'Merican Madness

I recently came across a blog post: "15 American Habits I Lost When I Moved to Australia"

14. Thinking the rest of the world cares about the NFL and religiously watching games

And to that you can add baseball, NASCAR, and NCAA basketball. Yes, that is correct. March Madness does not exist around the world.

So my  American friends were coming to visit me in Australia and it happened to be the start of the NCAA tournament. She didn't ask me plans for meeting her at the airport, if she'd need to exchange cash before getting here, or what clothes to pack. She asked if there'd be a way to watch basketball.

Yes, this is my third year in Australia. And yes, I love following college basketball. (Go Lady Huskies!) But when you're on the other side of the world, it's easy to lose track. First of all there's the whole time difference thing. Some may think it's socially unacceptable to go to the bar at 8am to watch the game and have a beer. Plus the bar's probably not open. And it doesn't receive and press or TV coverage. And as I and my American born-and-bred, basketball fan visitors learned, it's hard to watch even if you try. But I was willing to try my best to see what I could do to bring American basketball to Perth.

Option 1: Stream on the internet. In the US you can get every game live, free. Not here. Apparently the licensing is messed up. You'd think that you'd be able to pay a small (or larger) fee and stream the basketball games live. I could stream Australia Rules Football live in America, and no one even knows what that sport is in the US. But no such luck. The magic of the internet blocks all the fun things. This includes American Netflix and the best show ever, Nashville.

You are full of lies!

Option 2: Catch a game on TV. Sometimes they show NFL games on in the morning. They've got time to fill and 8am on a weekday morning isn't prime time. Well NCAA basketball doesn't even get the occasional spot.

Option 3: Watch it in a pub. I didn't have cable in South Carolina, but when there was a game I wanted to watch, I'd go to the local sports bar. Australians love to drink and they love sport. But there's no Buffalo Wild Wings equivalent. We happened to be small country towns that had only one or two pubs. Even the town with four pubs, only one pub had Foxtel (cable) to watch sports and the old blokes already had it on the rugby. 

I even tried to find a friend who would let us "borrow" her cable subscription but there are limitations with that as well (though my friend was a superstar who happens to like all things American and would have appreciated our need)

After some snooping around, we found a way to "cheat" and stream the games live. But the coverage was spotty at least and involved sitting in cafes ordering more flat whites and caramel slices than we needed, but they got to see there teams (unfortunately lose, sorry WVU and UConn). Thank goodness for smartphones.

So thank you Facebook friends, for keeping to me in the loop with live updates about exciting my alumni teams making it slightly further than thought, buzzer beater shots, and all things NCAA while I was sipping my coffee at work.

And now it's on time to footy...