Jackson Free Press

Here is a nice trivia question you can ask your friends next week: Do you know who was the first 2016 NFL Draft player to sign with his team?

If you said Moritz Boehringer, then you would be right. The rest of you might be saying, "Who’s Moritz Boehringer?"

Funny thing you should ask that, because depending on his success, he could have started a trend.

Boehringer is the first player in NFL history to be drafted directly from Europe. The Minnesota Vikings drafted him with the 180th pick in the sixth round.

The 22-year-old, 6-foot-4-inch wide receiver was the 2015 German League Rookie of the Year, who became interested in American football after watching highlights of Vikings superstar running back Adrian Peterson.

But Boehringer isn’t the only player from the Germany to find his way to a NFL training camp this summer. Griffin Neal played Division III football at Concordia College who graduated in 2015 and headed to Hildesheim, Germany.

Neal went to Germany after an invitation from an American coach and ended up playing for the Invaders, a second-tier team in the German Football League. He also worked with a quarterback coach that helped get him an invite to Tulane’s Pro Day.

That invite to a pro day was helped by rain that forced the Tulane players to workout at the New Orleans Saints' indoor practice facility. All the Saints decision makers were there instead of just one scout. Neal impressed the New Orleans big wigs enough to get another workout. He aced that workout and earned a contract for camp later this summer.

If the sport of football is going to keep growing, that growth has to come outside of the country. Every major North American team sport has already gone global.

Soccer, can be traced back 2000 years ago but England took the sport around the world, is the world’s biggest sport. Basketball and baseball are well-known around the world. Hockey is limited by weather in most of the world, but it is still more global than American football.

The German Football League started in 1999 and is still trying to grow in terms of talent and fans. Boehringer and others explained during the draft that most German players aren’t ready to play in the NFL, much less the Arena Football League.

Germany isn’t the only place where American football is trying to take hold. There's the Amercian Football League of China, and why not try to get American football in the country with the world’s largest population?

The sport is also making inroads in Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Australia, England and other places. The International Federation of American Football says there are 80 countries with some level of organized football.

Currently the most talented players are in Germany. That would make sense if you remember the old NFL Europe that folded in 2007, which had several teams in Germany to expose fans to American football.

While Boehringer is the first player from outside the US to be drafted, it might be awhile before the NFL begins to mine out of the country like the NBA and MLB does for talent. The exception is Canada when talking about players coming from out of the country and playing in the NFL.

While American football begins to catch hold in the rest of the world, can it become a major sport outside of the U.S.? That is an interesting question, and the slow growth of soccer here in America might provide a clue as to how long it would take other countries to catch up in talent.

Right now size and speed are the biggest difference between players around the world and American players, meaning American players are bigger and stronger at this point.

That doesn’t mean the gap can’t be cut like in basketball and baseball. It really depends on how much other countries want to promote the game and how well fans receive it.

If American football can become an Olympic sport (it would be as flag football), that would help the growth in other countries. Right now, the game will grow at a slow pace.

One good thing is the rest of the world can work on taking the head out of the game (in terms of tackling) and already know the dangers of concussions. There will not be a need to change the culture of football because they are just beginning their culture.

It might not be for another two decades, but it is worth watching to see if the rest of the world begins to come to the NFL.