American sports, and especially college sports, is a HUGE deal over here. everyone identifies themselves with a team, and they are literally DIE HARD fans. i've been to a few college games, and i will share my experiences...
American football
quite boring actually. although there's only 45mins of actual game time, they usually go for around 3 hours with stoppages (sometimes just to accommodate TV ad breaks) and timeouts. there's a lot of entertainment to fill in the lull periods, and people are swimming in beers, so the game soothes over them like a satisfying summer swell.
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| KU! |
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| OOOHH AAAHHH.... |
i've developed a pretty good understanding of the game, and at times it can be exciting, but the lack of continuity really hurts the game i feel. you just get sooo bored! there are a lot of big hits (keeping in mind that they're padded to the hilt) and the dudes are monstrous! there's usually around 45 guys in a squad, with only 11 players on the field, which according to my calculations means that some players are only on for around 10 minutes. nevertheless, they are all beastly athletes. hope to get into it a bit more in time...
KU basketball
my "school" Kansas University (KU) is renowned for basketball (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_Jayhawks_men's_basketball), winning THE national championship in 2008! interestingly enough, our first coach was the inventor of the game, James Naismith! needless to say KU has a long and proud legacy, and everyone in town is fanatical about the Kansas Jayhawks!
we dominate on the court, usually making it to the top 4 in our division, and having a 59 game home court winning streak! there have been a number of famous players produced here, including Paul Pierce (the only name that i recognize)! i got a random photo with one of the big name players at a bar one night, Travis Releford (
http://www.kuathletics.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/releford_travis00.html), which i'll no doubt be bragging about when he gets drafted to the NBA in a few years time.
the season proper starts in a few weeks, and there are rules as to when the team can start formal training. the first session is traditionally celebrated with a gala event at KU called "Late Night in the Phog". you can tell everyone is fanatical about Jayhawk basketball when in a town of 80,000 people, 16,000 show up to the season's first event! the atmosphere was amazing!! everyone got so riled up, chanting and cheering all night, it was hard not to get caught up in the emotion!
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| IT WENT OFF!!! |
the highlight of the night were the men's and women's teams playing separate warm up games, complete with crazy ass trick shots! i've never been a big fan of basketball, but after that display, i was sold. definitely going to make it to as many games as i can whilst i'm here! the KU spirit is nuts!!
