College football makes British debut as Wembley Way turns tailgate
Thousands of fans packed Wembley Way for the first top-tier American college football game staged on British soil, with a Fox broadcast crew turning the concourse into an outdoor studio.
Wembley Way was transformed into an American-style tailgate on Saturday as college football staged its first top-tier fixture on British soil, according to Guardian US Sport.
The 500-yard concourse leading to Wembley Stadium, normally associated with the build-up to English football fixtures, instead filled with fans waving placards and chanting college anthems as they made their way to the ground.
Fox's Big Noon Kickoff Show set up a temporary studio outside the venue, broadcasting live to an American audience and giving British passers-by an unusual glimpse of a US sporting institution landing in their own backyard.
Presenters Brady Quinn, Mark Ingram II, Matt Leinart and Urban Meyer fronted the coverage, discussing the fixture with both head coaches before the teams took to the field.
In one of the stranger scenes of the day, the four hosts ate fish and chips on air in front of a fake Grenadier guard, blending British tourist imagery with the trappings of American sports broadcasting.
The atmosphere around the studio and along Wembley Way carried the noise and colour of a US campus game day, with the crowd's chanting and tailgate energy giving the concourse a character rarely seen outside spring and autumn Saturdays in the United States.
The fixture follows a run of NFL games staged successfully in London in recent years, a trend that has gradually built appetite among British audiences for American football beyond its professional ranks.
Photographer Tom Jenkins documented the build-up in detail, capturing the broadcast set-up, the fans streaming down Wembley Way and the spectacle of a college football occasion transplanted several thousand miles from its usual home.
The event marks a fresh milestone in the sport's expansion beyond the United States, with Saturday's game standing as the first of its kind at the top level to be played in Britain.