A common saying in the USA suggests that: “There's no ‘I’ in TEAM”. A simple phrase able to point out a literal and conceptual truth that our basketball coach kept reminding us each time we set foot on the court. The main problem with this particular saying, though, is that you can't always translate it in other languages. Not in my mother tongue, Italian: “Non c'è alcuna ‘I’ in SQUADRA”?, of course not. Not in French: “Il n'y a aucune ‘I’ dans l’équipe?”, of course yes. And so on. In mid-August 1998, at seventeen years old, after two and a half days of no sleep (I was too excited) I reached a fairly hot Akron, Ohio. My Italian (adoptive) parents wanted me to learn English somewhere so I temporarily left my daily life in Milan to attend the senior year at the Conotton Valley High School. My very first time in the US happened during the highest wave of the American entertainment industry influenced by the imminent digital era. “The Miss-education of Lauryn Hill” just dropped and movies like Good will Hunting and American History X were exploding overseas. Moreover, the Columbine massacre made us all watch over our shoulders for the last few weeks of the school year. 

My new American parents, Pat and Larry Sherhags, were waiting for me at the bus station hoping that the numerous flights, taxis and busses would bring me safe and sound all the way to my new home. Pat, then 60, a very patient and funny woman, still worked at the Hospice of Tuscarawas County, we’re still in touch to this day. Larry, then 62, voracious reader of war and history books, died a few years ago, he used to work for W & LE railroad. They were both devout Catholic and we used to go to mass every Sunday at 7am at Our Lady of Mercy church in Carlton, a 40-minute drive from their home. In 2011, Pat and Larry celebrated their 50^th wedding anniversary. I met three of their four children, the last one died young because of permanent health issues. Extremely nice people, all of them, I got very lucky. After forty years in the railroads, Larry and Pat decided to go and live the last decades of their lives surrounded by nature, in a green spot called Leesville Lake, a place bustling with cheerful people during the summer holiday but extremely quiet for pretty much the rest of the year. Since their children were living in California (Shelly), Florida (Gabe), and Oregon or Washington State (Roger) with their own families, Pat and Larry welcomed for the first time an exchange-student into their home for the school year: me. 

The Conotton Valley High School lies peacefully on a hill overlooking a two-lane freeway in the middle of nowhere and according to Google Map things haven’t changed much since then. After years of watching American television for hours and hours each day back in my room in Milan, attending high school in Ohio was very much like being transported into one of those popular TV shows, Beverly Hills 90210 or Dawson’s Creek type. By that time I saw enough movies to know that high school sports here are taken seriously, very seriously, much more seriously than within the Italian educational system. Therefore the choice to play basketball for the first three months of my stay was not taken lightly. But I wasn’t the only exchange-student at Conotton Valley. We were seven from six different countries and two continents, all of us attending the fourth smallest school in the State with no more than seventy-five seniors. 

Margarita was from Ecuador, always smiling and open hearted, she could speak Spanish with Daniel, a short, very extrovert Mexican guy. Julian, reserved, tall, blondish, from Poland, he could speak his mother tongue with a Polish girl whose name I can’t unfortunately remember but she was very nice. The same goes for another girl from Hungary, the quietest voice in our group, so difficult to hear her all the time. After a few months I stopped struggling until one day, towards the end of the experience, I discovered she always spoke perfect English. Last but most definitely not least, Benjamin. French, 6.4, taller than me and Julian (both 6.2), a black dude from the dangerous banlieues of Paris, bit of a hothead back then. He was very critical of the US but he was soon engaged to one of our local classmates, a sweetheart, Jennifer I think, they might still live in Ohio…

For what I know, in 1998 no American high school had accepted a group of so many exchange-students altogether during one single year, or that was the legend. All you could hear from other exchange-students and programs spread across the country, from New York State to California, from Washington State to Montana, Wyoming and Virginia (to name just a few), it was a maximum of four exchange-students enrolled in mostly big schools, where thousands attended. Most high schools had probably only one exchange-student, maybe two. That year was of course life-changing and kind of brainwashed me for a while. One example: at each game, whether I was playing or not, I used to proudly sing the American national anthem, word for word, with the right hand on my heart. We don’t usually do much of that back in Europe. 

THE GAME

All was going pretty well, I enjoyed my first strange encounter with the jet lag, but few weeks in, with the basketball season ready to start, the Conotton Valley High school found itself in a bit of a…controversy. The five players of the first team were all from different countries. Benjamin (African-French contortionist style), Julian (a Polish wall difficult to penetrate), Daniel (a Mexican “now you see the ball, now you don’t”) and me (African-Italian, blocks and rebounds mostly). We weren’t basketball prodigies, none of us could really shoot, and that’s why Tony Markle, the captain, was there with us. Nevertheless, the four exchange-students were better than the rest of the players at Conotton Valley and that became an issue almost right away.

After days of crazy practice we lost the first game. I was a bit nervous, Benjamin was too much of a selfish hothead, and Julian and Daniel were not at their best. Tony couldn’t carry all of us. For the second game Benjamin couldn’t play because of a leg-injury sustained at home, therefore a second local player entered the first team. This time we won. Not so much for the last player that joined us (good at elbowing the heck off of everybody, even his teammates) but because I felt I knew what I had to do, Julian and Daniel were at their best, and Tony was much more generous with the assists. He was shy, very insecure, we talked to each other mainly during the games and only if necessary. On the court, though, he wasn’t that shy or insecure. Once we won that second game the Conotton Valley High School was front page news in the local Ohio paper. Benjamin came in the locker-room right after the game with stats and gave me his analysis: I scored twelve points in the first quarter and twelve in the last, plus a few rebounds and blocks here and there. The entire school seemed genuinely happy because it wasn’t particularly known for its sports achievements. 

Unfortunately this success couldn’t last. Something was already boiling underneath. After losing the third game by playing good but not good enough, I heard someone screaming in the hallways just outside the locker-room. I got closer and put myself behind our coach, the main target of those screams. The mother of one of the local players from the second team was really angry, shouting from the depth of her lungs. Her son hadn’t played enough during the games and that was not ok with both parents. What was the coach trying to do? They probably waited sixteen years to see their boy playing during his senior and last year of high school, just before heading off to college, and now the party was over because of some foreign students? It made a lot of sense in a way. The mother kept yelling and even if I couldn’t understand most of it (I had just arrived, my English was still terrible), we’re all humans. She had fire in her eyes. Pretty soon we all knew that these exchange-students were becoming a real problem, at least as far as basketball was concerned. So yeah, just like in the movies, sports were taken very seriously. We prayed at the beginning of each game, we’d go to the gym more often than not, practice every day like there was no tomorrow, and when the school closed for two weeks in early December (thanks to a snowstorm) we'd still practice and go to the gym. It was quite intense.

THE COACH

I felt bad for the situation but mainly for the coach. He was younger than most parents and very passionate about the game. He really wanted to win but that wasn’t enough. Therefore he had a choice to make: either trying to win with the best players, even if they came from a different country; or appease the parents with a more local team and lose. The pressure was high for me too. I wanted to play basketball but I didn’t want to upset anybody by trying to contribute the best way I could. In the end our coach chose the parents. Daniel, Julian and I were allowed on the court less and less. During a game I blocked the ball so hard that my opposite player fell abruptly to the ground. All kinds of screams hit me from the public. I was punished with a (false) foul, and a yellow card I think, so the coach took advantage of the situation to bench me after only a few minutes of me playing. Right there and then I probably decided that it wasn’t worth it. I wanted my year abroad to go as smoothly as possible. 

One evening at dinner Larry began complaining about the injustices of that game: “Matteo, that was not foul, I saw it! The referee was wrong! Your hand touched only the ball, the guy just fell to the ground, that was not a foul! The coach was wrong to take you out!” “Don’t worry Larry...”, I would reply trying not to smile too much by looking at Pat. Her and I were not that serious about any sports, we simply wanted to enjoy the game. “By the way, Matteo – Larry continued while eating a wonderful lasagna, they were both great cooks –, I noticed that you don’t play as much anymore, why is that?” I didn’t want to tell him because I knew how he would react. He was not picking me up at practice each day and cheering from the sidelines like a semi-mad man for nothing. He wanted results and rightly so. Therefore I really didn’t want to tell him…but I did. I explained him what happened between one of the mothers and the coach at the end of our third game. The screaming, the yelling, the insults, Larry couldn’t believe it: “It’s not right, the coach needs to understand that it’s not about letting local students play, it’s about the team, it’s about winning, it’s about the whole school!”. He kept going for a while without noticing that I was smiling again, he stopped only once his History Channel documentary was ready to start. He watched TV almost every night until he’d fall asleep on the couch and I could finally take over the remote with a bucket of vanilla ice cream between my hands. Practice came the next day. 

It was one of those cold, rainy, windy evenings in local Ohio. We just finished a few “suicides” (the running back and forth for a while and touching the ground with your hand at each level of the court). As usual, Larry was waiting outside with his grey pickup truck, engine running, taking a 50-minute pause from cooking dinner (about 25 minutes between home and school, a bit longer during winter because of the snow). I don’t know why exactly, Larry probably galvanized me, but I decided to talk to the coach. I didn’t agree with his choice either, it was cowardish. He looked like a young Roger Bart, clean face, a great smile, always ready to listen and help, even during his Government class. He wanted me to believe that he didn’t change anything, that he would allow only the best players in the first team for as long as it was needed but I wasn’t buying it. We both knew the truth. We went on, with total respect, never raising our voices, for at least thirty minutes. That’s when Larry entered the locker-room. 

“Matteo, what’s going on, I’ve been waiting, everything ok?” I told him that I was trying to share with the coach what we talked about at dinner the night before. Poor guy, now it was Larry’s turn. We stayed in and outside that locker-room for at least another hour, Larry wouldn’t stop pushing, making his case for me. The coach was listening, formulating some sort of excuses. He always wanted us to believe that nothing had changed in his strategy. Larry continued arguing alone even in the car on our way back as Pat was waiting for us. I was actually moved for some reason, he really defended my position even if he didn’t have to. The coach kept his strategy going and the parents were probably happy to see their kids play much longer but the Conotton Valley High School lost almost every time. The second time we played with the team we already won against thanks to my 24 points, they got me real good. I was their only mark. It looked like one of those old Chicago Bulls-Detroit Pistons games. They hurt me aggressively and after a while I just let them. It wasn't worth it. The coach, the team and probably half of the Conotton Valley’s parents were of no support. So we lost and we lost big time. After three months of this I was glad the basketball season was over, I could finally focus on enjoying the rest of the year without any kind of sport-pressure. I chose not to play football because I prefer to play rugby, and baseball was somehow too boring for my taste. 

THE PODCAST

During these past several months, almost thirty years later, I discovered “The Joe Rogan Experience”, a podcast with over twenty million subscribers. Quite an impressive and powerful platform. And the guests too, impressive: actors and directors, (ex?) CIA officers, scientists, billionaires, politicians, even the President. The JRE power, I assume, derives from the type of guests and conversations being recorded thanks to a guy whose enthusiasm was also impressive, at the beginning of his experience at least. Many arguments approached during several episodes are really important, they can have quite an impact on US policy and, therefore, on the rest of the world. Joe reminds me of a Conotton Valley’s classmate that seemed to know everything about everything. I’m often skeptical about this kind of people, they always bring me back to the movie “Good Will Hunting”. So I kept watching and researching with the intention of finding that “Sean Maguire-moment” by the lake, a hint of that famous speech given by Robin Williams before Matt Damon’s character stops being a coward and decides to play ball with his therapist. After a few months of watching I finally found it.

For twenty-one seconds, at 1:07:00 of the second Scott Eastwood episode (#1659), Joe seemed very surprised when he realized that not all of Africa is super hot. “Really? – he kept saying to Scott – Not hot in South Africa? Really? But if not hot it’s warm outside, right?” Scott looked a bit embarrassed by that short exchange about a country he lived in while shooting the movie “Invictus” (his third film in three years with his dad, Clint Eastwood). I can therefore confirm that Africa has many regions where it’s cold but just like in the US (and everywhere else) it depends on the altitude, the season, the terrain, etc. Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal, even where I live in Togo, a small, hot, humid country for most of the year, the weather can become much colder than usual. During my experience as an exchange-student in the US I was often asked the strangest things: if in Italy we had orange juice or Thanksgiving. Questions like these were coming even from my genius-classmate or from Americans that thought they didn’t need to go anywhere else to appreciate the beauty of this world. More recently I was asked if we had banks or tennis in Africa. 

More than 20 million subscribers is a big responsibility as many of Joe’s friends pointed out several times on his podcast, putting him in a very defensive mode. From comedy any argument can quickly become local politics and even more quickly “geolocal” politics. As an Italian, trust me, I know what happens when comedians get mixed up in politics. I won’t go into the recent Saudi Comedy Festival controversy, a geopolitical operation carefully managed by US, Israeli and Saudi elites. I don’t expect all comedians to understand it yet, maybe later on when the laughs stop. By the way, Trump just recently showed us what it is to be a real comedian on the world stage, impressive act, he gave a shout out even to my “Young and beautiful Italian Prime Minister”, Giorgia Meloni. Unfortunately I couldn’t stop laughing. I love comedy but it’s not my world, geopolitics is. Comedians (everywhere) need to be really careful not to be manipulated by the geopolitical forces that be, the backlash can be catastrophic, not just for them. Last but not least, apparently Joe doesn’t read the comments and I think it’s a mistake. He should read them, skip the “bot-ones” but read the others, there are some smart and funny people that are trying to contribute the best way they can, even if they’re not Americans. Joe might find a lot more in common with them than with some of his neighbors in Austin. 

Dear Joe, I know you’re realizing day after day how much your voice really matters and, it looks like, has the power to elect a President. But you need to realize also that your podcast has a serious consequences and impact worldwide that keep enlightening different aspects of our societies. We’re not all bots and we’re not all haters, a great deal of people simply wants to help with the interesting discussions concerning our lives. It doesn’t matter from which part of the world your viewers come from, it matters how many parts of the world they want in them to make the conversation more realistic. Outsiders can often help insiders with their different perspectives. I finally learned, always in Scott’s episode, that you would like to cut 30 per cent off of your podcast’s success and I might have the solution: try making your experience more like an exchange program where sometimes you also invite normal people from different countries, experts in their fields, the same fields you’re interested in. It could be a start and your JRE could become a bit smaller but more professional, many out there speak English good enough.

So, dear Joe, from local we need the JRE to get “geolocal” if we want to really better understand the small world we all live in. “Exchange-students”, like the ones at Conotton Valley High School in 1998, can really help your team win. 

MATTEO FRASCHINI KOFFI was born in Togo but grew up in Italy. Since 2005 he’s been based in Africa working as a freelance journalist, writer and filmmaker.