Slingbox, an Expat Football Fan's Best Friend

One of the more pressing disadvantages of an expat assignment located 10.5 hours ahead of your home time zone is that most sporting events take place at inopportune times. While I've become accustomed to this over the past eight plus months, it's worth mentioning that the one team sport I really care about it college football. It's also worth mentioning that I left Chicago the night of college football's BCS Championship game. So from my perspective, the past couple weeks is really the first instance where the whole time zone thing has really made a difference (you know, if sports were the reason for making a difference).

With the advent of Slingbox, the ability to hook a DVR to it, and other streaming media, gone are the days where watching isn't even an option. I was here in India on New Year's Day 2005 and remember hitting "refresh" on ESPN.com's gamecast to learn of Drew Tate's miracle touchdown pass as my beloved Iowa Hawkeyes defeated LSU in the Capital One Bowl (actually, based on the time change it was Janaury 2).

Thankfully, I'll be in the states for three Saturdays in October and have a full day planned with buddies to watch games on October 16. So I'll get a "real" college football fix in a few short weeks. Until that time (and after for that matter) I've decided to DVR one game each week and watch on Sunday mornings. As a bonus, on Saturday nights I'm able to catch the early games at a reasonable hour (11:00am CT equals 9:30pm IST). In fact,as I type this, I'm flipping back and forth between Arkansas/Georgia and Michigan/Umass (Michigan just scored and seems to be pulling away).

This week, however, is a special week. Those same beloved Iowa Hawkeyes are playing a night game on the west coast. So the 9:30pm CT kick off works out perfect for a live breakfast broadcast at 8:00am IST. And yes, that breakfast will likely include one of the two remaining IPA's in the fridge to mark the occasion.

Part of the expat experience includes giving up things that are familiar and comfortable; the obvious upside to that is that you're able to immerse yourself in a new culture and experience things you'd never expect. I'm willing to put that immersion on hold for three plus hours each Sunday morning for a return to "normalcy" (and no, normalcy isn't drinking alone on my couch at 8:00am on a Sunday morning).

Go Hawks!