Fortunately, I still had many questions for Sari about the culture in Saudi Arabia and his experiences. When I speak about my background and reasoning behind choosing TCU, American football is always mentioned as part of my college selection search. I lived with an international student from Vietnam my freshman year at TCU and he told me that TCU had a seminar for international students on American college football. From what I remember, the presentation included the rules of football and the component of school pride and spirit. Sari mentioned that he has yet to fully understand the rules of American football. I definitely see how American football is a difficult sport to understand because I did not seriously start watching football until I was about 10 years old. I think it took me two years of watching professional football on television to fully understand the rules, common penalties, and intricacies of controversial calls. My exposure to college football was even more sparse and I don't remember watching college football outside of the championship game before 8th grade. Part of this was due to growing up in the northeast and the relative lack of local football schools that I could identify with. No, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Michigan are not close to New Jersey, although they do control a significant amount of "fan market share" in the NYC metro area.
I have little interest in American soccer or "futbol", but I follow the World Cup when that is an occurring event. I followed the FIFA World Cup bidding process for 2022 by looking up the vote totals for each round and the eligible nations while that process was ongoing. After being severely disappointed and confused as to why the United States lost to Qatar in the process, I began to see articles appear regarding the corruption and bribing of FIFA officials throughout this process. As a complete novice to anything regarding FIFA or the Premier League, I asked Sari about his thoughts on Qatar receiving the bid for the World Cup, the structure of the Premier League, and what teams he follows.
Topics discussed include:
- Sports
- FIFA
- NFL
- Qatar
- Friends and HIMYM
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