A weird thing about being in Thailand — which is physically closer to the U.S. than is the UAE, and by several thousand miles — is an even bigger sense of disconnect from American sports. It’s the time zones. By 10 a.m. UAE time, just about every sports event “last night” in the U.S. is […]

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Apparently, I have been gone so long that the notion of USC defeating Stanford, in the Coliseum, is such a surprise that fans flood the field. For most of my life, and we’re talking more than a few decades now, USC beating Stanford was How Things Worked. Football players attended Stanford to have some fun […]

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Maybe this is a sign that I have been out of the country for too long. Or maybe for long enough. I really don’t care what happens in the National Football League.

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I knew Pat Haden, a little, more than three decades ago. I covered the Los Angeles Rams for four seasons for the San Bernardino Sun, and Haden was in his second season when I got on the beat, in 1977. Haden was great to work with. Bright and accessible and honest. And, of course, a […]

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It has been explained here how difficult it is to follow college football, and what little of it could be seen, easily, is now gone. Leave the country for four years, you realize most of college football you can get along without. With some exceptions. Your own team. Maybe your team’s league. A few of […]

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Not an original thought, I’m sure, but original to me. The best way to explain English soccer to somebody back in the U.S., who almost certainly doesn’t really care about the Premier League … is to compare it to college football. The same sort of tribal, DNA-encoded madness.

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This is the worst yet. Most of the first four years here in the UAE, we were able to see some college football. We had access to ESPN and ESPN America, which showed a bit of the college game.  Pretty much all the games that ran on ESPN in the U.S., and it was a […]

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A few years ago, we splurged on the slightly slicker version of the cable TV package. The one with all the Al Jazeera sports stations and, more important, the one with three ESPN stations. Yes, here in Abu Dhabi. ESPN, ESPN America and ESPN Classic. Those three were the primary lifeline, in the UAE, back […]

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Andy Murray won the “gentlemen’s” singles championship at Wimbledon today, the first Briton to do so since Fred Perry in 1936. Yes. Seventy-seven years ago. And there went another great losing streak. I am on record expressing support for the continuation of all prominent losing streaks. They give context and shape to teams, people and […]

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Watching American sports live, from the UAE, takes some extra effort. Not that things are not available. They are, if you pay a little bit extra — maybe $50 a year — to augment your basic cable package (most of which is not in English) with a set of stations that includes ESPN, Fox and, […]

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