Rice Bowl!

On Thursday Melvis, Wii, mornin and I headed out to the Tokyo Dome for an epic match-up between the winner of the X league (Matsushita Impulse) and the Collegiate Champion (Kansai Gakuin Fighters) in the 61st Rice Bowl! It's the 2nd time I've watched football live here, and it's always an experience... Football in Japan is bad. I'm thinking that football anywhere other than America is probably bad. The first game I saw was a World Cup of American Football match last summer between America and Korea, and the Americans (made up of recently graduated college students that weren't good enough to make it onto the practice squads of an NFL or Arena League team) demolished the Korean team, scoring almost every possible way (pass, rush, punt return, kick return, int return, fumble return). This was the 2nd time to see a game here, and it was worse. The final score was 52-38, and the teams played hard I guess... but they were just 2 bad teams. Both teams primarily ran out of shotgun formations leaning heavily on the option, and worse, on shovel passes. In my lifetime I have seen countless hours of football, NFL, NCAA, World League, NFL Europe, Arena Football, H.S. Football, XFL, Canadian Football, Football video games, and even USFL re-runs, and in all of that time combined, I have never seen as many shovel passes as I saw in this one game. The bright spot was that there were probably half (if not less) the number of dropped passes as I saw in last year's game (on TV) which made it roughly ok to watch. The game was a blowout in the first half, but in the 2nd half Kansai Gakuin made a dramatic comeback, and were pretty close to tying it up but the QB threw and interception, and pretty much dashed any hope. Kansai got the ball back on onside kick later, but by then it was pretty much too late, and the game ended with another pick to seal the deal. The Rice Bowl is an interesting concept, a semi-pro league's champion vs. the college champion, but it's also a bit ridiculous if you try and conceptualize it happening in the US. Imagine Florida playing against the Colts in something called the Bread Bowl, or the Steak Bowl, or something like that. Just don't see it happening. I know that here the difference between the leagues isn't as great, but how can a semi-pro team really be proud of beating a bunch of kids? And even worse, what if they lose to a bunch of kids? shame, shame...


Also, this guy was rad, as soon as the game started, he was out. His job was to keep people from going onto the field... I've never been so close to streaking in my life!





by the way, I'd like to thank Hot-shi for the tickets, sorry you had to work and couldn't come with us!