World tunes in to Superb Owl only to find men playing not-actually-rugby

As millions across the globe tuned in on Sunday expecting an avian spectacle of epic proportions, they were instead subjected to an elaborate game of “rugby, but make it stop every five seconds”.

The Superb Owl, a yearly event known for its extravagant musical intermissions and inexplicably expensive commercials, was thought by many international sports fans to be an avian-themed nature documentary. Instead, what they got was American football, a sport that looks like rugby but with helmets, armor, and far too much standing around.

“I was promised an owl,” said Sébastien Dupont, a disgruntled Six Nations rugby fan from Toulouse. “Instead, I saw a man in tights throw an egg to another man in tights, who then stopped running and celebrated like he had conquered a nation.”

While Americans insist that the Super Bowl is the pinnacle of sporting excellence, rugby fans watching from across the pond were left baffled by the constant stoppages, elaborate hand signals, and the strange concept of playing only offense or defense—not both.

“Where’s the chaos?” asked an Irish fan, nursing a pint of Guinness at 3 AM. “Where’s the man who gets trampled and just walks it off? Where are the forwards pretending they don’t have concussions? This is just highly choreographed theatre with occasional tackling.”

To add to the confusion, the game is called football, yet foot-to-ball interaction is alarmingly rare. Unlike the Six Nations, where the ball is frequently kicked as part of the strategy, American football reserves the act of kicking for specialists who appear for mere seconds before vanishing again.

As the Super Bowl concluded with yet another three-hour-long spectacle that somehow only contained 11 minutes of actual action, Six Nations fans switched back to watching highlights of their beloved, brutal, non-stop, muddy spectacle.