The 2020 Big XII Championship Game

      1 Comment on The 2020 Big XII Championship Game

Iowa State had a great football year, didn’t they? I have been able to hear the day games on free internet radio during my evenings, and their athletic media department does a great job of putting videos of all the highlights out on social media and their official website. Other than the time difference, it’s not much different than when I lived in Indiana without cable.

Running errands on game day

There is a German privately-owned station–it is important to Germans to distinguish between these stations and the tax-funded public stations–that shows one American college football game every Saturday evening, and two NFL games on Sundays. The moderators have all worked and/or played for the NFL, including Indianapolis Colt Björn Werner, who was the first German player to be drafted into the NFL. They alternate between doing their own play-calling and translating the information from “the American colleagues”, and when America sees advertisements, they broadcast some audience participation from their social media–pets, snacks, jerseys and souvenirs, people streaming the broadcast from interesting locations, and occasionally fans at the games. Most weeks the pets and snacks are more interesting than the NFL games themselves.

Dr Pepper American Football Edition.

German American-Football Fans (there are no American-Fußball fans) are generally less interested in any one specific college team than they are in the game itself, so the Saturday game is randomly selected from whatever the ESPN family is showing at noon Eastern Time. This week it was the Big XII Championship Game.

Pregame show

All the food shops are open during Total-Christmas-Is-Cancelled-Lockdown, but the supply chains are humming along, and I was able to acquire some rare refried beans made out of actual pinto beans for a layered taco dip. The other ingredients are fairly common, but it’s not a Midwestern taco dip without the beans.

Proper ratio of chips to dip.

Los geht’s!

The storm approached Jack Trice Stadium, but unfortunately the game was in Texas.

I don’t need to talk about the game, everybody else already has, so here are some links to clips from the broadcast, in case you want to hear what it sounded like in German:

Volker explains the targeting call was bogus.

Charlie Kolar “like the slalom!” in the second quarter.

Coach Esume feels Coach Campbell in the second quarter.

Breece Hall scores in the fourth quarter to make it exciting!

Highlights and overview.

One thought on “The 2020 Big XII Championship Game

Comments are closed.