When I first decided to spend a few months in the US, I pictured myself immersed in the arts and cultural scene of New York. I imagined myself making bright and powerful friends in DC, and bohemian but fascinating ones in Brooklyn. I thought my life there would be fun but refined; whimsical yet elegant.
In the end, what I got was a head-splitting hangover on Sunday, a few weeks after my return, as I’d stayed up ’til 3am to watch a game of American football played between two college teams. It isn’t easy to find sports bars in London showing them but I did get there in the end, and managed to drag two friends along with me.
After all, the Georgia Bulldogs – my adopted team – were going to play the Texas Longhorns in the Southeastern conference’s championship game. I couldn’t miss it. Before the game started, I tucked into a monstrous Philly cheesesteak – a beef sandwich the size of a newborn, and as dense as cement – and suddenly asked myself: what on earth happened to me on that trip?
The answer is both a simple and elusive one. When I visited South Carolina before the election, some friends took me to a party where everyone was going to watch some college football. It was a proper Southern shindig, with a fire pit in the garden and the game projected on to the side of one of those traditional white houses we’ve all seen in movies.
Many of the people there were either from Georgia or alumni of their university. As a result, we all rooted for the Dawgs. I had a really fun time that evening, trying to understand the byzantine rules and cheering for a team I knew nothing about, and could immediately tell it would forever remain a good memory.
A few weeks later, I went to a bar in New York to watch the Dawgs play again, with some other southern friends. It wasn’t quite as captivating a game, but I was hooked.
When I returned to London, I realised quickly that this wouldn’t be the end of the story. I had, at the very least, to finish watching the Bulldogs’ season.
Again: what had happened to me? I don’t even watch sports when I’m in Britain, aside from occasional, seasonal madness of the Euros and the World Cup. Why had I started caring about a sport I’d known nothing about only months earlier?
Then I remembered Venice. I lived in La Serenissima for a few months in 2022, as a way to banish the claustrophobia of the pandemic from my immediate memory, and things also took an unexpected turn there. I’d assumed that my time in Italy would be spent gawping at exquisite paintings and visiting endless awe-inspiring churches and, while I did do all of that, the most fun I had happened elsewhere.
Thanks to a friend of a friend, I ended up going to a Venezia FC game on the island, and I loved it so much that I ended up going again, and again. I returned to Venice for the first time earlier this year and one of the first things I did was check that there would be a home game that weekend.
Luckily there was, but regrettably it was January, so we sat for two hours in 4ºC, unable to see most of the action because of the lagoon’s famous fog. Still, sitting on those stalls and chanting with the ultras made me feel like I was back home.
This, I think, is the real reason why I keep going abroad and getting heavily into sports I wouldn’t care about in London. Watching a game with people supporting the same team as you is one of the most deeply social experiences you can have.
Intense bonds can be formed over the course of an hour and a half – or, in the case of college football, five hours – and it doesn’t matter that they almost certainly won’t last. In those moments, you rise and fall as one; celebrate and commiserate as you would with lifelong friends.
Is it really such a surprise that I found myself grasping for those moments when away from home and lonelier than I would have been in London? More broadly, you can also learn a whole lot about a country or a place by watching their sports with them.
The corporate sponsors on the pitch before Venezia’s games included a local funeral parlour and a brand of mozzarella. The entertainment at college football games largely centred around cheerleaders, and little games where attendees could win enough money to cover their university tuition.
Of course, you can read books and newspapers and watch television but, if you really want to get under the skin of some city or region, the easiest thing to do is to follow the locals and go cheer for the local team. If you’re lucky, you may even end up having such a good time that you’ll keep following those teams after your return home, as they’ll remind you of happy times you had halfway across the world.
Or, more succinctly: go Dawgs!
