Is "Ole" Replacing "Rah" as the New Football Cheer?

I was watching one of the several pre-game shows before the Super Bowl on Sunday, and they were showing a montage of the playoffs. As I listened to the statistics being rattled off and they players being named as impacting the game, it struck me how many Mexican-American players had a huge impact on their team this season: Tony Romo in Dallas, Jeff Garcia in Philadelphia, and Roberto Garza in Chicago, among others.

The Mexican-American representation made me wonder about how much attention the Super Bowl would be receiving in Mexico; it is the most-watched show on earth, but have our neighbors to the south embraced it? The immigration influx has brought parts of the Mexican culture into American society, including their sporting preferences; soccer's popularity has even started to rise in the States, with soccer-games being televised on an increasingly frequent basis, and not just on the Spanish-language stations. So do Mexicans watch the Super Bowl?

According to an article printed in the Boston Herald, about 20 million people are expected to watch the Super Bowl in Mexico and, for the first time, a soccer match was not scheduled to be played at the same time as the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl will also be shown at 13 movie theaters in Mexico City.

And there are even signs that the excitement is not just because of the size and importance of the championship game; in the 2005 season, a game between the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49ers in Mexico City, the first NFL game played in Mexico, drew 103, 467 fans to Estadio Azteca to watch the game. The Cinemex movie chain also broadcast Monday night games throughout the season, drawing nearly 14,000 fans.

Football games have been broadcast in Mexico for almost 40 years, so people remember the glory days of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Chicago Bears, and the Dallas Cowboys, but what Mexico is seeing now is a relatively new popularity boom. Like an American visiting a European country going to see a soccer match, when Mexican people visit America they are going to sporting events, like football games and basketball games, and taking their newfound interest in the sport and teams back home with them.

While some people talk of how the Mexican culture is infiltrating the United States, there needs to be a realization that the cultural flow is going both ways; while Americans are slowly starting to pay attention to the World Cup, figuring out what a yellow card is, and understanding why people are upset when Adolfo Bautista misses an easy shot, Mexicans are starting to go to NFL games, figuring out what first and ten means, and understanding why Rex Grossman was such a hot debate.

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For the full article from the Boston Herald, go to http://patriots.bostonherald.com/otherNFL/view.bg?articleid=180859

The Tony Romo photo is from story.scout.com/a.z?s=114&p=2&c=556350 and the Roberto Garza photo is courtesy http://www.robertogarza63.com/

The photo from the Cardinals-49ers game in Mexico is from http://www.nflatino.com/noticiacompleta/index.php?news=200510022048

For more information about the NFL in Mexico, check out http://www.nflatino.com/inicio/index.php