Impressions

The plane was passing over the “world famous” Horseshoe football stadium, we were told on the flight from Chicago as the plane descended towards Columbus airport. World famous? Shouldn’t “football” be world famous in the first place for the stadium to be world famous? The Americans actually call football “soccer”. And as far as I am concerned, “football” is a sport that seems similar to rugby and involves neither much use of the foot nor a “ball”.

It is a sport where huge men with huge amounts of protection bring down members of the opposing team and make sure the “ball” reaches as deep into the opposing team’s territory as possible. It’s a bit funny to see the progress of the game, which to an uninitiated eye seems like a controlled riot in the middle of a big field with about one-lakh spectators cheering the players on.

Football is a big deal in the USA. I also learned that football was the most important thing in my university. Nothing is more important than football. The “Buckeyes” were national college champions last year with a record 14-0 winning streak. And to give me a perspective of the celebrations that happened after the finals, reliable sources (Indians of course) told me that the only thing that would match it in India would be if India won the Cricket World Cup and the Hockey World Cup, at the same time, against Pakistan.

The “Buckeye” is the seed of a tree native to the state of Ohio. It is also the name for the community of students of the Ohio State University and the residents of Ohio. You see Ohio is “The Buckeye state”. So I too am a “Buckeye” and there is no way I am allowed to forget that fact. It is present on every T-shirt and coffee mug, every shop window and ID card (the university ID card is called the BuckID). Everything is named with the “Buck” in it. So there is a university internet plan called the “Buck95” (which costs $1.95 per month – buck 95. Get it?), a bookstore called Buckeye Books, and on and on. On the last day of the MBA orientation, each student was given a buckeye seed just to make sure that no one ever forgot.

The passion for football runs quite deep here. On game days (which are Saturdays), the Horseshoe stadium becomes the centre of attention and discussion all over the state. Every game is a big social event with groups of people having “tailgate” parties from hours before the game starts and hours after the game ends (because the Buckeyes would have won as they are that good). I have the good fortune of living on the main road to the stadium and it is an excellent vantage point to see the activity on a typical game day. People set up stalls selling everything from T-shirts, mugs, hats, pens, key chains and almost everything else under the sun that can be coloured scarlet or grey (the colours of the Ohio State University) and can be inscribed with “OSU, Buckeyes, National Champions 2002”.

The stadium itself can hold about as many people as the Eden Gardens can in Calcutta. It is shaped like a horseshoe and was built in the 1920s or 30s. The stadium is so central to the culture of the place that I saw a documentary on TV about its history and how it came to be built, something similar to what we would see about the Taj Mahal for example. When it was built, the capacity used to be around eighty thousand, which meant that it could fit half the population of Columbus at the time!

We had a guided tour of the stadium as part of the orientation for the MBA program. The entrance feels like that of a huge cathedral. Employees of the stadiums called “redcoats” (because they wore red waistcoats) took us around the stadium and explained the history of the place and had many interesting little stories to tell us. The gentleman guiding our group was quite old but had such an infectious enthusiasm for the place, you would have thought he was showing us around his favourite room in his house. He was steeped in the history and tradition of the Ohio State University, the Buckeyes and the “shoe” as the stadium is referred to. One could clearly see that he would rather not be doing anything else in the world than taking care of his beloved stadium.

As I entered the stands, I could see why the roars from the crowd were audible from my apartment. It was huge! This was the first time I was ever inside a stadium and I guess it took a few minutes for me to regain control of my jaw muscles. The stadium is actually a “closed” horseshoe. One end was indeed left open until a few years ago when the university decided to expand the capacity and put up stands on the open end too. We were taken up into the television commentary boxes, the media boxes, the private suites, and the president’s suite. Watching a football game live in the stadium was one experience I would definitely not miss when in the USA.

As much a part of the football experience in the OSU is the band that plays before the game starts and in the intervals. The Ohio State University band is TBDBITL. It stands for “The Best Damn Band In The Land” and the acronym is trademarked. I have seen the band practising on the grounds and they are fantastic. The band is most famous for doing the “script Ohio” at the beginning of every game in the stadium. They trace out the word “Ohio” in formation and it was apparently first presented in 1936 and is always performed to the rhythm of the same tune (Le Regiment de Sambre et Meuse) with the clapping (in rhythm) of the fans in the stadium. When the “i” in Ohio is “dotted” (that is the dot on the “i” is placed) by a tuba player, the crowd gives a huge roar. The honour of dotting the “i” always goes to the tuba player.

Very much like the rivalry between Mohun Bagan and East Bengal, or even India and Pakistan, there is a deep and old rivalry between OSU and the University of Michigan. Nothing makes a Buckeye fan happier than a win over Michigan. He (the fan base is overwhelmingly male, so much that until about 25-30 years ago, there were no ladies toilets in the stadium) is even happier if the win is at “the hole” – the derisive nickname given by the Buckeyes to the stadium of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The current coach Jim Tressel achieved the dream of beating Michigan at the hole the first time he took the team there as head coach. The current feeling is that he’ll get all of Columbus’s votes if he stood for President of the USA.

We in India think we are crazy about cricket. Looking at the craze for football amongst the buckeyes, I think we terribly overrate ourselves.

To a large extent, most Americans love sports and follow their favourite teams closely. Almost every major city has its own football, basketball or baseball team that the entire city roots for. You might have observed that Americans care only about American sports. That has to do with the American worldview, which is quite an interesting topic in itself.