In February 2016, on the opening night of the second season of the Egyptian National Football League, tragedy struck. Omar Khaled, a freshman defensive lineman for the American University of Cairo, died shortly after leaving a game. The university cancelled the rest of its season, sponsors dropped the league, and the press had lots of questions.
It didn’t help that the average Egyptian had little grasp of the sport. The league had six teams and 400 players; attendance was about 100 to 150 a game. “People don’t even know what American Football is,” says Amr Hebbo, the president of the Egyptian Federation of American Football.