On Sunday, the NFL played a regular season game in front of a sellout crowd at London's Wembley Stadium for the third straight year. In recent months, the English Premier League has openly discussed returning the favor to the United States by adding a 39th game to its schedule and holding it at various sites around the world, including in the States. This begs the question: If the Brits are so accepting of American football, would Americans be interested in English football?

If it's done right, there's no reason to think why playing one EPL game per season in the United States wouldn't be a rousing success. It might upset English football traditionalists, but it could help expand the league's global footprint and make EPL soccer something more than a novelty in these parts.

In order to do so, however, the games themselves must still feel like a novelty. (It's quite an anomaly, I know: In order to not be a novelty, the games themselves must stay a novelty.) Like it or not, the only way that soccer has proven its ability to be a mass success in the United States is when there are big-time events. World Cups (men's or women's), David Beckham debuts and exhibitions between European clubs and/or MLS teams can sell thousands of tickets at the biggest venues in the country.

This country has a huge "big event" complex. On the whole, the masses won't get excited about something unless it feels important. This is why gymnastics, figure skating and swimming are only big every four years. For this reason, MLS will never catch on with a huge audience. People don't think there's anything at stake. These aren't the best players or the best league, people rationalize, so why should I care?

The EPL won't have a problem establishing legitimacy over here. Even the greenest of sports fans understand that the EPL is the big-time. 

In order to sell a lot of tickets and make this venture worthwhile, though, the EPL would have to be careful which games it selects for the United States. A soccer equivalent of the New Orleans Saints-Miami Dolphins game (which was played in London last year) won't fly. People won't be filling Giants Stadium to see Stoke City vs. Portsmouth. It will take a Manchester United or Chelsea or Arsenal -- teams with American name recognition -- to generate interest.

The EPL also wouldn't have the luxury of picking one location and sticking with it (as the NFL has done with Wembley). The game will need to rotate on a yearly basis amongst cities with big soccer followings (Los Angeles, New York, Washington/Baltimore) and places with enthusiastic hosts (as Fenway Park apparently is) to ensure freshness in new markets.

Handled correctly, these games would have the potential to generate more casual interest in the EPL and, perhaps, could even give the afternoon games on Fox Soccer Channel (which recently re-upped its American contract) a big-event feel in the United States.

For 30 years people have asked "can soccer succeed in America?" Maybe the reason it hasn't is because people have been selling the wrong product. The EPL could be the right one.