My first Broncos game left me frozen | Pius Kamau

The NFL season is upon the land.

It reminds me of the first football game that I attended soon after I arrived in Colorado.

I remember it well because of the circumstances of our attendance my surgical Chief and I.

After rounds at the hospital my boss said he had car troubles and asked me to take him to the Broncos stadium.

He also had an extra ticket.

No other surgical chief had ever asked me for a favor nor offered me anything away from the narrow confines of wards, ORs, ERs.

This was therefore an honor.

It was snowing and my attire light jacket and shirt, no gloves was more suited for summer than an early winters snow storm.

I remember sitting close to the field, large men running to and fro, crashing into each other, playing a game I was unfamiliar with.

As my teeth chattered, we were exposed to howling winds and freezing water on the ground.

Snow fell on my bare head, as my hands and feet slowly grew numb.

Amidst this new experience, watching a game that so many people, including my boss, seemed to be enjoying enormously, I silently, patiently endured the three hours.

But it was my fault.

I should have gone to the covered part of the stadium that was better protected from the elements and therefore warmer.

Sadly, I was in foreign territory, my boss an unknown mystery.

I have never been tempted to attend another game.

That said, I remain curious about football players: the sumo-like offensive tackles, the speed-of-light wide receivers running on the slippery ground, scoring to the crowds frenzied approval.

Most of the players were Black.

There were no Black quarterbacks then.

White lore had it that Blacks lacked the intelligence to captain a team.

In time I enjoyed John Elways two Superbowl wins.

In time it occurred to me that the more I appreciated the nuance of the game, the better I understood America and the importance of sports to its peoples psyche.

I appreciate my fellow citizens passion for their sports.

They often remind me of my former boss, who, absorbed in the game, was unaware that his driver sitting beside him was freezing.

Societies use sports as a way of identity.

I often hear new arrivals to Colorado declare their loyalty to former home teams; be they Giants, RedSkins or New England Patriots.

It initially made no sense to me.

Then I began seeing that these teams are more than a group of overfed men.

Rather, the transplants identify with a community that has that one thing in common.

Similarly school teams draw allegiance of alumni for their entire lives.

In my pre-US days, soccer was the one game the whole world played and competed in.

In Kenya, we played soccer barefoot.

All you needed was a ball made of balled up newspapers, or bunched up rags, an open field and four sticks for goal posts.

After I graduated to a multiracial college with a concomitant sartorial transformation, I was for a short time a Rugby champion.

Rugby was played in White schools only, but our college, the only multiracial school in Africa, was an exception.

Another sport played by Asians and Whites of colonial Kenya was cricket.

Blacks were not allowed to join cricket clubs.

Growing up, racial separation was total: in schools, social events, worship, employment.

Colonialism was Apartheid with a different moniker.

In many ways the games we play are determined by our place in the social order.

Also, changes in that order can be observed as the games we play are played by more of us.

The recent Olympics demonstrated that quite nicely; with a few more Blacks in swimming pools; more colored people in Judo and gymnastics.

Simone Biles hauled 11 Olympic medals and a lifetime total of 106 medals.

During the British colonial era, our rulers children played tennis, cricket, rugby and many other sports.

Soccer and track filled our days.

We ran barefoot for millennia.

To show progress since independence, many African teams competed in a variety of sports traditionally reserved for colonizing powers.

Basketball, soccer, Taekwondo, are good examples.

Given time more countries will compete in gymnastics, tennis and other sports.

Watching from the comfort of my couch, I see Black QBs, and Black team owners.

I hear America sing about their own work, their own life.

Like the growth of a tree, progress is often imperceptible.

Pius Kamau, M.D., a retired general surgeon, is president of the Aurora-based Africa America Higher Education Partnerships; co-founder of the Africa Enterprise Group and an activist for minority students STEM education.

He is a National Public Radio commentator, a Huffington Post blogger, a past columnist for Denver dailies and is featured on the podcast, Never Again..

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