An American Buckeye in London

I’ve been an Ohio ex-pat for my entire adult life. I left home to spend my younger and more vulnerable yeas with Uncle Sam, which led to a succession of homes that were largely not of my choosing. New York, Alabama, Kansas, Tennessee. They all had their merits, and I don’t regret them. But the younger among you might not recall that college football didn’t always enjoy the incredible television presence it does now. In the days before digital cable (as recently as the middle of the last decade) moving out of Big Ten country meant that your chances of actually seeing your team on Saturday plummeted. I spent several years in the deep south having to watch Mississippi State play Southern Miss instead of any one of the several great B1G tilts of the day. As if I couldn’t hate the south more…

Nowadays, it doesn’t really matter where you live for the most part. With a few extra bucks on your cable bill, you can see virtually any game you want. Thanks to BTN, you can even see a lot of games you don’t want! So it is that modern telecommunications has solved the problem of being an internally displaced midwesterner each fall.

Recently, I’ve become a legal resident of the United Kingdom (and a temporary sufferer of all the buffoonery that is Brexit). This has put me back in much the same spot I was in while suffering the outrageous misfortune of life in lower Alabama. Fortunately, there appears to be a solution: the ex-pat bar. Or pub, to speak the local.

The Dugout at Belushi’s London Bridge isn’t exactly a London landmark. Don’t skip the British Museum to see what is, essentially, an American style sports bar nestled in the heart of Southwark. But there are big HD screens, quality beers, and lots of Americans hungry for some good old fashioned gridiron football.

I’ve never been much of one for watching sports in a pub. There are too many emotions involved, and there’s always one over-the-top, half-drunk asshole on both sides of the crowd who can’t be a good sport about...sport. But it seems I’ll be having to make an exception.

I guess I’ll learn to cheer for Chelsea Football while I’m trying new things. When in Rome, as they say. Or in this case, when in Londinium.

Where have you watched a game outside the US? Let us know