THE National Football League (NFL) is the world?s most profitable sports league, but American football is still working to gain a foothold in China.

With his youth football team comprised of 70 percent of local Chinese players, Sea Dragons founder and coach Memo Mata is bringing America's game to Shanghai while also helping change his players' lives in the process.

The first NFL player with full Chinese ancestry Ed Wang is a sturdy man but while overseeing a Sea Dragons practice he witnessed something that made him literally jump back.

The team was doing a tackling drill when eight-year-old Bill Yuan found himself lined up against a 12-year-old boy twice his size. While football is a game of will, physical size plays an undeniable part and coach Mata tried to intervene. Yuan protested and his mother gave her approval to let him try. With TV cameras on hand, tiny Yuan in Mata's words, "completely destroyed this 12-year-old," proving that on the football field, power can come in small packages.

This story is an apt description for the Sea Dragons and their founder, Mata. While the NFL dominates America's sporting heart, it's still relatively unknown in China.

When founded in February 2011, the Sea Dragons seemed like an ambitious dream. Now, it's the first truly integrated American football youth team in the country - a 50-person squad that just held an open practice at Shanghai Sports Center in front of thousands of spectators, including ex-NFL MVP LaDainian Tomlinson. For the coach and team, this was another milestone in what has been an unlikely journey.

When Mata arrived in Shanghai with his wife Marissa in 2008, football was the last thing on his mind. He was teaching English at Shanghai United International School (SUIS) when he was approached about starting an extracurricular school program.

For the 32-year-old who had played high school football with Super Bowl winning quarterback Drew Brees, the program's focus was a no-brainer. He contacted the expat-focused Shanghai American Football League (SAFL)'s founder Ken Holloway about borrowing gear and started recruiting for the new Xiehe Blue Dragons team.

This proved easy, recalls Mata, because students "thought wearing the helmet was so cool."

With the program in place, Mata had to start at the basics both on and off the field. "The first lesson was that I wasn't going to help them dress," Mata says. After that, he was tasked with the challenge of breaking the complex game of American football into terms that his players would understand.

"I've been able to break it down to numbers and letters," he explains. "I break down where people have to go by letters and the players by numbers. So if I say A7, the kids know who's getting the ball and where they are going."

The team grew and played against the SAFL's Dragons team in December 2010 in the first tackle football game in the country. When the NFL invited Ed Wang to lead a workshop with the team as part of his China tour, Mata was faced with a dilemma. The SAFL was unable to lend gear so Mata "begged and begged my wife to let me buy gear." The couple's holiday savings was enough to cover 25 sets of equipment and Wang's visit brought national attention to the team.

Shortly after, Mata ended the program's affiliation with SUIS and started anew as the Sea Dragons. Armed with equipment but no team, Mata started Saturday Smashes on a grassy area in Hongqiao area. Equipment was laid out and any kid passing by was welcome to try. It was successful, connecting Mata to a variety of supporters, restocking the squad with players and disproving the perception that American football is too physical to appeal to Chinese tastes.

"At first the parents are a little worried about the contact but once they see how we teach them to tackle properly and safely, they really get into it," Mata explains.

"Sometimes when I'm pushing their kids to make that last bear crawl for those last five yards, the parents are yelling, 'Push him more! Push him more!' But that's because they have found all the positive things that American football will bring to a young man, like discipline, teamwork, cooperation and responsibility, have made their kids better students and better sons."

It's a sentiment that's echoed by the parents and players. Tiffany Chiu was passing by the Saturday Smashes desperate to find a sport that would appeal to her then 13-year-old son, Winston, who was addicted to videogames.

Winston instantly took to the sport and the changes that football made were not lost on his mother. "Before, my son didn't like any sport but he's passionate about football now," she says. "He talks about it all of the time and it's also changed his personality. He's 15 now and very independent."

Part of the reason that the Sea Dragons boasts so much parental support has been Mata's reinforcement of their values. He constantly preaches to his players that in America, if their grades start slipping they wouldn't be allowed to play. He backed up his words by sitting the impressive Bill Yuan last spring due to poor grades. The tactic worked, Yuan's grades have since improved and he's back in the team for this fall season.

The team boasts a high retention rate and its overall ability to appeal to the local community surprised the SAFL's Holloway.

Popular teacher

òChinese kids have busy schedules and the sport requires a large time commitment,ó he says. òThe strong numbers are a direct reflection of Memo?s impact on the Chinese community. He?s a very popular teacher and the kids enjoy playing for him.ó

Players like Winston agree. òCoach Memo is really nice and even when we lose, the most important thing to him is that we had a good time,ó he says.

In the meantime, the team is building up such a base of support that parents have demanded T-shirts be made so they can show off their team pride.

The Sea Dragons have big plans for the fall season with a goal of getting 75 players and fielding three teams: a junior team, a middle school team and China?s first ever high school team. Mata and Holloway are organizing another game between their teams, and Mata is hoping to make history by hosting the first ever international American football game in China between his high school squad and the Russian Under-19 team.

Fuelling Mata?s motivation is his firsthand experience with the positive impact of the sport on his life. In his native Texas, the sport is almost a religion with high school football games attracting nearly 50,000 spectators and a conduit for athletic scholarships.

"One of my main goals is to provide opportunities for these kids to better their lives through American football," he says. "I want to help build the sport here so that eventually American recruiters have the opportunity to see Chinese talent, because what Chinese parents don't want their kid to go to a great American university for free?

"And even if the player doesn't get that scholarship, at least that journey would have made them a better student, a better son and a better citizen," says Mata.

Surprising growth

The Sea Dragons success has been part of a surprising growth in American football's popularity in China. In the past year, television and online viewership of NFL games has grown exponentially with the league's Sina weibo account now boasting more than 170,000 followers. It's been a pleasant trend for the NFL which opened up its NFL China office in Beijing five years ago.

"I was a student here in 1990 in Beijing and I could remember people saying that Chinese people would never drink coffee," says NFL China Managing Director Richard Young. "Just like coffee isn't going to overtake tea, American football isn't going to overtake basketball and soccer right now. But that doesn't mean Starbucks doesn't have a really great opportunity for business and that's how we're going to be."

Mata has his own ideas of why the sport's popularity is slowly growing. "I think that people are starting to see that it's a game, not a fight," he says. "It's a chess game with live players and that really appeals to the Chinese community because there's strategy and you have to be smart."

While America's most popular sport continues its inroads into China, Young and other members of the local football community credit Mata and his supporters for the Sea Dragons' success.

"Memo's done an amazing job," Young says. "The guy is literally putting the program together with his own blood, sweat and tears. If it wasn't for him, this wouldn't have happened."

The Sea Dragons will begin their 12-week fall season on September 8. Program registration is: 1,200 yuan (US$189) for players with gear; 1,600 for players who want to rent gear; 2,800+ for players who want to buy gear. For further details visit chinaseadragons.com to find out more.