In previous posts I have gushed about how much I am enjoying the job so far, and that there aren’t many negatives to the job.
However, as we are in the heart of American Football Season, NBA and NHL is starting soon, Baseball is in the heat of the playoffs, as is Major League Soccer, I have to say, being abroad in awkward time zones really sucks if you are a sports fan.
For example, I LOVE college football. I graduated from New Mexico State University for my undergrad, and religiously follow them to this day. Historically, NMSU is a basketball school with lots of success on the court. Football on the other hand is usually abysmal, and between 1960 and 2017, NMSU was the only FBS team to not play in a Bowl Game. The finally broke that curse in 2017, winning the Arizona Bowl, and again last year winning the Quick Lane Bowl, but for their history, they are pretty much the worst top division football program in NCAA history. That’s probably why I love them so much, they’re the ultimate underdog, and any whiff of success in Las Cruces is treated like winning the Super Bowl. Whereas bigger schools like Texas or Alabama fire their coaches if they don’t win 10 games. (Fun fact, when NMSU won that bowl game in 2017, the longest bowl game winning drought was passed to my graduate alma mater The University of Texas at El Paso who hasn’t won a bowl since 1967…I sure know how to pick great programs).
As a die hard fan of really bad football, living in a time zone 6 or 7 hours ahead of where most games are played really makes it hard to follow. Earlier this month when NMSU had a Wednesday night game on national TV, kickoff was 1AM in Mauritania, and it ended at 430AM. As much as I love my team, there’s no way to really follow the action and it really stinks. Instead, what ends up happening is I wake up at 2 in the morning, remember the game is playing, check the score, then struggle to sleep again if it’s a nail biter. For the first time in my adult life, I haven’t been able to follow my time as much as I would like to, and it’s entirely because I am in the Foreign Service.
The same applies to any other sport. I have never really felt more disconnected from American sport culture in my life, not a huge sacrifice but definitely has me considering bidding on western hemisphere posts in the future and is worth considering if you are a die hard fan yourself and looking to jump into this lifestyle. -Nick
