The Curious Phenomenon of American Sports Obsession: A Comical Exploration for Expats New to the Game

I need to confess something: before moving to America, I cared about exactly zero sports. In Vietnam, people follow football (the real kind, with your feet). In Singapore, my colleagues watched Premier League and Formula 1. I watched neither. I was the guy at the office who changed the subject when sports came up.

Then I moved to the Bay Area and discovered that sports in America are not really about sports. They are about identity, community, rituals, food, and a level of emotional investment that I had previously only seen in Vietnamese aunties discussing who is marrying whom at Tet. :P

This is my attempt to make sense of it all, from a very confused outsider's perspective.

The Big Four (A Crash Course)

Football (American Football): Not to be confused with actual football, which Americans insist on calling "soccer." This game involves an egg-shaped ball, body armor, and frequent commercial breaks. I found the Super Bowl genuinely confusing my first year — not the game itself, but the fact that even people who do not watch football all year throw Super Bowl parties. It is less a sporting event and more a national holiday.

The traditions are wild. Green Bay Packers fans wear "cheesehead" hats shaped like a wedge of cheese. Pittsburgh Steelers fans wave a "Terrible Towel." I have been in advertising for 18 years and even I am impressed by this level of brand loyalty.

Baseball: Known as "America's pastime," which I think means "America's excuse to sit outside for four hours eating hot dogs." The pace is... deliberate. But the traditions are charming — the seventh-inning stretch where everyone sings "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," the rally squirrels at Cardinals games, the Curse of the Billy Goat that supposedly cursed the Cubs for decades. Americans take baseball superstitions seriously. Like, really seriously.

Basketball: This is the one that finally got me. Fast-paced, exciting, and easy to follow once you learn the basics. The March Madness college tournament is genuinely thrilling, and the Splash Brothers (Curry and Thompson) playing for the Warriors right here in the Bay Area made it personal. More on that in my Warriors post.

Hockey: Fast, skillful, and apparently it is totally normal for fights to break out mid-game while the refs just... watch? Detroit Red Wings fans throw octopuses onto the ice during playoffs. Octopuses. On ice. I am still processing this.

Tailgating: The Part I Actually Love

Before I experienced tailgating, someone described it as "cooking a full BBQ meal in a parking lot before a game." I thought they were exaggerating. They were not.

Americans literally set up grills, inflatable furniture, portable bars, and full sound systems in stadium parking lots hours before the game starts. Some of these tailgate setups are more elaborate than any picnic I have ever attended in my life. The food ranges from classic burgers and ribs to full Cajun crawfish boils (LSU Tigers fans in Louisiana are in a league of their own).

The Buffalo Bills' "Bills Mafia" takes it to another level — they are famous for jumping through folding tables as a pregame activity. The first time I saw this on video, I showed it to my Singaporean friends and none of them believed it was real.

From my experience, tailgating is where American sports culture really shines. You do not even need to care about the game. The party in the parking lot IS the event. :D

Fantasy Sports: When It Gets Too Real

I thought fantasy sports were a casual thing until a coworker spent his entire lunch break explaining the draft to me. He had a spreadsheet — a real, color-coded spreadsheet — ranking NFL players by projected performance, injury risk, and "bye week conflicts" (a concept I still do not fully understand). He described his draft party the way my Vietnamese relatives describe Tet dinner: sacred, non-negotiable, and involving strong opinions about who is underperforming this year.

Then I learned that people do this every week, all season. They trade players. They trash-talk in group chats. The stakes can involve cash prizes and, more importantly, the kind of bragging rights that apparently matter deeply in American friendship circles. Sites like FanDuel and DraftKings have turned this into a daily activity.

I have not joined a fantasy league yet. I think I would either get too obsessed or too confused. There is no in-between.

The Weird Traditions

Every sport has its rituals, and American ones are beautifully bizarre:

• Rally caps: When a baseball team is losing late in the game, fans turn their hats inside out or backward to "rally" the team. This is treated with complete seriousness.
• Mascots: The Philadelphia Flyers have "Gritty," a googly-eyed orange furry monster that has become an internet sensation. He is simultaneously terrifying and beloved. I think he might be my spirit animal.
• The seventh-inning stretch: Everyone stands up and sings together in the middle of a baseball game. It is oddly wholesome.
• The "Shoot the Puck" contest: During hockey intermissions, fans try to shoot from center ice into a tiny goal slot. It is nearly impossible and consistently hilarious.

My Honest Take

I came to America not caring about sports at all. I now own a Warriors jersey and have strong opinions about Steph Curry's three-point shooting. I am not sure how this happened.

I think what got me was not the sports themselves, but everything around them — the community, the traditions, the shared experience of watching something together and caring about the outcome. In a country where people can feel quite isolated (American suburbs are lonely compared to the communal living I was used to in Asia), sports provide a sense of belonging. You put on your team's jersey, you go to a game or a bar, and suddenly you are part of something with the strangers sitting next to you.

From my experience, learning to appreciate American sports is one of the fastest ways to connect with locals. You do not have to become an expert. Just pick a local team, show up with an open mind, and let the culture do the rest.

What was your first encounter with American sports culture? I bet some of you have stories that are even more bewildering than mine.

Cheers,

Chandler