A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 28
This is the fourth year in a row I’ve run this series in April.
Today’s story: Pro Football Makes a Play for India:
MUMBAI, India — On a recent Saturday morning, nearly 20 players from the Mumbai Gladiators football team went through their weekly drills and scrimmage at the popular Juhu Beach, in the suburbs north of this sprawling city of 14 million.
Dressed in red T-shirts and black shorts, the players engaged in a 90-minute practice that resembled a touch football game among friends rather than a gathering of professionals chasing dreams of fame and fortune. Elderly people and families out for walks appeared confused as they passed by. One couple approached the men to ask what game they were playing.
So it goes for the hundreds of athletes trying to catch on with the Elite Football League of India, a new and curious venture aimed at introducing American football to India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and other countries in Asia. It is a perhaps quixotic undertaking, but it could prove to be lucrative should the game achieve some measure of popularity within the vast population of potential fans.
“When you first watch the games, it’s laughable,” said Richard Whelan, one of the founders and co-chief executive of the league. “But if you watch it for more than five minutes, you want to know how it ends. It’s an absolute joke compared to the N.F.L. But it’s not a joke compared to anything else on Indian sports television, and that’s all we’re going up against.”
One potential audience could be the tens of thousands of young people who have spent time in the United States. Amit Paranjape, a 41-year-old software entrepreneur who studied at the University of Wisconsin and lived in Dallas for 12 years, is a fan of the Packers and the Cowboys. He was excited when he learned about the league but was disappointed that none of the games would be played in Pune, where he lives and which has an E.F.L.I. team, the Marathas.
Later, he found the league’s games on television, but he said he changed the channel after a few plays because the level of competition was less compelling than an American high school football game.
“It was like a bad dream,” he said.
Indeed, in E.F.L.I. games, quarterbacks frequently throw wobbly passes that are often dropped or intercepted. In a game between the Gladiators and the Colombo Lions, a Lions running back who apparently thought he had reached the end zone spiked the ball on the 4-yard line. One of his teammates recovered the ball and scored, but the Lions missed the extra point. A Gladiators receiver then fumbled the ball on the ensuing kickoff.
Many players found the sport by chance. Rahul Kelaskar, a 24-year-old wide receiver for the Gladiators, was recruited when Whelan spotted him working at a hotel in Mumbai. Kelaskar is 6 feet 5 inches but weighs 125 pounds, earning him the nickname Sticks from his coaches.
Despite knowing little about the sport and over the opposition of his parents, with whom he lives, Kelaskar quit his 30,000-rupee-a-month ($555) job at the hotel to join the Gladiators, who pay their players about 15,000 rupees ($277) a month.
Despite the league’s shaky prospects, Kelaskar dreams of becoming “the Jerry Rice of India” and is convinced that he made the right choice.
“I have age in my hand,” he said. “If I play for three years and if the league doesn’t work, I can come back into the corporate field and maybe I will struggle to find a job but I will be O.K.”
There is a legacy of bad-sports-teams-get-good in Hollywood. The Bad News Bears, Cool Runnings, The Mighty Ducks, Major League. Combine that with the BRIC [Brazil-Russia-India-China] element… well, at least the “I” part… toss in a crusty American football coach with a checkered background finding himself in a big honking FOOW [Fish-Out-Of-Water] situation…
Voila! You got yourself a movie!
How about you? What would you do with this story idea?
Each day this month, I invite you to join me in comments to do some brainstorming. Gender bend, genre bend, what if. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when we play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.
See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.
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