God Save the Queen and the NY Giants

So the NFL came to London last week. Granted, I generally run in American expat circles, but there was quite a bit of buzz about the game from both locals and foreigners. True American football fans go to great lengths to follow their teams back home.

Andy has ransomed his life to Yahoo! to watch the Jets game each week. He gets the game on the PC, then connects the laptop to the big-screen TV to watch the action. He’ll put up with pixelated images, screen-saver interruptions and full-on crashes just to glimpse Chad throwing another too-short pass. The games run late into the evenings for us. Most Sunday nights he stumbles into bed in the wee hours, cursing another fourth-quarter debacle.

Occasionally, our preferred team will be on Sky Sports, which syndicates games from the US networks. They don’t show American commercials, but fill that time with horrible montages of cheerleaders and highlight reels from past seasons. Inevitably, one highlight shows the Jets blowing some play. The announcers are British, which is odd, or former players-turned-broadcasters who were rejected by the American networks for good reason.

Thousands of Americans flew into London for the big game, including Grandma and Papa and Mary S. When Grandma and Papa passed through customs, the agents were still buzzing about the Miami Dolphins cheerleaders who arrived en masse the day before. I imagine them wearing their sparkly, midriff-bearing outfits and bouncing their way through the line (the cheerleaders, not Grandma and Papa).

On Sunday, we took the tube to the “new” Wembley, only one stop from our home station. There was great excitement as we approached the stadium. People were talking of “history in the making” and flashes were going off as everyone was taking pictures of the stadium, the crowd, the football banners and the giant animatronic Miami Dolphin player.

We split into two groups. I was fortunate to be in the group with Grandma and Papa. As I sat down, I couldn’t help but notice that the 50-yard line literally ran through my seat. Nice. We met some entertaining folks from New Jersey and New York around us, all bemoaning the horrible state of food in London. The place smelled like a KFC as everyone was eating fish-and-chips.

The game opened with the typical fanfare. We realized how many Brits were there when the crowd sang a rousing rendition of God Save the Queen, much louder than The Star-Spangled Banner (but honestly, who can sing that song anyway?)

The football game itself wasn’t all that great. The Miami Dolphins have yet to win a game this season. Our biggest concern was that the NY Giants not lose. The highlight, for many, was the streaker who stole the spotlight during halftime. I missed his performance but Grandma managed to catch him with her digital camera. Good work.

In the end, the Giants won. Grandma collected the names of people in our section who wanted a copy of the streaker photo. A good time was had by all.

Get a better view of the streaker here.