AHC: Make American Football popular in the UK

Piggybacking off the Basketball discussion,I thought this was an interesting idea. Bonus points for a POD after the NFL / AFL merger.

Obvious ideas involve butterflying away the Rugby split, but that happened early enough to maybe affect the development of football in the US, so should probably be avoided.
 
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I don't like bumping my own thread, but I'll do it once.

One idea I had was that it gets introduced by American service personnel during WW2 and establishes itself in the North West, perhaps at the expense of Rugby League,
 
I suppose American Football becomes popular earlier thereby giving the NFL more money to force, I mean, promote the game with an annual regular season game in London earlier than in OTL.

Also, on that note, at least have teams playing against each other that are good and not mediocre vs. less than mediocre like this year.

I suppose the next question is: How to make the NFL more popular earlier?
 
The World Football League doesn't fold after 1 season? On that note, a team from England like the London Monarchs wins the world championship instead of the Sacramento Surge. After all, people gravitate towards winning teams.

Actually, that could be a potential timeline.
 
Get rid of time outs ;)
There was a big rise in popularity of the game in the 80's when they showed the highlights of US games on Channel 4, but it died off when they started showing full length games with the times outs included.
 
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