As the widespread coverage of Yi Jianlian's NBA move reaffirmed China's love affair with basketball, a first-round pick from the 2004 NFL draft was in Beijing on Friday to promote "America's favorite sport."

New England Patriots tight end Ben Watson and a delegation of NFL and Patriots officials are aiming to raise the profile of a sport barely known in the world's most populous country.

Aware of the scale of their task, the NFL has so far concentrated on developing the non-contact version of American football in schools.

"We're here to encourage and support those 5,000 kids who are playing flag football here in China," Watson told reporters.

"Hopefully with the development one day there'll be a Yao Ming of the NFL. We know the Chinese have a great tradition in athletics and we hope they can continue it in football."

Yao and now Yi have helped make the NBA one of the most popular forms of entertainment in China. NFL games, by contrast, are broadcast tape-delayed to tiny audiences in the early hours of the morning.

"We are late but that just means we have to work twice as hard," Gordon Smeaton, NFL vice president international, told reporters.

The postponement until 2009 of the inaugural China Bowl between the Patriots and Seattle Seahawks, which had been scheduled for this August, was not a blow but a two-year window to develop the league's profile, Smeaton added.

It also presents them with the possibility of playing the game at the "Bird's Nest" National Stadium, currently under construction for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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