Being true to your school in a faraway land
The Western sports leagues best known in China are the professional ones such as the NBA, the English Premier League and the Bundesliga.
US college sports teams are little known here. What seems to be a mystery to many Chinese are the deep passions local university teams arouse among fans — they are much more widely popular than pro teams in most cases.
The Chinese system is more geared toward having the most talented athletes attend specialized sports schools.
For most of us in my extended family and that of my wife, the sport that is a deep part of our culture is the one in which helmeted men bash into each other. It is known as “American foot- ball” and, in China, called ganlanqiu or “olive ball” because of its shape.
This has been an especially exciting season because my college team, the Georgia Bulldogs, and my wife’s team, the Alabama Crimson Tide, were for a few weeks No 1 and No 2 in the national rankings. When Georgia was named No 1 in the playoff poll, it was upsetting for Alabama fans, whose perennially dominant team has accustomed them to the top spot.
My team took a drubbing in a recent game and fell to No 7, and my wife’s team is No 1 again.
Still, there’s a very good chance our two teams will play each other in the Southeastern Conference championship on Dec 2 in my hometown, Atlanta.
My wife — in jest, I think — has graciously offered to give me a blanket and pillow so I can sleep on the couch.
To understand the power of college football, especially in some areas of the United States, it’s helpful to know that the southern states were long the national family’s poor cousins, where opportunity and education were harder to come by. Strong football teams were a point of pride, and continue to be, even as more prosperity has come to the region.
College sports is so engrained that my wife and I often describe colors by their corresponding teams: “Sweetie, is that red more Mississippi State or Alabama?” “That looks like LSU purple!”
Use the QR code below to see a short video showing the cultural prominence of the University of Alabama cheer: “Roll Tide”.
It really doesn’t exaggerate much.
My wife, an English teacher, even has a video of some of her students in Shanghai cheering “Roll Tide”, which she taught them.
As the number of Chinese college students attending US colleges has risen in the past decade, some US universities are reaching out. The digital media company Vice Sports noted last year that the University of Illinois broadcast football games in Mandarin, thanks to students from Changzhou, Jiangsu province, and Chengdu, Sichuan province.
For us, college football is a family thing. One of my first baby pictures is me dressed up in the bright orange of my dad’s university, Tennessee. We teased my brother, an Alabama fan, when he married into a family loyal to his team’s main rival, Auburn. Luckily, they have two daughters — one for each team.
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