There are a few downsides to being a foreign student in the U.S., from the steep learning curve of a new academic system—what’s a GPA? I have to do homework? And midterms?—to the fact that even now, I occasionally get confused looks when using particularly British words or phrases. Oh, and that on more than one occasion, someone has—in all seriousness—asked me who the Queen is. When it comes to sport, though, it’s all good.

Sure, I can feel a little homesick when I realize no one around me has even the faintest clue about vitally important sports news back on the other side of the pond, and it’s worrying that even in this globally connected world, it can be far too easy to lose touch with those events myself. But being a stranger in a strange land has some serious advantages.

Back home, it doesn’t take too much to expose the gaps in my sports knowledge. The soccer team I support isn’t in the top English league, so my awareness of the cutting edge of the sport can be a bit lacking, and even then, I rarely go to games because I just can’t afford the week-on-week drain on my bank account. And though I watch my fair share of sports on TV, I still can’t measure up to the time put in by serious devotees.

In the U.S., though, all the cracks in my identity as a fan don’t matter. Not because the bright, mysterious world of American sports helps patch over those—when it comes to my American sporting knowledge, those cracks can turn into bottomless chasms—but simply because I’m not a local. I don’t do a good American accent, so as soon as I speak, people’s expectations of me as a fan are different.

If I didn’t know the basic rules of soccer, I might feel a little unworthy back in Europe, but here I can ask the most stupid questions and get generally patient answers. I do have to occasionally deal with someone explaining to me why my foreign sports are so inferior, but that’s a two-way street. I reckon I could get away with saying pretty much anything about American sports, because when it comes down to it, most people will write these outbursts off. I didn’t grow up in this particular sports culture, so I’m not really expected to “get it.” I can earn forgiveness just by breaking out my charming accent.

But that brings up another issue. Like with any good infomercial host, I also—perhaps worryingly—think that people sometimes turn to me for an expert opinion on overseas sports. For some reason, I’ve watched my fair share of these feature-length adverts in the past, and a defining aspect of pretty much all of them is the point when they roll out the “British expert.” This is invariably someone who is apparently famous back home (though unknown to me) with a pronounced, supposedly British accent. All I need to do, then, is crank up the Britishness a notch and suddenly people start to trust that I really know what I’m talking about.

The whole point of going out into the world is to broaden your horizons, though, and that is really why spending a few years of my life in the U.S. is a great thing, especially as a sports fan. I won’t flatter the Americans reading this by claiming that I have been completely won over by sports here—I’m not about to switch my loyalties—but there’s definitely something about US sports that’s truly unique in the world. It’s not necessarily a better way of doing things, but simply a different one.

Instead of trying to make comparisons or even find those things that I think are done better over here, perhaps it’s better to explain that the best thing about American sports is their newness to me. There’s always a new rule to learn, new tactics to understand, fresh allegiances to be taken up and new chants to shout out. It’s a bit like learning a new language: picking up those first few words—like learning to say hello and count to 10—is far more exciting than fine-tuning my grasp on my own mother tongue.