As we work our way through the year, mem­o­rable and his­toric events seem to be play­ing out on the world stage with increas­ing fre­quency.  An African Amer­i­can pres­i­dent has taken office fac­ing a world­wide eco­nomic cri­sis, mas­sive protests in Iran have threat­ened to top­ple the cur­rent regime, the war in Afghanistan has inten­si­fied, the lit­tle gar­goyle in North Korea keeps shoot­ing mis­siles, and so forth.  The list goes on and on.  Heck, the recent coup in Nicaragua that may or may not have been legal lasted on the front pages for about a day before the media returned to report­ing that Michael Jack­son was still, in fact, dead.  But there has been one breath­tak­ing story that man­aged to fly under the radar.  This was an event so unbe­liev­able in so many dif­fer­ent respects that I was will­ing to break out of my sum­mer malaise to write this.  Appar­ently, a team of for­mer Notre Dame foot­ball play­ers trav­eled to Tokyo to take on Japan’s national team.

Just the rev­e­la­tion that Japan has a national foot­ball team is star­tling and leaves me brim­ming with ques­tions.  Do they have to recruit sumo wrestlers to play line?  Do they deliver audi­bles in haiku form?  Are their plays more reli­able and bet­ter con­structed than Amer­i­can ones?  Does their offense depend on mak­ing sur­prise attacks and cheap shots that catch the enemy off guard?  Cer­tainly they must have side­line cam­era poli­cies that would earn Bill Belichick’s approval?  Is the sta­dium required to stop sell­ing saké prior to the 4^th quar­ter?  In honor of Notre Dame, did the Japan­ese team install a moti­va­tional sign in their locker room encour­ag­ing the team to “Pray Rike a Cham­pion Today?”  Will NFL teams soon be engag­ing in bid­ding wars for play­ers devel­oped in Japan?  A quick search of Japan Amer­i­can Foot­ball Asso­ci­a­tion shows it has been in exis­tence since 1934 and its league cham­pi­onship game is called the Rice Bowl.  I’m not kidding.

This idea of a for­eign foot­ball asso­ci­a­tion is actu­ally a fas­ci­nat­ing con­cept, much more intrigu­ing than NFL Europe.  It would be ter­rific if other coun­tries could fol­low Japan’s lead and begin to develop their own American-football pro­grams.  Imag­ine if other coun­tries were one day com­pet­i­tive enough to stage a world cup sim­i­lar to the soc­cer ver­sion.  See­ing coun­tries clash head to head on the grid­iron would be enjoy­able on mul­ti­ple lev­els.  The U.S. would essen­tially play the dom­i­nant role that Brazil does in soc­cer.  The Kenyan teams would be light­ning fast with great sta­mina, the East­ern Euro­pean and Russ­ian teams would play a rugged smash-mouth style, and I imag­ine Swe­den would fea­ture a more grace­ful, pass-happy offense.  Cuba’s play­ing style (and equip­ment) would be straight out of 1959.  New Zealand and South Africa could pre­tend it is rugby and field potent squads them­selves and per­haps fig­ure out just why it is this game requires pads.  France’s uni­forms would, of course, be all white.

In the actual game, the Aging Irish beat Japan 19–3 behind the lead­er­ship of Lou Holtz.  While game­days are always bet­ter when Notre Dame loses, we can at least be thank­ful the matchup did not pro­voke any inter­na­tional inci­dents.  Though Notre Dame may have gone over­board by start­ing a quar­ter­back named Rice, it was a fit­ting touch in this exhi­bi­tion between for­eign teams and play­ers to fea­ture a foot­ball coach who needs a trans­la­tor for his own team.  For­tu­nately, the Japan­ese team and media did not take offense at his spit­ting on them and under­stood he does it to every­body (and he in turn for­gave the media for repeat­edly call­ing him Rou Hortz–he thym­pa­thithed really).  There is no word if Mark May and Reese Davis were on hand to nee­dle the Japan team and talk about how they just won’t be able to stand up to China’s aer­ial assault.  On a shock­ing note, two-time Heis­man tro­phy win­ner and for­mer Detroit Lion Ron Powlus was left off the Notre Dame ros­ter.  He must have been too busy teach­ing cur­rent Irish super star Jimmy Clausen every­thing he knows.

Con­grat­u­la­tions are due to all the Aging Irish play­ers who returned to the field and defeated a team of far younger players–a sig­nif­i­cant feat regard­less of their coun­try of ori­gin.  Now that they have proven them­selves supe­rior to Japan, per­haps Notre Dame can take the next step and over­throw the mighty likes of Syra­cuse and Air Force.  Hope­fully, this event will be a step for­ward for Amer­i­can foot­ball in Japan and around the world.  And if there ever is day when Japan­ese foot­ball chal­lenges the U.S. for dom­i­nance as they’re cur­rently doing in base­ball, that will truly be a his­toric event.