp did as well.) And quoting from Rule 12-2-8 on unnecessary roughness:
“(e) running or diving into, or throwing the body against or on a player obviously out of the play, before or after the ball is dead;
…
Note: If in doubt about a roughness call or potentially dangerous tactics, the covering official(s) should always call unnecessary roughness.”
Packer defenders tick me off. What about the following week when, on a kickoff the receiver took a knee and a Packer player leveled him when only a touch was needed. (Actually the refs made a bad call, the whistle should have blown as soon as the receiver took a knee.)
What was Sherman’s answer? The tackler was trying to force a fumble. Only problem is, that would be impossible since with a knee down, the instant he was touched by the defender the receiver would be down by contact.
Bunch of cry-babies and hypocrates who only made the playoffs by playing in the worst division. How can anyone look at the NFC North and talk of parity?
Quote: ‘Translate “Manchester United, or Arsenal, or Liverpool” to “Yankees, Braves and Dimondbacks”, drop the “and ancient” and change “youth set-up” to “farm system” and you’ve got the current state of American pro baseball pretty darn cold.’
Except that ten years ago, the Yankees were mediocre, the Braves were terrible, and the Diamondbacks didn’t exist. The Indians and Mariners, both hugely successful since 1995, were so bad that feature films were made on the premise that they would continue to be laughable. The big-city Dodgers and Mets are writing the definitive book on how not to be competitive, with a foreword from the big-city Cubs, who haven’t won anything since forever.
Parity in baseball is, in fact, higher than in the other two major US sports (I don’t care about the NHL, and MLS doesn’t have its act together yet).
I don’t know why you hate the Packers, but you swerved into the point I was trying to make. On the play in question in the Minnesota game, the referees wrongly failed to call TO when Walsh signalled for it. So Antuan Edwards went after Walsh, since he had the ball — and got fined for it. My point was that, if the league isn’t going to fine somebody like Sapp, how can the players be expected to know what does and what doesn’t constitute unnecessary roughness. Indeed, at the time, I suggested that either Antuan Edwards or Mike Sherman respond to the fine by commenting that if leaving your feet and engaging in a helmet-to-helmet hit 20+ yards from the ball doesn’t constitute unnecessary roughness, then certainly running over a guy who actually had the ball couldn’t possibly be unnecessary. FWIW, I do think Edwards didn’t need to hit Walsh so hard, but the big point here is that the league is clearly not applying its rules consistently — much the same way governments don’t apply laws inconsistently. And I had the same problem with Pittsburgh fans and other pundits who complained about the “running into the kicker” penalty at the end of the playoff game in Tennessee. They said that yes, the guy ran into the kicker — but you don’t call the penalty in that situation. I say that if it’s a penalty in the first quarter, it’s a penalty in OT.
And I’d argue that the Packers would have gone better than 12-4 if Clifton hadn’t been so viciously injured by Sapp. The Packers’ offensive line was so decimated by the end of the season that they couldn’t run much of the offense they wanted.
Only Americans will offer this type of help.
I am the victim of sexual, physical, mental and psychological abuse. Now in death my husband has dealt the final blow. Please ask your members to help me.
My husband, a medical doctor, a man whom I trusted and was married to for 30 years died recently and to my surprise he left everything we worked alongside each other to get, to the three grown healthy children from his first marriage. Twenty four years my senior he is afraid I would marry and use the money on someone else. My health is at its worst and now I have to pay legal fees to get what is rightfully mine. I am not asking for much a dollar from everyone will help. I have opened an account at the bank of Nova Scotia in Toronto, Ontario Canada. Branch number 51482, account number 08080-32 or mail to Jodie Post Office, 9 Linstead Court, Toronto, Ontario M9R 2T4, Canada. Thanks in advance. One dollar or whatever your group can afford afford
L. glorya muller
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