San Diego Who?

Ok, you know you've been out the the U.S. for too long when you start forgetting what NFL Football ( as opposed to British Football, or what we call soccer in the U.S.) teams are in what locations.  For the most part here in China, sports news is gathered from Internet sites. Streaming video of NFL games are non-existent,  and for that matter, news coverage scarce.  The NFL hasn't caught on in China, although they are big fans of the NBA.

As it was, the movement of NFL teams was difficult to keep track of on a good memory day.  For example ChinaFubar was born and raised in St. Louis, which used to be home to the St. Louis Cardinals NFL franchise, before them moved to Arizona and became the Arizona Cardinals.  Then finally the Los Angeles Rams moved to St. Louis, and all was well,  until the officials would make a mistake and call a penalty against "Los Angeles"  during a home game in St. Louis.  

Then, after the Rams were in St. Louis for only one season, I moved to Los Angeles.  Sold my Ram's PSL's, and was again, with no NFL team to cheer.  Still cheered the Rams, especially to their 1999 Super Bowl Championship with Kurt Warner at QB!  Great stuff, unfortunately, I was traveling in China at the time and of course didn't see the game.  Does the NFL really know how many viewers it looses because of their rules?

Now I call Arizona my U.S. home, at least that's what it says on my driver's license, and I'm again calling the Cardinals my home team, except now they play in Tempe.  And once again, they seem to be playoff bound in no small part due to the efforts of the very capable Kurt Warner.  Does anyone see a pattern here?  Is Warner Canton bound?  Should be, and not Canton, China either. 

But I digress.

All this movement and lack of regular exposure to the NFL was brought home last night while watching NFL on Bensports satellite at the local British pub here in Dongguan, One for the Road.  Not quite the same as in U.S., lots of British accents, and the game was only on one TV, with British football (soccer) on the other, larger screens. Plus the game, being on delay, was time compressed, and that just screws up the normal rhythm of watching an NFL game, as they cut out all the goings on between the end of a play and the snap for next play.  Kind of like watching an hour and a half of a highlight reel.

So I'm watching the game, and through the Chinese subtitles I can see that the Balti---oops, Indiana Colts are playing...some team from SD with what looks like a yellow feather as a logo.  At least that's what it looked like on the bottom of the screen where they show the scores.  So I'm thinking   SD....South Dakota??  When did they get a team?  And what is it,  the Yellow Feathers?  That's what the logo looked like.  After all, teams aren't named after the cities they play in now, but the states they play in.  Tennessee Titans,  Indiana Colts,  Arizona Cardinals,  Minnesota Vikings, etc.

Then, they finally show a close up of the team,and I realize "Duh, San Diego!!!   CHARGERS!  Doh!!  That's not a feather, that's a bad drawing of a spark.

That's when it hit me, the old limited memory bug.  The theory that the human brain can only hold so much information, and as you get older, at a certain point your brain becomes saturated, and for every new bit of information you learn, you forget something.  So, I suspect that some bit of the vast amount of knowledge I've picked up in the last few months caused me to forget the San Diego Chargers actually existed, and were not in actuality a team called the South Dakota Yellow Feathers.

Problem solved.  Except now there's another problem.

What bit of information did I now forget because I've "re-learned" about the San Diego Chargers.

Maybe my wife, good old what's her name knows.