Melville hasn't lost his English accent, though holding the reins of rugby's ultimate bucking bronco has forced him to shake off many of the English sensibilities.
In a sport that holds on to traditions, Melville is the man who has had to ride bareback on rugby's new frontier.
That's not to say he doesn't care still for the finer points of the game's values - in fact, those very values form a key component of rugby's marketing push here.
But in essence, he has had to make rugby fit America, rather than make America fit rugby.
The truth is, rugby, not American Football, has always been seen as college sport's renegade game.
Not for rugby the baubles of power and booster prestige of gridiron.
Instead, rugby was the game for the boozers and the boofheads, the boys who spent as much time in the dean's office as they did in the lecture hall.
That was the box Melville was keen to get rugby out of. Rookie rugby is the box he was keen to put it in.
"We trialled the programme in 2008 in Florida and, in what was a very happy surprise, seventy schools turned up to learn about it," he says, sipping a very sweet-tasting beer at a Chicago hotel bar.
"By our calculations we figured over the next three months a total of 70,000 kids had a taste of the game."
Seventy thousand kids. Let that sink in for a second before I tell you that USA Rugby now considers the number of kids playing the game - 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds included - to be close to two million across 40 of the 52 states.
I know what you're asking right now: sure, all these kids are farting about in grade school with a tag belt and a couple of balls, but how is rugby ever going to compete with the big leagues?
The simple answer is, it isn't going to. Not now and not in the foreseeable future.
But, as I mentioned in this column in June, there is an appetite for the game here that needs to be satiated, and all indications are that, morsel by morsel, bite by bite, that is indeed happening.
The plans are breathtaking in scope.
A new formalised College finals series was announced yesterday to be operated in conjunction with sports marketing powerhouse IMG; a professional league, according to Melville, is less than two years away; pressure is being applied at global level to allow the US team room in the international windows to get more tier one connection (as it stands, this All Blacks game on Sunday will be the side's last tier one contest before next year's World Cup); and, on the sellout success of this November test concept, the idea will be shopped to Australia, South Africa and - imagine the audience for this - the 2017 Lions en route to New Zealand.
There is heart to be taken by the fact USA rugby has not hidden behind the Olympic status of sevens rugby and has instead decided to make the game an annual proposition, rather than just a four-yearly one.
The game is growing - one Cleveland native I bumped into outside the All Blacks' hotel, who was in town to recruit emergency room doctors to cover a state-wide shortage (moral of the story, don't crash your car in Ohio), couldn't believe he was in the same hotel as the world's number one team - and the telecast of this game will give, in Melville's own words, "people who know rugby the chance to see what rugby can be".
He also told me something quite revealing.
He said his first international in charge of the USA Rugby programme saw the home team face Uruguay in a World Cup qualifier.
The game was held at Stamford University, 750 people turned up, and the entry fee was a can of beans for charity.
From a can of beans to a sell-out Soldier Field in less than seven years. Everything here is just a box of fluffies and the man behind the box is Nigel Melville.
3 Things about US rugby
1 Far from rookie
In a period of three months a total of 70,000 children had a taste of rookie rugby.
2 State of play
The number of children playing the game is two million across 40 of the 52 states.
3 They're learning
A new formalised College finals series is less than two years away.
