US College Sports - uniquely American
US college sports – there’s nothing like it in any other country. I realized this and how much I missed it when I was living abroad. On Saturdays, all across America, friends and strangers gather for a day of barbeques, beer, and ‘trash talking’ over multiple televisions blaring different college games. Yesterday was the official start of the college sports season with the first games of American football. I spent the day with friends, first at a bar to watch Cal (University of California, Berkeley) play Tennessee and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) play Utah and later at a barbeque to watch USC play Arkansas. Both Cal and UCLA were my alma maters. UCLA won (31-10) but unfortunately Cal was beaten (18-35).
Sports are undeniably one of the strongest defining cultural elements of America. It permeates the weekend fabric of many Americans from the days when s/he is in elementary school to the rest of his/her life. I credit much of America’s competitive nature to this phenomenon. I’ve known a number of non-Americans over the last few years and it seems no other country has a sports culture as in-grained as America’s. Here in the states, kids are encouraged to play pee-wee football, little league baseball, or soccer as soon as they can either run, hit, or kick. From elementary school, we are later encouraged to play high school varsity sports and for those few that have the talent, are later recruited to play and attend colleges/universities with sports scholarships. At the college/university age, those that don’t play sports adopt our college teams as an extension of ourselves. After graduation, we still follow and root for our alma maters. This life-long love affair with sports and the spirit of competition, whether in individual sports or collectively in teams, helps define much of the weekend life here. Even in the ‘off-season’ where one’s favorite sport take a hiatus, a fair amount of us still participate by playing after work or on the weekends with friends, neighbors, and even strangers. I play about two or three team sports a week now… it’s a great way to stay active and a perfect excuse to have a beer afterwards.
Oh, incidentally, on a sport related note, the great Andre Agassi officially retired from tennis today after 21 years. He was beaten by Benajamin Becker (no relation to Boris) in the 3rd round of the US Open in Flushing Meadows, NY. I did catch the game on TV. I will always have one memory of him and Steffi Graf... back in winter of 2001, I was with some friends at a sushi restaurant in the Rockridge area of Oakland eating at one of the tables when in comes this tall, striking blonde who instantly caught my attention. When after a few seconds, it dawned on me that it was Steffi, I looked at the guy next to her and noticed it was Andre! Wow! I was speechless. They took their seat at the sushi bar and had a quiet meal... everyone at the restaurant were respectful and no one bothered them during their entire meal.
