Cultural Shock In American Football

Cultural shock is the difference in habits and traditions people may have. Cultural shock can be experienced in many different ways, it can be experienced from the way a person dress to the linguistic difference one might have. The cultural shock I experienced has to do with sports and particularly football culture.

When I talked with domestic students about football, they mostly would become confused because we were not in agreement of what football meant. To me it meant a sport where you control the ball with your feet but, that was known by them as soccer, and to them it meant a sport where the ball can be carried on hands which was known by me as American football. The majority of the countries call football the sport that in the US is called by soccer, and later on, I learned that not many Americans are aware of that difference in meaning. As well not many foreigners are.

After the meaning difference, I realized that I didn't know anything about football culture, not even the most simple football rules.

Friends would start talking about football teams, and players, college football, and I would not participate on the conversation. Because of that, sometimes I felt left aside when the topic turned to football. Which I learned that it is not a minor topic since football is one of the most appreciated sports in the US. At this point a can assume that in my country I used to hear and participate in this kind of conversation, but it would be all about soccer, and at this time my friends were speaking a language I didn't know, and I'm not referring to English. I'm referring to football language. College mascots were new to me because in my on culture the university is rarely associated with sports and they don't have mascots. I found mascots really interesting and deeply connected to football and college

tradition.
I had an American roommate that once invited me to a football game which MSU was playing. Ironically, I don't even remember the team MSU was playing against in that day. My friend and I went to meet with its parents for tailgating. I didn't know what it was and even by its name I couldn't create any meaningful reference with what I knew already. Once there, I saw that it is part of football culture and not only my roommate family was doing it but most of football fans did. The food I ate there was home made food like hot dogs and mac and cheese. People brought more and more food, and the consume of alcohol was normal and seem to be what most of the young adults were doing. An interesting aspect of tailgating is that it mostly happen on the stadium's parking lot and the people get to interact with each other like in a party.
When I went in the stadium, it was amazing, it had people all around. I had never seen so many people gathered on the same place. People sang the MSU fight song and did a dance choreography that I didn't know, but it was interesting to see. Soon the game had started, MSU players passed the ball to each other and my friend shouted from his lungs a massive “touchdown”, and I was just smiling until he noticed that I had no idea of what it was and he started to explain it to me. A peculiar smell that I remember from watching a football game is the popcorn smell, and a peculiar noise is the marching band music that was frenetic and made people dance when the cheerleaders came between the game intervals.
I experienced cultural shock regarding football culture, but I realized that cultural shock doesn't need to be a negative experience all the time. Even though many of the things I experienced with football were new comparing to my own culture, I learned that cultural shock can be the way to learn about new cultures, and to understand why do people do things different from the way I do.