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Bulldogs quarterback Michael Piatkowski (Photo courtesy of Drake University)
It’s football season again and Iowa’s Drake University took the occasion to announce plans for its football team to play a game in Tanzania. The Bulldogs intend to take on an all-star team from Mexico in the inaugural Global Kilimanjaro Bowl in May 2011. It is considered to be the first American football game on the African continent. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports. Download MP3
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MARCO WERMAN: The first American football game to be played in Africa will take place next spring. And that’s according to Drake University, a private college in Iowa. It has a non-scholarship NCAA Division 1 football team – the Bulldogs – led by a man with a dream to bring grid-iron to Tanzania. The World’s Alex Gallafent reports.
ALEX GALLAFENT: The dream belongs to Chris Creighton – Coach Creighton.
CHRIS CREIGHTON: In my life, some of the most influential moments have been when I’ve been in developing nations.
GALLAFENT: Creighton mentions Haiti, where he volunteered at aged 16, and Ecuador. In the spring of his junior year at college, he spent a month there, in the Amazon.
CREIGHTON: Living with the [PH] Kofan Indians.
GALLAFENT: Creighton says these were life-changing experiences for a kid like him, growing up in the States in relative wealth.
CREIGHTON: And when I became a football coach I wanted to be more than an X’s and O’s guy. I’m very competitive; you know, we want to win every game that we play. But at the same time, you know, I can feel responsible for the guys that are under my direction and I want their experience to be one of the most incredible of their life; and for me, that includes more than just winning games.
GALLAFENT: So Coach Creighton has developed a habit of taking his teams overseas. In 2003, the Bulldogs played in Austria.
CREIGHTON: It was a great trip. But after having come back, I don’t think that our guys were changed by the culture, the European culture, like I had been impacted by a developing country.
GALLAFENT: So in 2006, he took the team to Panama.
CREIGHTON: Totally different trip. And I think, to a man, all of us were profoundly impacted by what we saw and what we did. And so this trip kind of was birthed out of all of that, and this is sort of the Big Kahuna, if you will, to go to Africa.
GALLAFENT: And this is the plan: Next May, the Drake Bulldogs will play a full-scale game in Tanzania, against – well, we’ll get to that in a moment. Now, it’s not clear if it’ll really be the first ever American football game on the continent, but that’s what their research is telling them. Regardless, the team will then spend time working with the local community, including on the building of an orphanage. Finally, they’ll all climb Mount Kilimanjaro.
BRANDON COLEMAN: Football’s probably not going to be the first thing on my mind, standing at the top of a mountain like that.
GALLAFENT: Brandon Coleman is a sophomore at Drake, and a defensive end for the Bulldogs. The game may be only part of what he’s excited about, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.
COLEMAN: When the whistle blows, it’s on, for sure.
GALLAFENT: Coleman hasn’t met his opponents before.
COLEMAN: I don’t know much about them. I think they’re going to be a good football team. I think they’re going to be talented. They’re a team of all-stars.
GALLAFENT: Indeed, they are. A team of all-stars from… Mexico. Coach Creighton explains.
CREIGHTON: By NCAA rule, we have to play a non-American opponent, to take a foreign tour – is what the NCAA calls it. So the whole trip hinged on our ability to find an American football team outside of America that would be willing to go all the way to Tanzania, wherever they were from, to play us in a game.
GALLAFENT: They found one – an all-star team, put together just for this game, drawn from a newly formed conference of private universities in Mexico. Enrique Ramos leads the team’s Organizing Committee. He says they’re not going all the way to Tanzania to lose. They want to win.
ENRIQUE RAMOS: Well, we’re going to try. We’re going to try. We want to make the game interesting for Drake, and to compete. But it’s going to be a challenge for us.
GALLAFENT: Ramos adds that his team is going for more than the game, by the way. They’ll be joining up with the Bulldogs for the community service and for the mountain climb, too.
For The World, I’m Alex Gallafent.
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