The Hamburg Huskies - Football?

-Tom's Turn


On the plane trip, following a short leg to Chicago we went on the long leg to London.   I sat next to a German fellow who, it turns out, was from Hamburg.  Or rather he had recently moved to Hamburg from Kiel, as he had switched jobs.  He was the manager and marketing director of the American Football league team Hamburg Huskies.  The team is manned with German players who work during the day and then play American football as a hobby.  The Hamburg Huskies drew 500-600 paying fans each game last season, and this fellow was brought in based on his success at getting over 2,000 fans to the Kiel Blue Devils games last year.  So when you are in Germany and hear somebody mention football, don’t always assume they are talking about soccer.  Okay, you can go ahead and assume 99.9 % of the time, given the ratio of European soccer to American football fans here.  You can check out the Huskies' website a www.goeagles.de/ (they may be getting their mascots a bit mixed up!)