Thank you. I love me some Gridiron, but calling it football is just plain inaccurate
Hey, look, it's a new and entirely fresh question about American football. No, wait, actually it's not new at all. Quite frankly I have no idea to the answer of the question, though.
Cricket? When I was in college, I had several Indian friends who tried to explain it to me. Maybe it was the language barrier, or it was probably the fact it just seemed to make no sense for my puny isolationist American brain, but I couldn't understand their explanation of the sport at all. Wickets and runs? Two different types of scoring? wtf? (this is not an invitation to try and explain it to me, btw)
I can't say anything for the popularity of American football. At least with baseball we can cite it's popularity in other parts of the world, primarily in east Asia and Latin America.
And Kotz was dead-on about the Floparooskis infiltrating American sports. Manu Ginobli is a prime example of this.