This Week in Fandom: Live from the NFL’s Berlin Showcase
Every (ahem) week, I write my nephew letters about sports that he mostly doesn’t read. They centre on my support for the New York Knicks, Mets, Giants, and Tottenham Hotspur – and his love of Chelsea, LeBron James, and prop bets.
It was all a bit surreal, if I’m being honest. I consume so much NFL content, once the season’s underway, that in a way it felt foolish not to attend the Indianapolis Colts’ ‘home’ game against the Atlanta Falcons at the Olympiastadion. As always I thought I was better off saving the money, for folly I can justify as “vacation expenses” two weeks from now in Central London.
Throughout in the week, the universe kept batting its eyelashes at me. The Colts mascot, a rather aggressive, blue horse with a pot belly whose purpose I’ve never quite understood, threw 15-yarders at the locals in the middle of Alexanderplatz; literally the last place in the city I would recommend a friendly game of catch. I saw this sequence, which was shot under the bleakest fall sky available, in between work things. I also watched a video of Carlie Irsay-Gordon, daughter of late Colts owner Jim Irsay, buy everybody a beer at a bar I also would not recommend a friendly game of catch in – but hey. She seems to be exactly who we think she is, on the sidelines, learning the game, both demanding and exhibiting accountability. The Colts are 7 and 1 or something. We are at that point in the season where some of us, many of us, have begun to look forward to the draft, healthy rosters again, and playoff hopes in a time and place far removed from this one.
The thing with sports tourism, which is what I’ll call my willingness to spend large amounts of money on gallivanting centered around sports contests, is you have to be willing to brave Viking weather. This helps explain the enduring appeal of baseball, despite accusations it is too long and too technical a pastime. It’s the only viable game in town when the sun comes back out, and in the summer its romance is easy to conflate with how much time everyone can spend outside. American football in Berlin, and the Tottenham Hotspur fixture to which I’ve already committed Black Friday funds (Lord help me), is kicking off just as the weather turns quite dastardly. I’ve seen so many Premiership matches on the telly where at the right angles rain seems to be pouring on every Tom, Dick, and Harry Kane; and I’ve honestly began to wonder how on earth people do this.
Despite these apprehensions, and even my silent prayer at one point that this affair would not extend into overtime, it was exciting to share the same city as the 7-and-2 Colts, and the Atlanta “Damned If We Know What They Are” Falcons. You can almost convince yourself you’re dreaming this shit up, when most times there is no one close by to gasp with at a one-handed grab, or Matthew Stafford’s missile deployment system, or to pray (lotta prayer lately) for just a few more inches and a first down.
I almost needed it confirmed to me this was actually happening and, boy, I could feel my soul doing a vindicated yoga stretch across my entire body. There were team jerseys everywhere at the Friedrichstraße train station. I saw several Colts home shirts, not a few Giants ones, and a Jaxson Smith-Njigba on the train. Highly specific jerseys, like a Mario Manningham one, make you think wow: did we both see the same play in that one game against the Cowboys in 2007, and did we both struggle to contain ourselves at the sheer awesomeness of the young (and mostly black) men who risk everything for this ridiculous sport? I am engaged in complex telepathy, all the time, with my fellow Berliners.
As you know I have many complicated feelings about this sport, nearly all of which come to the fore when the ballistics are right there in front of you. The least unique of these concerns American football’s complicity in perpetuating the idea that black wealth is an attainable thing, an option, when (on these terms) it actually represents success by supernatural means – let alone that any of the major sports leagues can only accommodate so much talent at a time. I am still terribly uncomfortable with what the game does to these gentlemen’s minds and bodies, even if the soothing aloe vera for fans in general is, Hey, at least they get to take a home a couple mil. The fact that enrolment is voluntary, and here and there excessively rewarded, enables us to separate the art from the prognoses. We move up and down the injury list, and from draft to draft for more blood, more thunder, with unsettling ease.
Then there’s the pageantry, lad. If baseball is hot dogs and summer romance and Cat Power and pies right to the face after walk-off home runs, football is a somewhat unapologetic display of American power. We were only missing fighter jets and a 21-gun salute at the Olympiastadion – but we got the national anthem, the stadium announcer stirring our bones because there was no place on earth just then that we ought be, and the cheerleaders gliding in perfect synchronicity along the sidelines. Even pre-game you’re absolutely buzzing for no discernible reason; the NFL, I’m sure of it now, is the world’s ultimate multimedia machine. From the in-game ceremony and subsequent, nationwide highlights, to the social clips of so-so speeches and on-field anecdotes… Any time there is football happening, its dancers, directors, and legislators are snatching repeatedly at history’s quill.
Bill Simmons and Cousin Sal, the following day, were of the opinion that I’d seen a lackluster game but it certainly didn’t feel that way in the moment. There is a sense in recent weeks that the Colts, and in particular Daniel Jones, are allowed to get away with slightly average offensive series. I will pointedly resist any comparisons to Sam Darnold, who — like Jones — enjoyed a personal renaissance on a new team after being written off as a below-average quarterback, only to vindicate that critique in only the biggest game of his life. (The playoffs are overseen by gods without mercy.)
I only remember Jones making maybe two, maybe three interesting lateral throws, and have eternal footage on my phone of Jonathan Taylor running some 70 odd yards for a touchdown. When Atlanta had the ball they made things way too interesting, a common trait of self-destructive teams, which I would know, since I am irreparably a believer in self-destructive teams. The home crowd was on Indy’s side, which tracks beyond just the ticket billing if you know what I meannnnn, so I could almost hear my gasps travel round the arena whenever Drake London caught things.
I rarely catch Atlanta games in the post- Matt Ryan era, not even highlights, so I’m really only familiar with the lore around London’s receiving game. Twice, thrice, he’d climb the air and go shoulder-to-shoulder up there with whoever dared drag him down from heaven, then land back on earth with the football. I wished Atlanta would run the ball more, so I could witness the purported majesty of Bijan Robinson also, but the Falcons barely ran the football when they should have. In the final four minutes of the game, with possession and a slender lead, Atlanta showed merely passing awareness of a ton of game clock. It’s almost as if they think they’re a year away from the team they could be, and want to tank just enough to land themselves another Drake London in the spring. So they, you know, kept things interesting in Berlin.
A friendly pair of chaps to my left asked which team I support. I said I was a Giants fan, despite the 9ers jersey tucked under my puffer. I forget their names, but one of them sighed sweetly at New York’s tough luck all season – losing Malik Nabers and then Cam Skattebo to injury as soon as they’ve found their franchise quarterback.
“God,” I said, “hates the Giants.”
“Mmm, ja, ja … but no, actually – doesn’t he hate the Jets?”
I guess he’s a New England Patriot then.
I got home quickly despite the swell of football lovers on the U-Bahn. I turned on Giants at Bears. Aforementioned franchise quarterback Jaxson Dart was singlehandedly ruining Chicago’s season like I asked him to, before a nasty fall landed him in concussion protocol again. On the replay I thought I saw his head just lying there flat on the ground, and social media would later reveal he even lost a tooth. This is the cost of fandom but also the point of it, I suppose: the intimate connections we think we have with all these fleeting athletes, and what fraternity they enable amongst us ordinary citizens.
