I spent the first day of 2011 in a bar in Lake Buena Vista, nursing what I felt was a somewhat unreasonable hangover and being educated in the finer points on college (American) football.
Those of us who have been educated in the British university system will have a hard time understand exactly how huge college sport is in the United States. For my friends who went to the University of Warwick, a school of about 20,000 students - imagine the Warwick vs. Coventry varsity rugby game (the pinnacle of the Warwick sports calendar) being broadcast on Sky Sports 1. And taking place in a sold out stadium the size of Old Trafford.
The National College Athletics Association is the monolith that administrates university sport in America - but especially American Football, Basketball, Hockey and Baseball. All have large followings, but college football is the really big one. Many people I have spoken to, both my friends here and random people I have met along the way, argue that college football is becoming more popular than the NFL due to the NFL becoming so singularly driven by money.
Most NFL fans also have a college team that they support. I sat in the bar on Saturday afternoon with 2 of my good friends - one of whom is a Penn State fan, and the other a Gators (the University of Florida's sport teams) fan. And here we come across another unique facet of college sports here - neither of my friends actually went to the university they are supporting, and this is far from uncommon. Those who went to schools with large and well-known teams follow those teams; others simply choose a college to follow based on their performance, playing style or because they like their coach. It is absolutely accepted to follow a university that you didn't go to and/or isn't local. This extends into the professional leagues as well - after ten years of getting stick for being a Manchester United fan who wasn't from Manchester, I am getting some fairly strange reactions for supporting the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, my local NFL team, because they're shit. Sometimes you just can't win!
Anyway, back to college football. Saturday was a big day in the college football calendar with a large number of bowl games going on. The bowl games mark the end of the college football season, but there's about 20 of them, none of them producing a clear college champion. It's ridiculously confusing, so I am going to direct you to Wikipedia to see if you can make any more sense of it than me. The sheer volume is driven by the sponsorship opportunities available (who says that college football is less money driven than the NFL?!) - but people go wild for them. Saturday's big game was the Outback Bowl, Penn State vs. Florida.
Despite all my ramblings above about the madness, I actually really enjoyed it. College football fans can be totally bonkers, but that simply makes for some great Saturday afternoon banter. What I am realising about American sport is that if you are into it, you are really into it. No half-hearted efforts here. And that's what makes it fun to get into on a Saturday afternoon - even if it has taken me 5 years to truly understand what the hell is going on in college football or NFL.
Oh, and I've decided to adopt the Gators as my university side. As someone who didn't go to uni here, I think I have the privilege of choice!
I need to start calling football 'soccer' here!! What's the world coming to - when the primary focus of the game is to hit the ball with your foot it should be called football!! N
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