I've watched a lot of sports that I wasn't brought up on and the one sport i just can't enjoy is American football.
Aussie rules I can watch and enjoy. Its ridiculous but its fun.
Football (soccer to you) is subtle and, usually, finely balanced.
Hurling is just weaponised hockey.
American football is watching a bunch of people standing around wondering what to do for most of the time. There's way too many people on the pitch for any exciting running action. Most of the people there just run into the guys in front of them making both of them superfluous to the game. It's just a stodgy, slow mess.
I mean, that's exactly what rugby looks like to everyone else, so the issue here is that neither of us actually understand the subtleties of what is going on in those "just running into each other, and so superfluous" moments....I can admit that about myself, anyway. Hah.
American football isn't really like that at all--each one of those guys running into each other is doing that in a specific direction, for a specific reason, on each individual play to create planned holes, distractions, blocks, whatever. It's all preposterously coordinated and those guys have to memorize something like 90 different schemes for their playbook (it's probably more than that, I honestly have no idea).
I'm not arguing that greater complexity is a benefit as Captante mentioned earlier--in, fact, I think the opposite is true in sports--but it
is extremely complex, highly organized, and everyone has a specific place to be on each given play which can change dramatically from play to play. The strategy changes from play to play for many reasons, which is why there is a lot of standing around and planning in between. In a way, it's actually a bit
too fast for their human brains because they have to scheme this out within 35 seconds between each play, based on the results of the previous play.
I can absolutely appreciate how boring it appears to others.