San Francisco
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n They call it \u201cAmerican football\u201d because, well, \u201cfootball is football,\u201d says Ian Potter.\n <\/p>\n
\n And by \u201cfootball\u201d he means \u201csoccer,\u201d a fact that is underscored by the raucous cheering that periodically punctuates the Mad Dog in the Fog, a Nottingham Forest bar located in San Francisco\u2019s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.\n <\/p>\n
\n Potter and seven of his, well, best mates are here at the Mad Dog to watch their hometown team lose to Leeds. But they\u2019re here in San Francisco \u2013 more than 5,000 miles and about 14 hours of travel from home \u2013 because the Super Bowl is in town. And wherever the Super Bowl goes, so goes a group of Brits who don\u2019t even have tickets to the big game.\n <\/p>\n
\n It started in Miami in 2019. The group \u2013 that year totaling 23 friends \u2013 was in town for a \u201cstag do\u201d (British for bachelor party). They didn\u2019t intend to overlap with the Super Bowl, but soon realized that the NFL brought a city-wide sense of celebration. And, come Super Bowl Sunday, a great excuse to drink. Not that they seem to need much of one.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cJust here for the booze and partying,\u201d said Alex Bowles. And because it\u2019s a chance to get the friend group together once a year.\n <\/p>\n
\n For most of the group, Miami was their introduction to American football. They were shocked at how long an hour of gameplay can take and by the magnitude of cheers for that year\u2019s halftime performer, Jennifer Lopez. And they had so much fun they decided to make it an annual tradition. Covid-19 nixed the trip a couple times but this year marks their fifth time going to the Super Bowl city and just soaking up the American atmosphere.\n <\/p>\n
\n Some quick reviews of past locations: LA was great. Las Vegas was the worst because, instead of dive bars, it was all casinos and you could hardly feel the Super Bowl-ness over the intensity of Sin City. \u201cNo locals,\u201d says Andy Albone. \u201cVegas is about Vegas,\u201d Potter says.\n <\/p>\n
\n And last year in New Orleans was the best \u2013 even though two of the guys got robbed that week.\n <\/p>\n
\n Their experiences have made most of them into Kansas City Chiefs fans (and they agreed with this CNN reporter that Taylor Swift would make for a very fun halftime performance) \u2013 all except Adam Martin, who was already a San Francisco 49ers fan when this tradition started. His phone background is a picture of Brock Purdy and he\u2019s been trying to teach the others the rules of American football. Or at least whether a particular play was good or bad for the team they\u2019re rooting for.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019m still trying to understand it,\u201d says Ian Taylor.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere\u2019s about 19,000 players,\u201d says Josef Gaylor.\n <\/p>\n
\n And it\u2019s not just football, these trips have become a foray into the wider world of American sports. In Vegas, they went to an NHL game and on Monday, they\u2019re going to a Golden State Warriors NBA game.\n <\/p>\n
\n But they haven\u2019t quite mastered the finer points of the American sports cultural landscape. Martin bought a Los Angeles Dodgers jersey to wear here in California, and quickly learned the locals in SF are not Dodgers fans.\n <\/p>\n
\n He just has to save it for next year, when the Super Bowl is in Los Angeles. They\u2019re already planning to be there.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cMinute we get back, I\u2019ll book it,\u201d Potter says.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Francisco \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 They call it \u201cAmerican football\u201d because, well, \u201cfootball is football,\u201d says Ian Potter. And by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-454998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}