Seeing a pack of Asian stu- dents headed to the library on a Saturday isn't an un- common sight at Hopkins. But last Saturday afternoon, they weren't headed to D-level. The crowd stopped just shy of MSE at the Beach. And they had no intentions of studying.
They were there for one reason and one reason only: to beat the crap out of each other.
The students were gathered at the Beach for the 2005 Rice Bowl, the annual football game between the Chinese Students Association (CSA) and the Korean Students Association (KSA). The no-pads, tackle gridiron battle is the only football game you'll ever see where the players' last names have more X's than the playbooks.
Last spring, I participated in a just-for-kicks touch-football game that featured two of the least athletically-inclined student groups on campus, The News-Letter and Student Council. The game was punctuated by terribly executed plays and frequent pizza-and-soda breaks. Unfortunately, it won't be available on ESPN Classic for at least a couple of years.
Anyways while walking over to my first Rice Bowl, I expected pretty much the same thing. But I couldn't have been more wrong -- the two teams actually cared. They played like something was actually at stake.
Who knows -- maybe for them, something was.
The two teams went blow-for-blow for an unrelenting hour, playing in front of a large, enthusiastic crowd that several varsity sports at Hopkins could only dream of attracting.
In the end, the CSA proved to be no match for the larger, better-practiced KSA, who easily won, 65-14. Picture Tiananmen Square if the tanks didn't stop.
If you weren't at the game, I know what you're thinking -- football isn't really the sport of choice for Asian-Americans. Other than Norm Chow and Timmy Chang, there haven't been many role models to emerge, and let's not pretend that young Asian-American kids are plastering their bedroom walls with posters of a guy who was a fourth-string backup to Joey Harrington for about a week.
But the game was well played, and the players probably have enough bruises, grass stains and ripped shirts to vouch for their effort. Still, the real star of the game was the bitter tension between the two student groups, evidenced by the frequent late hits, contested calls and bouts of swearing that erupted from both sides.
"It's kind of like the Red Sox and the Yankees," said junior Kevin Kim, the captain of the KSA team. "There's a lot of tension, but there's also a lot of respect between the teams."
"Yeah, except those teams are good," added one of his teammates.
And apparently, this wasn't the first year that the game turned into a Far East Side Story.
"It's always been like that," said Alex Huang, a Hopkins graduate who took a break from classes at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine to -support the CSA team and ended up getting roped into playing quarterback late in the game. "The rivalry really makes the game more fun. But it can get out of hand."
The rivalry was fueled by the fact that the CSA's massive offensive line was made up of several players who would have a hard time convincing anyone that they're of Chinese descent.
"It was more like the Caucasian Students Association," said Kim.
But members of the CSA team attested that their ethnically-diverse squad wasn't simply the result of a country of 1.3 billion people being unable to field a seven-man team.
"The CSA isn't about Chinese people, it's about promoting Chinese culture," said junior Joe Xue. "Most of the guys who played come to CSA events and meetings. They're as much a part of the club as Chinese people who don't show up to meetings."
Both teams admitted that the rivalry was friendly, and Kim even mocked my attempts to uncover a more deep-seeded origin of the feud.
"It's because we score higher on the SATs" he said, managing to keep a straight face for several moments before breaking into a smile.
After the game, both squads gathered up for team cheers, met at midfield to shake hands and began to walk home. The question of which student group could put forth a more dominant football team had been answered, and thus only one question -- posed by a member of the CSA-- remained.
"So, who's going to the library now?"
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