UNION JACK CLASSIC
Wembley Stadium has staged just about everything football has to offer. On Saturday, it added another chapter to its history: College Football. Kansas and Arizona State crossed the Atlantic for a Week 3 matchup that brought the sights, sounds and spectacle of a fall Saturday in America to the heart of London.
LONDON BECOMES THE CENTER OF EUROPEAN FOOTBALL
For one Saturday in September, London became the center of the College Football world.
The British capital is hardly a stranger to American football. After years of hosting NFL regular-season games, London has grown accustomed to jerseys taking over the Underground, tailgates outside major stadiums and thousands of visiting fans turning a weekend overseas into a football pilgrimage.
College Football, however, was something different. Neither the Kansas Jayhawks nor the Arizona State Sun Devils had ever taken their programs across the Atlantic. And for the first Union Jack Classic, there could hardly have been a more fitting stage than Wembley Stadium. The only question was whether the fans would show up. And they did.
A crowd of 46,523 filled Wembley, including roughly 15,000 fans who had traveled from the United States specifically for the game (around 9,000 supporting Arizona State and another 6,000 following Kansas).
For much of the week, though, you could have been forgiven for not realizing a major College Football game was about to take place. There were pep rallies, marching bands, cheerleaders and mascots around the city, but London is a metropolis of nearly 10 million people. Even several thousand traveling fans can disappear quickly into its streets.
Saturday morning changed everything. From early in the day, Wembley Way began filling with maroon and gold, crimson and blue, and just about every other football color imaginable.
The main tailgate quickly came alive, while the FOX Big Noon Kickoff stage added some serious College Football star power, with Brady Quinn, Urban Meyer, Mark Ingram II and Matt Leinart among the familiar faces helping set the scene outside the stadium.
Jayhawks and Sun Devils fans mixed with the wonderfully unpredictable European football crowd: supporters wearing jerseys from schools in every corner of America, NFL teams from every division and enough different helmets and logos to turn Wembley Way into a walking encyclopedia of the sport.
For a few hours, London no longer felt like a city simply hosting a College Football game.
Wembley felt like a little piece of Saturday afternoon in America had been dropped into Europe.
THE GAME ITSELF
The first College Football game ever played at Wembley was never going to be remembered as an offensive shootout. It didn't need to be. Instead, Kansas and Arizona State delivered big plays, momentum swings and enough late drama to keep the outcome alive deep into the fourth quarter.
Arizona State struck first with a field goal, but Kansas answered with the first truly historic moment of the afternoon. Tate Nagy fielded a punt and took it 72 yards to the house, scoring the first College Football touchdown ever recorded at Wembley Stadium.
Kansas led 7-3, and for much of the opening half the Jayhawks looked like the team most capable of controlling the game.
But a poor Kansas punt shortly before halftime handed Arizona State possession at the Jayhawks' 25-yard line. The Sun Devils wasted no time taking advantage, as Cutter Boley immediately found Reed Harris for a touchdown. And just like that, Arizona State went into the locker room with a 10-7 lead.
Then came the biggest punch of the afternoon. The second half had barely begun when Jaren Hamilton took the opening kickoff 100 yards for a touchdown. The stadium erupted, and suddenly the Sun Devils were up 17-7.
Kansas continued to move the football better than Arizona State for long stretches, but the Jayhawks simply could not stop hurting themselves.
Then, in the fourth quarter, came perhaps the most unlikely highlight of the day. Kansas put the ball on the ground and Hyrum Vaeono, a defensive lineman weighing more than 300 pounds, scooped it up and rumbled 77 yards downfield, carrying the ball all the way to the doorstep of the end zone before finally being brought down.
For a moment, every neutral fan inside Wembley was willing the big man those final few yards. He didn't quite make it, but Arizona State did on the next sequence, with Boley finishing the job to make it 24-7.
That looked like the knockout blow, but Kansas had other ideas. Nagy, already responsible for the game's first touchdown, struck again with a 38-yard score. A later field goal pulled the Jayhawks within one possession at 24-17 and, suddenly, Wembley had a game again.
Kansas needed one last defensive stop to get the football back, but Boley made sure it never came. The Sun Devils quarterback picked up the decisive first down with his legs, allowing Arizona State to drain the remaining clock and close out a 24-17 victory.
The final numbers show a differente story: Kansas finished with 414 yards of total offense. Arizona State had just 228. But the Jayhawks also turned the football over three times.
MORE YEARS TO COME
If the first Union Jack Classic was designed as a proof of concept, consider the concept proven.
The crowd was there, the atmosphere was there and most importantly, the event felt like more than simply a football game dropped into an unfamiliar stadium.
From the tailgate and marching bands to the cheerleaders, live music and College Football pageantry, organizers understood that what makes the sport special is everything surrounding those sixty minutes on the field.
There is, of course, room to grow: Merchandising was probably the most obvious missed opportunity. Throughout the week, both programs had flooded social media with London-themed caps, shirts and special-edition Union Jack Classic gear. Yet surprisingly little of it found its way to the merchandise stands available to fans in Britain. For an event attracting thousands of supporters who had traveled thousands of miles, alongside European fans attending their first major College Football game, the appetite for exclusive merchandise was clearly there.
The tailgate itself could also expand in future editions. There was plenty of space, the atmosphere was excellent and the crowd arrived early, but more interactive fan experiences would help bring the event even closer to the kind of all-day football festival familiar to American audiences.
On the entertainment side, however, there was little to complain about. Live performances and the DJ kept Wembley Way moving throughout the day and provided the perfect soundtrack as thousands of fans made their way toward the stadium.
Those are refinements, not fundamental problems, because the number that matters most is this one:
More than 46,000 people came to Wembley to watch College Football. Around 15,000 of them crossed the Atlantic specifically to be there.
Saturday showed there is room for College Football here, too. If this is only the beginning, we have one message for the organizers: WE'LL SEE YOU AT THE NEXT UNION JACK CLASSIC.
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