Intro to Premier League

Are you looking for an appetizer before indulging in a college football filled Saturday? Look no further than waking up to silky British accents commentating the English Premier League this weekend.

For those who don’t know, the Premier League features the top 20 soccer (football) teams in England as they go toe-to-toe each week until May to see who can accumulate the most points over the course of the season. Three points are awarded to the victor and while the team defeated gets no points, one point is awarded to each team who draw.

There are no playoffs, so every game counts. The bottom three teams at the end of the season get sent down to a lower division. Talk about a twisted, sporting way of a trial by combat. To put it into an American analogy: the Minnesota Twins, Atlanta Braves and San Diego Padres would be in grave danger of playing the AAA next season due to their poor records and the Salt Lake Bees would have a chance to make it to the big leagues if they were one of the top teams in AAA.

They will only play three games into the 38 fixtures, so it’s not too late to jump in and follow the action. The stakes will be high when dawn comes Saturday as local undefeated rivals Manchester City and Manchester United face off at 5:30 a.m. Both teams have new managers who have a heated history and have splashed the cash over the summer which includes over 300 million dollars in player acquisitions. Manchester United even broke the all-time transfer fee record to re-acquire midfielder Paul Pogba at approximately 118 million U.S. dollars.

There will typically be a slew of matches at 8:00 a.m. after the early bird game and a late fixture at 10:30 a.m. The last Saturday fixture this weekend will feature the biggest Cinderella team in sports history: Leicester City. The Foxes as they are affectionately known, were 5000-1 odds to win the title going into last year. Cleveland Browns in 2016 are 200-1 odds to win the Super Bowl. Leicester went on a historic season to claim their first ever English Premier League title in 2015. Now all the teams have re-loaded and are looking to stake their claim as the best team in England.

The only logical reason to not follow the English Premier League would be the fact it’s not accessible to watch and/or it’s too early. With NBC Live Extra, you can easily access any of the matches you want to watch on your phone, laptop or iPad with a cable subscription. Your favorite team will never be blacked out and you’ll be able to watch them on-demand.

Now there’s no excuse you aren’t able to see why the rest of the world calls it “the beautiful game.”