Balle Balle, ASU vs UCLA
Date: October 23, 2004
Time: 12:30 pm
Venue: Sun Devil Stadium, ASU
The first american football game I saw turned out to be an exciting affair. It was the seasons first game against UCLA and it went "right down to the wire" as Harsha Bhogle would put it ! The International Students Association is very concerned about our feelings and hence to cheer us up, it had distributed 200 free tickets. As you would imagine 198 were scooped up by desis on day one. How do i know? Well, the 2 chinese guys were sitting next to me.
We entered the stadium at around noon and soon realised the importance of caps,hats,goggles,suntan,water,shorts etc etc. Now I know, why they call it the "sun devil" stadium. Anyway, our assigned seats were far at the top and after futile attempts of being "honest", we crashed into the nearest seats after the huge climb. Within minutes, I was wondering whether I was really in US, cause all the seats around us were now occupied by desis ;) (ofcourse not to forget our chini bhai bhai). So now we had a bunch of "desi devils", as we called us, cheering for the home team. The amrus looked at us appreciatingly.
The game began with the ASU band playing some cacophonous tunes or maybe it was just me who was trying to identify some song in them. Then came the national anthem and I was trying to remember what came after "vindhya himachal yamuna ganga" ... After all the american fanfare, the game began. The players looked more like gladiators ready to draw blood. The UCLA supporters were in sizeable number in there dull blue shirts (hey, thats a genuine color ok.), while ASUites were in M&G (maroon and gold).
So far so good. But why would you watch a japanese movie, if you cant understand it? Atleast you would look for a subtitled print. So I gave my friend a bored look and he jumped at the chance of showing of his knowledge of this game. Its quite interesting actually once you get the hang of it (thats paradoxical, cause you wud get the hang of it, only if its interesting !). Anyho, i watched the game with this new enlightened perspective and slowly got involved in it. I was surprised to see myself worried when we were almost sure to lose and elated to have finally won !! Yes, it was a close match, us winning by 48-42. Since, I am no expert in the game, I will refrain from making any "expert comments" about the game as such. But some observations :D
The game is nothing like the football we know and the name is a misnomer. You can easily see its been refashioned for the TV audience and can be classified as "sports entertainment". Gimmicks like background music(!), firecrackers after every ASU touch down, the noise-o-meter (where people in the stadium shout and cause the needle on the screen to jump, I seriously believe its fake ;), cheer leaders ofcourse, sparky (ASU's mascot) doing push ups equal to the score after each quarter, the band etc made it more of a live entertainment event, rather than some serious sport. Though it was nothing but serious, what with so much money being put into it by the big sponsors.
Still, some of the new desis were not so impressed. "Abe kitni baar rukte hain ye log" (dude, you watch cricket for 5 days with nothing happening at all for most of the time, that too with no result at the end !! but thats ok, cricket is cricket yaar ;). I was amazed by this guy's knowledge about the game. He was like explaining some of the very finer points of the game, which I doubt even the makers of the game had in mind ! He rattled about the rose bowl, orange bowl, the national championship, current favourite teams, ASU's chances, player performances, the mistakes we made, how we can improve, global terrorism (no that was yesterday) etc etc, till my brain couldn't make out the words from their sounds. But it was futile to stop him cause by now he had rapt attention of all the desis around him, who yearned to "talk" about the game like him and wouldn't miss this chance in hell to get some expert comments and details.
So the desi devils had their fun...we yelled and screamed, we cheered our team till our throats couldnt take it anymore, we did the mandatory photo shoot to tell our loved ones what we did on october 23rd and like that we left the stadium at 4:30. 3 hours of my life spent in watching my first football game (why am I giving it so much importance ??? dunno, mundane lives, mundane things maybe.)
And now we were hungry as wolves. oye papa da dhaba pass he to hain ;)) So some more discussion on other mundane issues like monday's exam and tuesday's project over papa's hot pizza. Bas life was fun on saturday :)
Time: 12:30 pm
Venue: Sun Devil Stadium, ASU
The first american football game I saw turned out to be an exciting affair. It was the seasons first game against UCLA and it went "right down to the wire" as Harsha Bhogle would put it ! The International Students Association is very concerned about our feelings and hence to cheer us up, it had distributed 200 free tickets. As you would imagine 198 were scooped up by desis on day one. How do i know? Well, the 2 chinese guys were sitting next to me.
We entered the stadium at around noon and soon realised the importance of caps,hats,goggles,suntan,water,shorts etc etc. Now I know, why they call it the "sun devil" stadium. Anyway, our assigned seats were far at the top and after futile attempts of being "honest", we crashed into the nearest seats after the huge climb. Within minutes, I was wondering whether I was really in US, cause all the seats around us were now occupied by desis ;) (ofcourse not to forget our chini bhai bhai). So now we had a bunch of "desi devils", as we called us, cheering for the home team. The amrus looked at us appreciatingly.
The game began with the ASU band playing some cacophonous tunes or maybe it was just me who was trying to identify some song in them. Then came the national anthem and I was trying to remember what came after "vindhya himachal yamuna ganga" ... After all the american fanfare, the game began. The players looked more like gladiators ready to draw blood. The UCLA supporters were in sizeable number in there dull blue shirts (hey, thats a genuine color ok.), while ASUites were in M&G (maroon and gold).
So far so good. But why would you watch a japanese movie, if you cant understand it? Atleast you would look for a subtitled print. So I gave my friend a bored look and he jumped at the chance of showing of his knowledge of this game. Its quite interesting actually once you get the hang of it (thats paradoxical, cause you wud get the hang of it, only if its interesting !). Anyho, i watched the game with this new enlightened perspective and slowly got involved in it. I was surprised to see myself worried when we were almost sure to lose and elated to have finally won !! Yes, it was a close match, us winning by 48-42. Since, I am no expert in the game, I will refrain from making any "expert comments" about the game as such. But some observations :D
The game is nothing like the football we know and the name is a misnomer. You can easily see its been refashioned for the TV audience and can be classified as "sports entertainment". Gimmicks like background music(!), firecrackers after every ASU touch down, the noise-o-meter (where people in the stadium shout and cause the needle on the screen to jump, I seriously believe its fake ;), cheer leaders ofcourse, sparky (ASU's mascot) doing push ups equal to the score after each quarter, the band etc made it more of a live entertainment event, rather than some serious sport. Though it was nothing but serious, what with so much money being put into it by the big sponsors.
Still, some of the new desis were not so impressed. "Abe kitni baar rukte hain ye log" (dude, you watch cricket for 5 days with nothing happening at all for most of the time, that too with no result at the end !! but thats ok, cricket is cricket yaar ;). I was amazed by this guy's knowledge about the game. He was like explaining some of the very finer points of the game, which I doubt even the makers of the game had in mind ! He rattled about the rose bowl, orange bowl, the national championship, current favourite teams, ASU's chances, player performances, the mistakes we made, how we can improve, global terrorism (no that was yesterday) etc etc, till my brain couldn't make out the words from their sounds. But it was futile to stop him cause by now he had rapt attention of all the desis around him, who yearned to "talk" about the game like him and wouldn't miss this chance in hell to get some expert comments and details.
So the desi devils had their fun...we yelled and screamed, we cheered our team till our throats couldnt take it anymore, we did the mandatory photo shoot to tell our loved ones what we did on october 23rd and like that we left the stadium at 4:30. 3 hours of my life spent in watching my first football game (why am I giving it so much importance ??? dunno, mundane lives, mundane things maybe.)
And now we were hungry as wolves. oye papa da dhaba pass he to hain ;)) So some more discussion on other mundane issues like monday's exam and tuesday's project over papa's hot pizza. Bas life was fun on saturday :)
