I came to the USA for graduate study in physics and joined the physics department of the Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge in January of 1971.

From the very first day I started to notice strange graffiti in every men's room on campus which said something to the effect that "Ole Miss sucks" and often using more vulgar language than that.

The graffiti was on the partitions of the stalls, on the wall above the urinals and sometimes even on the mirror. It simply did not make any sense. So I asked one of the senior Indian guys "Hey, what the heck does 'Ole Miss' mean?"

My friend smiled and said "I guess, since you were not here during the fall semester, you do not know anything about American football!" "This is a football-crazy campus town and LSU has a good reputation in college football" he continued. "Ole Miss is the nickname for the University of Mississippi football team and they are our arch rivals; kind of
like Mohun Bagan and East Bengal."

I was a little shocked that I did not even know about the existence of such a sport. "Is it anything like football played in India?” I asked. My friend smiled again and said "I do not even know why they call it football. Actually foot touches the ball only during kicking but otherwise, the game is played basically by throwing, catching and running with the ball". I had heard about the game of rugby and inquired "Is it like rugby?"

"Nope. It is a rather unique game and it is played only in the USA. It is not an Olympic sport and there is no world championship because there is no other country interested in it". "Do the Americans know how to play the game that we call football?"

"Yes, but it is not that popular. They call it soccer". I also learned that the name of the LSU football team was LSU Tigers and the team had a real tiger as a "mascot". In case of LSU, they had a real Royal Bengal Tiger locked up in a cage on the campus; it was taken to the field during a game.

I felt a certain degree of kinship with this tiger because we both originated from the same region of the world. I had to wait until the following fall semester to actually see how a football game was played. My friend was right. Every Saturday it was a madhouse and streets werejammed with cars and cheering students with beer cans.

I never went to see an actual football game; it was difficult and expensive to get tickets and I would not have appreciated it anyway. Pranab, my room-mate, used to follow professional football more than college football. As a result, I also started to watch more pro-football.

Pranab took the time to explain to me the rules and scoringmsystem. Lots of things about this game seemed strange to me. For example, there was no logic in assigning six points to a touchdown and three points to a field goal. I did not understand why every touchdown had to be followed by a kick for an extra point. It was almost amusing that the referees placed the ball on the ground just by eyeballing, but then measured the distance covered accurately to an inch.

Then there were things like "safety" counting for two points which made no sense. Nonetheless, the concept of
advancing by ten yards at a time and having the luxury of four chances or "downs" to do that somehow appealed to me. I also quickly appreciated the role of a quarterback as the "brain centre" of the team deciding the mode of attack.

Although Louisiana did have a relatively new pro-football team, they were not strong contenders and Pranab was an avid fan of the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys had won the "Super Bowl" (which is like a national championship) the year before. So I ended up watching Dallas Cowboys games every Sunday. I must confess that their cheerleaders
were more of an attraction than the game itself.

"Cheerleaders" – here is another example of Americana. I do not know what kind of inspiration the players got by looking at these scantily clad girls dancing for a couple of minutes every so often, but those girls were stunning and certainly provided entertainment to the spectators.

What a contrast with our football! Just imagine a bunch of Indian women wearing saris and dancing on the sidelines of an IFA shield game!

Subsequently I moved to Indianapolis, San Diego and eventually to Orange County, California. I was always looking for a local team I could passionately root for but without any luck. My timing was off. Both Green Bay Packers and Indianapolis Colts won Super Bowl championships after I left those cities.

I did not develop any liking for other American sports like baseball, basketball, ice hockey. Baseball seemed like a distorted version of cricket. If you loved cricket, it would be almost impossible to love baseball. Watching basketball could be exciting but it seemed that all you had to do was to watch the final two minutes.

Having grown up with India's dominance in field hockey, ice hockey seemed like a joke! However, I really developed
a liking for football. I had been waiting all these years for LA or Orange County to have a pro-team. Finally my wait is over. The owner of the Rams decided to move his team from St. Louis to LA and we again had a team, the LA Rams in
2016.

Subsequently the Chargers announced that they were also going to move their football team from San Diego to LA in 2017. Now I am hoping that at least one of these two teams would become a Super Bowl contender sometime in the near future.