College football’s latest foray into Ireland got a big reaction from visiting Americans in Dublin, where Kansas State is set to open the season against Big 12 conference rival Iowa State on Saturday.
The recurring Aer Lingus College Football Classic series is aimed at bringing tourists from the US into the country, where roughly 30 million Americans can trace their roots. For years, invitees were predominantly Catholic schools, such as Boston College or Notre Dame. Now, though, the series has widened its reach by inviting some larger publicly funded institutions —what the Irish might call ‘National Schools.’
Of course, Americans refer to these as ‘state’ schools, which typically carry that exact word in their official names. Hence: Kansas State University and Iowa State University.
Unfortunately for some local pubs, that naming construct was lost in translation.
‘Funniest thing I have seen in Dublin so far,’ Noah Wolf, an Iowa State announcer, wrote on X. ‘This bar clearly searched ‘Iowa State flag’ and ‘Kansas state flag’ and ordered the first thing that popped up, doing no other research.’
One Dublin bar curiously welcomed the entire state of Kansas and Iowa State football fans
The mistake was actually made by another Dublin bar as well, as seen on social media
The accompanying picture shows the exterior of Tapped, a Dublin pub, with one Cyclones flag above its awning alongside the state flag of Kansas — a blue banner with a crest in the middle. Noticeably absent was any representation of Kansas State University.
‘Well done, Dublin!’ one Cyclones fan wrote online.
Remarkably, Tapped wasn’t the only pub to make this mistake.
The Porterhouse Temple Bar also featured the state flag of Kansas above its awning alongside an Iowa State Cyclones flag.
And these kinds of mistakes actually go back years.
Back in 2016, when Georgia Tech and Boston College squared off in Dublin, one local pub put up a signing promoting a matchup between ‘Georgia’ and ‘Boston,’ with the word ‘tech’ curiously nestled between the two proper nouns.
Big 12 rivals Kansas State and Iowa State are set to open the season Saturday in Dublin
Another respondent on X shared a photo they claimed to have taken in Ireland, showing a man wearing an ‘Indianapolis United States Daytona inter-state international speedway circuit’ t-shirt.
It’s unclear how these two separate American races from rival auto-racing circuits came to occupy the same piece of fabric.
The good news is that these cultural schisms don’t appear to be a detraction for American fans. Aer Lingus expects about 25,000 fans to be flying in for the game at Aviva Stadium.
Asked why his school was invited to play in Dublin, Wildcats coach Chris Klieman made it fairly clear to reporters: ‘I think all the pubs are going to see why.’