The barking began on the shuttle bus.
An older gentleman spotted a kindred spirit wearing team colours and let out a woof.
Inside the cavernous SoFi Stadium, the dogs (or dawgs as they are known) stood up and let rip.
It wasn’t even a home game for the Cleveland Browns, yet their devout canine-esque followers made their presence heard.
The Los Angeles Rams were hosts yet it almost felt like they had landed in Brownsville as the Cleveland posse howled their lungs out.
Legend has it that defensive back Hanford Dixon came up with the ‘dawgs’ tag in 1985 and would bark along with the rest of the Cleveland defense after a sack or significant play. Fans quickly replicated the noise on the field and adopted it as a rallying cry.
There was a sizeable sprinkling of Browns seated side by side with Rams followers – who sadly didn’t bleat or grunt to encourage their team – in our section of the unsegregated stadium.
It’s commonplace in American sports for opposition fans to sit together and judging by a minority of online videos a recipe for easily provoked aggravation and brutal violence.
Punch-ups and barneys featured on social media make it seem like a trip to a National Football League (NFL) stadium is like entering some kind of testosterone drenched warzone.
Sit in silence and gravely ignore everyone or incur the wrath of a tanked-up moron ready to land a knuckle sandwich.
Thankfully, the worst I witnessed was some relatively good-natured ribbing between some rather heavily built Browns dawgs and an easily agitated Rams supporter in the toilets.
Not only did the male sheep worshipper disapprove of the Browns’ very existence but questioned whether there was anything worthwhile in Ohio at all. Rather harsh as the big men from the old Forest City barked back. No urinals or sinks were hurt despite the lukewarm verbals.
The cross words and animal chants aside, it was genuinely thrilling to be inside an NFL stadium. I can very charitably describe myself as a lapsed fan of American football.
A nostalgic observer is more accurate. As a youngster I was converted by Channel 4’s coverage of the sport in the United Kingdom – shout out to the brilliant duo of presenter Mick Luckhurst and reporter Gary Imlach.
In what was perhaps a more innocent time I chose the Washington Redskins (now the Washington Commanders) as my team purely as I liked the logo on their helmets.
In hindsight I probably wouldn’t make the same decision now.
Nevertheless, I can still recall the excitement of being allowed to stay up into the early hours of the morning for Super Bowl XXVI as the Redskins soundly defeated the Buffalo Bills.
Such was my admiration for quarterback Mark Rypien that I owned a plastic figurine in his honour. The fantastic trio of Ricky Sanders, Gary Clark, and Art Monk all starred as the Washington wide receivers helped their team coast to a 37-24 victory in Minneapolis.
Even now I’m still a little stuck in the era of legendary teams, coaches, and players.
The fearsome moustached madman Mike Ditka, dynamic running back Walter Payton and brilliantly nicknamed William ‘The Refrigerator’ Perry of the Chicago Bears.
The iconic San Francisco 49ers tandem of omniscient quarterback Joe Montana and classy wide receiver Jerry Rice.
Dallas Cowboys icons Troy Aitken and Emmitt Smith, and Boomer Esiason running the show at the Cincinnati Bengals. Running back extraordinaire Barry Sanders weaving through defenses with untouchable speed and grace for the Detroit Lions, while Warren Moon was out of this world for the Houston Oilers.
My interest faded as it became more difficult to watch due to time difference and the absence of any proper (and affordable) television coverage. Gridiron gradually disappeared from my sporting spectrum, as my obsession with football, the National Basketball Association (NBA) and (for a brief while) wrestling grew.
Even the name of the sport is a remarkably pointless bone of contention on either side of the pond. If you are from Scotland, England, Wales, Northern Ireland, or Ireland it will always be American Football (or gridiron). In the USA and Canada, it’s football.
Why anyone would embark on apoplectic diatribes about what to call it is absolutely laughable. In a climate where opinions masquerade as facts and everyone is an expert in their chosen field, and every other field, there are no winners. I won’t waste any more time on the name game, call it what you want and be happy.
I was definitely in an optimistic mood as I entered the SoFi stadium.
Built at a cost of billions it sits beside a man-made lake and features a gigantic futuristic looking silver canopy. The NFL’s west coach headquarters are situated in the same palm tree lined complex, but it is the sheer magnitude of the 70,000-capacity building which staggers.
Even in December (2023), the temperature was a more than manageable 18°C (66°F) in the city of Inglewood, located to the southwest of Los Angeles.
The stadium is not actually in LA itself, although it might as well be. It’s a common misconception that the City of Angels is a vast, sprawling metropolis which covers an enormous geographical area. While it is large by any measure, Tinseltown is the seat of Los Angeles County but does not occupy the area in its entirety. LA is surrounded by several smaller cities, including Inglewood, all with their own distinct identities.
SoFi stadium has the capacity of a small Californian city itself.
As light seeped in through the canopy’s metal patterns the magnitude of the multi-layered bowl came into full view.
Yet it was the mind-boggling Samsung Infinity Screen that demanded all eyes latch on and never leave. It hovered above the field like an intricately shaped wraparound stargate with a built in hypnotizing forcefield.
I was bedazzled by the pixellated clarity of the images on the massive display. It was tempting to stare at it, and not the field, for the whole game. Many people couldn’t look anywhere else.
When the screen temporarily went blank in the third quarter there was a brief murmur of panic before it was rebooted back into action.
It was only when I sat down in the level 3 lower club section of the stadium that the privilege of being there, thanks to a free ticket from a very generous relative, sank in.
The sightlines were flawless as the national anthem began. The Star-Spangled Banner played with soul on the saxophone then noise, more noise and even more noise.
The big picture hanging from the rooftop called for volume and decibel levels, a deafening hysteria that sent everyone into a screaming trance. No one was safe in the ongoing Rampede.
A chant of: ‘Whose house? Rams house!’ played out on repeat. It must be noted that they also share the stadium with the Los Angeles Chargers. Both franchises – such is the terminology for US sports teams – have played elsewhere. The Rams were actually formed in Cleveland and also played in St. Louis. The Chargers spent 56 seasons in San Diego. It would never happen in football, it is unimaginable that Celtic would ever play anywhere other than Glasgow or Real Madrid outside the Spanish capital; to pick just two examples but hey ho, different sports operate in their own universes.
Gridiron is a relatively simple sport complicated by an abundance of miniscule rules.
Although there are some small similarities with both rugby union and rugby league, American football at the highest level, and in full flow is spectacularly entertaining.
Thankfully, it was a high scoring game, full of blisteringly hard hits, fantastic plays, and captivating bursts of majestic athleticism.
Four memorable moments – everything can be digested into easy to digest chunks due to the stop-start nature of it all – stood out.
Rookie Puka Nacua somehow collected a Matthew Stafford throw between three defenders and sprinted to the endzone for a brilliant 70-yard touchdown in the opening quarter. It was a breathtaking example of the game at its best. A unison of pinpoint accuracy, raw speed and agility. The 23-year-old wide receiver then left the game after he landed heavily following a magnificent diving catch. There was a scintilla of silence before he got up from the sidelines and headed to the locker rooms. Thankfully, Nacua returned with ribs intact in the second half. Every single little thing is celebrated to an exaggerated extent, from a routine tackle to a simple reception. It manages to be heartwarming and off-putting at the same time.
Elite quarterback Stafford made sure the Rams never trailed, although Browns place-kicker Dustin Hopkins inexplicably missed a point after a touchdown which would have tied the score in the fourth quarter. It is rare to witness such a blunder. Place kickers do not usually mess up what is essentially a formality, like a missed rugby conversion under the posts.
Veteran Browns stand-in quarterback Joe Flacco then made an untimely mistake as his throw was intercepted by the wonderfully named Rams safety John Johnson III and it was all over. The Rams downing the Browns 36-19.
Everything was punctuated by stoppages. Plays begin and end, sometimes in a couple of seconds, at other times agonizingly slowly. Players head off and on the field incessantly. Everyone waits around for television time-outs. Then team time-outs. Coaches challenge referee calls. Half-time comes and goes.
Watch a game on television and the same mind-numbing adverts for beer, cars and food become seared into your brain. You end up remembering more about the commercials than anything else.
In the stadium the boredom factor is softened by a myriad of competitions, games, and novelties.
A family are selected to play Blackjack to win resort tickets, another couple tackle quiz questions with the prize of a trip to Disneyland and a mariachi band belt out tunes to celebrate the birthday of Rams mascot Rampage – a hyper, exuberant anthropomorphic male sheep.
Celebrities Randall Park, of sitcom Fresh off the Boat (and somewhat famous for his cameo as “Asian Jim” in the The Office), and Los Angeles Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are in attendance and get the full big screen treatment.
The Rams house chants ring out. There are no original songs. No football style chants. It is all rehearsed and repeated Ad infinitum. All rather robotic.
There is nothing to celebrate the brilliant Stafford or outstanding Nacua.
How about: ‘He’s too good for Old Trafford, he’s our horned hero Stafford,’ to the tune of the Pogues “Fairytale of New York.” Or perhaps: ‘Hey, hey Puka (Ooh, aah), I wanna know (oh-oh-oh), How you caught that ball’ to DJ Otzi’s classic “Hey Baby.”
Clearly both chants will be adopted by the Rams fans next season. No need to thank me. Maybe it would create a tiny trickle of atmosphere away from the money grabbing antics everywhere in the arena.
The game or event was sponsored – as everything has to be in the relentless cash making machine that is American sports – by the makers of Japanese manga television show One Piece. It was advertised with a wearisome regularity and free mini towels with the show’s logo and date of the game were handed out to all in attendance to mark the occasion.
It wasn’t enough to hold everyone’s attention as the breaks inevitably lead to distraction.
The couple beside me missed most of the first quarter before taking their seats. Two guys in the same row discussed their fantasy teams and betting odds rather than focus on the events on the field. Others were glued to their phones or shuffled in and out constantly with beers and food in hand.
The average attention span in America is reportedly anywhere between eight seconds to eight minutes, so concentrating for three hours 20 minutes was probably beyond more or less everyone in the 70,000 plus attendance.
It was worth walking around the concourse, even just to check the eye-poppingly expensive prices for food and merchandise. I resisted the urge to splash out on soda filled to the brim with ice. No one noticed my Sampdoria jacket – it is blue and could almost pass as Rams attire – but I spotted an older gent with a Fiorentina hat and two chaps with Argentinian football tops on.
The walk between levels passed various hospitality and VIP areas as some very serious stewards pointed the way through a long, narrow passageway past the poshos with dosh.
The Rams fans were euphoric as the game wound down. I was fairly content at completing a small milestone on my own.
I had completed the full set of major North American sports as a spectator (yes, I’m going to name them all).
Trips tailored around the Dallas Mavericks schedule to see my basketball hero Dirk Nowitzki meant I saw the German superstar sharpshooter play NBA games in New Jersey (at the Continental Airlines Arena in the Meadowlands sports complex), Madison Square Garden against the Knicks and in Toronto where he emphatically dunked on the dome of Raptors rookie Andrea Bargnani. I saw the Boston Celtics a couple of times at The Garden and marvelled at the height of Kevin Garnett from near the courtside. The Sacramento Kings bench, which included wily veteran Brad Miller, were so tall that they blocked our view whenever they stood up.
I also took in a Toronto Maple Leafs National Hockey League game in Canada’s most populous city and saw the LA Kings in the City of Angels last year. Both were enthralling despite the difficulty in locating the puck and the lack of any fisticuffs.
Major League Baseball experiences were not quite as memorable. Watching Mike Piazza play for the New York Mets in Shea Stadium was exciting enough yet a Yankees game in their iconic old Bronx home moved at snail’s pace over a dreary 12 innings.
After bizarrely turning down a ticket to see the fearsome Dick MacPherson (who I had the privilege to meet in person at the Carrier Dome) and the Syracuse Orangemen, my first American football game was a soporific event.
Anticipation gave way to outright boredom as I covered the Scottish Claymores in the NFL’s European league at Hampden Park for my local newspaper in Glasgow.
The fractured game time, with virtually nothing in between the pauses, almost put me off the sport for life.
The Browns faithful were not quite as bent out of shape as their heroes fell away late on. Yet dozens exited the stadium early in the fourth quarter with the Rams victory a foregone conclusion. The giant screen even showed a rather forlorn dude clad in brown with a filter that made him look like he was in tears.
The rest of the dawgs traipsed out the house in a grave mood. A pair exclaimed it was a dark loss as they made their way out of the SoFi. I couldn’t tell if they were serious or not.
Any of those sporting opposition colours were subjected to intermittent but relatively good-natured abuse. A poor young girl was moved to say she only attended the game at her boyfriend’s request after the Brown jerseyed fan was targeted by some ebullient Rams. It was an hour wait for the shuttle bus back to the subway station with not a single woof to be heard.
Stephen Kasiewicz 