Colts arrive in Germany, face Patriots on Sunday
The Indianapolis Colts arrive in Germany to face the New England Patriots on Sunday.
Joel A. Erickson/IndyStar
FRANKFURT, Germany — Arguably the biggest Colts fan in Europe was there to greet the team as Indianapolis landed on the continent Friday.
George Eghator has spent years building a sizable following as one of the biggest American football fans in the United Kingdom, to the point that he’s become one of the country’s most influential voices on the sport.
The team he chose to support long ago just happens to be the Colts.
Eghator was in Frankfurt on Friday, seated in the second row of the interview room as the team made its appearance for practice at Stadium am Bornheimer Hang, wearing a blue and white Colts jacket and lobbing questions at head coach Shane Steichen, quarterback Gardner Minshew and left tackle Bernhard Raimann.
He loves the game so much that he played it in the United Kingdom for 11 years.
Now, he’s become one of the sports chief ambassadors.
“My passion, my love, my interest in the sport is real,” Eghator said. “When you can tell someone’s passionate about something, it comes out in the content they create.”
Eghator grew up playing rugby, and he intended on playing the sport at the university — Americans would call it college — level. When he got to the University of Brighton, though, he realized he was too far away from his rugby team to keep playing.
American football seemed like the next best thing.
“What I could see was the contact part of the sport, and I’m a physical guy,” Eghator said. “I decided to give it a try, went down for a trial and never looked back.”
Eghator, 18 at the time, settled into a natural role as a running back for the Brighton Tsunamis, then eventually moved on after graduation to the London Blitz and Kent Exiles of the BAFA National Leagues.
“It used to be sponsored by Budweiser and Coca-Cola,” Eghator said. “We have guys who coach in the NFL who used to play in the U.K.”
Injuries forced Eghator to retire two years ago, after 11 total seasons as a player.
But his love of the game might be stronger than ever, like his love of the Colts.
A love that happened almost by accident.
“The first I played the game Madden, I told myself whatever team shows up, that’s the first team I’m going to pick,” Eghator said. “It just happened to be the Peyton Manning era, so I rode with that.”
Indianapolis has become his team, and he’s hosted Colts.com writer J.J. Stankevitz on his podcast, George On Sports, several times.
Eghator’s love of the sport, though, extends beyond Indianapolis, and it’s put him in a position to be in the Colts press conferences in Frankfurt on Friday night.
“Anything that happens in the U.K., you see my face there,” Eghator said.
Eghator is hoping to be in Las Vegas for the Super Bowl this season, adding the NFL’s biggest game to his already-packed schedule.
He’s been noticed by plenty of NFL-mad fans in Europe. Eghator is an earnest partner of the NFL in the U.K., and he’s big enough that he’s hosted NFL Network anchor Stacey Dales and Fox Sports rules analyst Dean Blandino, a former referee, on his podcast, in addition to the appearances by Colts personalities.
Officially, his title is content creator.
But Eghator’s reach goes beyond social media.
“He brings you color from game day on social media, mixed with insight into the game as a former player himself,” Sky sports NFL editor Cameron Hogwood said. “When they bring the games to London, he’s one of our leading faces on social media across social platforms, in terms of bringing the game to life in the U.K. He’s also one of my favorite colleagues.”
Eghator wants to see the game keep growing, push through the plateau that can happen after the exponential growth in interest that’s happening in places like Germany and Austria.
“There was a lot of history in the U.K.,” Eghator said. “It’s not quite there anymore. It has dipped slightly, but Europe as a whole, there are certain opportunities.”
Opportunities he wants to make sure every fan knows is there.
For example, any player from 16 to 19 can now enter the NFL Academy, which opened in 2019 and develops young athletes into players capable of playing at the collegiate level in the United States, anything from the FBS to the junior college ranks.
If that had been around when Eghator was younger, if he’d known much about the sport before he turned 18, who knows how far his career might have gone.
“I really wish I’d known about the sport from a younger age,” Eghator said “I would have tried to make it as high as possible.”
Instead, he’s become one of the sport’s most visible advocates in Europe, a crusader for football who also happens to be a diehard Colts fan.