College Football, U.S.-Style, Takes Hold in Mexico
Cox News Service
Friday, November 16, 2007
ATIZAPAN, Mexico — It's Saturday afternoon, the hot dogs are slathered in jalapeños, and the stadium is already rocking, two hours before kickoff.
In the sprawling suburbs of Mexico City, it's time for some college football.
 JEREMY SCHWARTZ/Cox Newspapers Teams on the field at the 'Plastic Stockyard,' the home field of the Savage Sheep of Monterrey Tech's Mexico State campus during a semifinal football game against the National Polytechnic University.  JEREMY SCHWARTZ/Cox Newspapers A fan of the Savage Sheep of Monterrey Tech's Mexico State campus watches a semifinal game.  JEREMY SCHWARTZ/Cox Newspapers Fans of the White Eagles, the team from the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, watches attentively during a semifinal match.  JEREMY SCHWARTZ/Cox Newspapers A fan of the White Eagles, the team from the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico City, watches attentively during a semifinal match.  JEREMY SCHWARTZ/Cox Newspapers Announcers call the game between the White Eagles of the National Polytechnic Institute and the Savage Sheep of Monterrey Tech State of Mexico Campus in Atizapan, a suburb of Mexico City. The Savage Sheep won and head to the finals Friday night (Nov. 16) |
Although it toils under the imposing shadow of soccer, college football is blossoming south of the border, selling out stadiums from Monterrey to Mexico City. Its fiercely loyal fan base is spawning a generation of young people who prefer pigskin to penalty kicks.
"The sport is just tough, it's exciting," said Luis Angel Gamboa, a third-year student at National Polytechnic Institute. "The emotion, the adrenaline, the nerves. I like the way they blast each other."
On this recent game day at a stadium perched dramatically in the hills of the Valley of Mexico, fans scream themselves hoarse with off-color taunts and wave giant team flags.
It's the Savage Sheep vs. the White Eagles, a semifinal playoff game featuring the hardscrabble public university, National Polytechnic Institute, and its working class fans vs. the posh Monterrey Tech campus in the state of Mexico.
"This is as good as it gets for us," said Daniel Flores, a retired professor at the National Polytechnic Institute, decked out in full White Eagles regalia. "It's just like up (in the United States), but the spirit is even more fanatical here."
Football's roots in Mexico run deep, fueled mostly by returning migrants and the emergence in the 1970s of televised NFL games.
Mexico City's Azteca Stadium boasts the NFL's all-time attendance record (112,376 for a 1994 pre-season game between the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Oilers) and Mexican TV networks broadcast NFL games every Sunday.
A popular Mexico City movie theater chain even shows Monday Night Football on its big screens.
But for live football, serious fans turn to the nation's 12-team college league, which is fed by hundreds of peewee teams and a growing number of high schools.
"It's a very passionate fan base," said Alejandro Morales, director of the Mexican football hall of fame. "We have a big infrastructure for football in Mexico that a lot of people don't know about."
Universities have been playing football in Mexico since the 1920's and the ONEFA, Mexico's football-only version of the NCAA, was formed in 1978. The league originally drew its popularity from Mexico City's massive public schools, but private schools in the north have come to dominate in recent years.
College football here is played on a much smaller scale than in the United States, with just a single 12-team league in its highest division. Stadiums resemble the fields at large U.S. high schools, nothing like the mammoth stadiums at the University of Georgia or the University of Texas.
The level of play is comparable to small U.S. colleges and for the last 20 years Mexican college all-stars have played NCAA Division III standouts in the annual Aztec Bowl. This year's game will be played in Chihuahua, Mexico on Dec. 6.
The league's quality is steadily improving, analysts and scouts say.
The ONEFA has sent two offensive linemen, Rolando Cantu and Ramiro Pruneda, to the NFL in recent years. More than 20 graduates of the Mexican league have played in the NFL Europe, which was known as a pipeline for Mexican players before it folded earlier this year.
Mexican coaches regularly travel to coaching clinics at American universities like Florida State and the University of Texas, learning the latest NCAA strategies and techniques.
"Obviously that's helping the quality of the league," said ONEFA president Alfredo Trejo.
The league also imports players from the United States, mostly from high schools in the southwest.
Mexico's most successful team, Monterrey Tech, has a Laredo, Texas-raised coach and regularly recruits cross-border talent. That's helped turn Monterrey into a juggernaut, winning the last three league championships. The team goes for its fourth consecutive title Friday night (Nov. 16) in a game televised on ESPN Deportes.
Star linebacker Manuel Padilla exemplifies the team's bi-national success. After graduating high school in California's Imperial Valley, the Mexico-born Padilla ended up in Monterrey after getting recruited by Tech coaches.
He said that while growing up he didn't even know college football existed in Mexico, but that he's gotten an opportunity to shine, so much so that the graduating senior will try out for NFL scouts next spring.
" I see Monterrey as a good jump to the next level," Padilla said. "We have great players here. ... In five years you're going to see a lot more (Mexican) players in the NFL."