A "sporty" trip

Thinking about it now it seems almost impossible, but there was once a television season in which football hadn't swallowed up everything else. And we're not talking about another era (or maybe yes, on second thought), because that season was the 1980s. While RAI held the rights to all football, but used them with that minimum of frugality that made even watching the second half of a match on Sunday at 6 p.m. enjoyable, the newly born commercial networks had of necessity to offer something different. And they did so by focusing on a phenomenon that then, and very quickly, became widespread: American sports.

NFL football and NBA basketball in the mid-80s experienced a real explosion, also thanks to programmes like Record and Super Bowl, thanks to journalists like Tommasi, Tranquillo, Bagatta, Peterson (and later Crosa, Cadeo and others), thanks to the choices of TVs like Canale 5 and Italia 1 which to launch themselves aimed at a young and alternative audience. On the wave of the extraordinary challenges between the Los Angeles Lakers of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar and the Boston Celtics of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, American basketball, until then considered a mythical and almost abstract entity, came to capture the imagination of thousands of kids.

American football did the same: thanks above all to the Sunday morning delayed broadcasts, Dan Marino and Joe Montana, the San Francisco 49ers, Oakland Raiders and Dallas Cowboys, icons of a sport that in Italy many didn't even know existed, became famous almost like football champions. The phenomenon wasn't only televised, if it's true that specialised magazines quickly proliferated (then just as quickly defunct), merchandising of various kinds (from t-shirts to stationery, in middle school the NFL-branded diaries were all the rage), board games and more.

Those (good) times then ended quickly, the soap bubble deflated almost immediately and already by the early 90s not much was left: for over a decade football has dominated and been all the rage to the point of boredom, while practically everything else, American sports included, has become a niche product ending up on satellite TV and partly also in oblivion. But for those who became adults in the 1980s, the mark of that season has remained, indelible. Of course, for a long time remaining a fan of NBA basketball or NFL football was difficult, the offering was little and not very appealing.

And even though lately things are changing, and the Internet has opened up a series of opportunities (sites, forums, blogs, streaming and so on) that until five years ago you could only dream of, being a fan of American sports, especially if we're talking about football, still qualifies you as a protected animal. To be protected especially if crazy enough to decide to take on 10 hours of flight just, or almost, to see a match. But the web, as mentioned above, offers opportunities that until a few years ago were unthinkable, and getting your hands on tickets today is no longer an undertaking. The teams themselves, specialised sites and parallel markets such as eBay allow you to buy entrance tickets for all leagues and for all matches.

So last June, without even having the plane ticket in hand, a single click on the keyboard was enough to buy a couple of tickets ($40 each, auction on eBay) valid for going to enjoy, live, the Indianapolis Colts. And on 10 December we were there, at the AllTel Stadium in Jacksonville, Florida, to see live Peyton Manning, the team's symbolic player, lead the Colts against the home team Jaguars. Writing that the result didn't matter at all (a crushing 44-17 for the Jaguars...) would be a shameless lie, but for once, perhaps only that once, the important thing was taking part. Perhaps not for the Colts, perhaps not for the hundreds of fans who came by car from Indiana, but for us absolutely yes.

And taking part was wonderful, even if on the field it was a massacre, even if it wasn't fun being mocked for three hours by the person sitting next to us, a tall black guy, two metres tall, who laughed in our faces with gusto because we were wearing the wrong colours. If we'd been in Italy we'd have got annoyed, but not there, not that day. That was the day of our first football match in the flesh, it was the day of our first tailgate. Yes, the tailgate, which literally would be the queue at the entrance, but in reality is the essence of the average American's way of experiencing sport. Because it's precisely the average American who goes to football.

The blond and slightly chubby one, with wife and kids in tow, who loads tent, barbecue and provisions onto his pick-up, puts on his team's jersey, shows up at the match three hours early, parks, sets up the equipment, starts cooking hot dogs, drinking beer (and happily shares with you, if your colours are the right ones) and goes on practically until the referees blow the whistle for the start. A climate of absolute celebration that nothing and no one could ruin. That not even a ruinous defeat managed to ruin for us.

NBA IN WASHINGTON With a surplus of disorganisation that should be avoided when travelling, perhaps because we were too excited about the Colts option, we hadn't thought about the possibility of attending, during the 10 days of holiday on the east coast of the USA, other sporting events, basketball or football as they might be. Too late to find something on the Internet, once we arrived in Washington we tried to go and see the NBA at the Verizon Center, the basketball stadium. On Friday evening the Miami Heat, world champions, were playing, the team of Shaquille O'Neal and Dwayne Wade, guests of the Wizards of Gilbert Arenas, current joint top scorer of the league. Without tickets, but with plenty of desire to get in, we approached the scalpers.

In reality, obviously to avoid trouble with the police, these characters wave with one hand a sign saying I need tickets, but with the other they wave the tickets they have to sell. And that evening they were going at an affordable price, 30 dollars (40 to start with, but they competed with each other...), and in three minutes the deal was done. Then off to the entrance check, with the fear that they were fake. He had sworn they were good, the scalper, but we all know how these things go. At least where we're from, because instead the tickets were good, and at 19:05, tip-off time, we were in our seats. In a beautiful, very elegant sports arena, which holds about 18 thousand people, even if inside there must have been at most 12-13 thousand. A slightly more select audience compared to football, more elegant, less popular.

But the football match is a real event (each team plays at home only 8 games a season), football is the event that fills the whole family's Sunday. Basketball instead is an evening's entertainment, a beautiful distraction that you can enjoy at will (the NBA season lasts 82 games before the play-offs). And this, even emotionally, makes all the difference in the world. Purely from a sporting point of view, little luck this time too: Wade and Shaq stayed on the sidelines with injuries, and Washington, amid the applause of a vaguely distracted crowd, won easily.

BALTIMORE, MORE FOOTBALL Once we discovered that the scalping phenomenon exists here too, and that all in all you can try taking the risk, we decide that before returning to Italy we can treat ourselves to another football match, or at least try to. The nearest is in Baltimore, 40 kilometres from Washington, where we're sleeping and from where on Monday morning our flight to Italy will depart. On Sunday at nine we leave the motel, destination Maryland, where we arrive around 10. Already a couple of kilometres before the M&T Bank Stadium we see the first scalpers. We approach one, a black man of about 50, with an enormous cigar in his mouth, who asks us for 75 dollars a ticket, a much lower figure than that asked by other colleagues of his.

This time there's no room for negotiation: once we got the message we gave him the 150 bucks and in exchange he handed us the tickets and a business card... With the loot in hand we enter the stadium, skipping this time a large part of the tailgate, but not the part that involves souvenir photos with some of the beautiful cheerleaders of the Ravens, the home team. The match starts at 13:00, but by around midday we're already in the stands. The tickets, despite some obligatory jitters, were good this time too. Ahead of us is the match between the Baltimore Ravens and Cleveland Browns, a challenge between two cities all in all fairly close, between teams that play in the same division and that are divided by a long and deeply felt rivalry.

The noise of the 75,000 is impressive, the insults to the Browns players fly thick and fast and at their entrance, when the speaker reads out the names, the whole crowd shouts sucks (the translation is easy). But despite the hostility, despite the booing, the noise and all this verbal aggression, absolutely nothing happens. In the stands there are Browns jerseys somewhat everywhere, the fans are mixed because here nobody would ever dream of separating the sections, and yet everything goes smoothly until the end. Even when Cleveland comes back and pulls level at 17-17, the booing and the tension increase. But there's no one arguing, or getting angry, or cursing. Nothing at all, just supporting. Despite litres and litres of beer being sold everywhere.

Shortly before sunset the match ends, and after a quick tour of Baltimore, one of the ugliest cities seen in the United States, we point the car towards Washington. One last night and then the plane will take us back to Italy. The dream ended very quickly. But we discovered that, although very beautiful, it's not a dream at all. On the contrary, it's all very real. And we should relive it as soon as possible. Because even in American sport all is not roses and flowers, and even across the Atlantic they have problems with doping, overpaid, spoilt and sometimes violent players, overly powerful agents and so on. But between that vision of sport and the hysterical, corrupt, megalomaniac Italian football, we've already made our choice. A while ago.