Arena league expanding into China

On this, the week of the ArenaBowl, Soul part-owner Ron Jaworski is effusive. He usually is, but this day, his voice rises and falls with the excitement of things being done.

The former Eagles quarterback has just left a meeting plotting the future of the Arena Football League. The Soul will play for the title Saturday. He is making preparations to bring a football league to China by next year.

Jaworski, 62, has become the Johnny Appleseed of football, spreading the sport into your homes (he is an NFL analyst on ESPN); into your cities (he was at an AFL news conference Thursday announcing an expansion team in Los Angeles); and across the world. Jaworski is a leader of the effort to bring the six-team league to China.

"I don't sleep," Jaworski said, laughing. "Hey, it's not work to me if it's what I enjoy doing."

Jaworski enjoys doing anything football. He has championed the Arena Football League, and the Soul have had success with him on board. They won a championship in 2008 and will play in the ArenaBowl on Saturday in a rematch of last year's title game.

Although his team has lost to the Arizona Rattlers twice already this year, Jaworski likes the Soul's chances. ("I could just sense that we're not done," he said. "We're not done. We're happy to win, but our real celebration is going to come Saturday.")

But the China venture is the boldest yet, and potentially the most transformative. China has nearly 1.4 billion people - an untapped market, he calls it, of sports-hungry fans.

Already, Jaworski said, he has met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping about the endeavor. AFL Global is teaching football in six universities in China. The six teams in the league will play 10 AFL-style games in the first season, and mostly Chinese players will fill the rosters, with some Americans mixed in.

That presents a challenge. Most in China don't know much about American football. Not only will the AFL have to recruit athletes, but it will have to teach them the game, too. But that's the point: The NFL has a stronghold in United States. Abroad, there is a clean slate.

"There is no NFL in China," Jaworski said. ". . . Now, hey, I may not be around to see that come to fruition, but if you think about it in those terms, 20-30 years from now, all these young Chinese people, four times the population here in the United States, are going to be watching Arena football, not National Football League football."