Though I am abroad, I am still tuned-in enough to realize that the NFL season is underway in the US. It's already been a few years since I've lost interest in and stopped following football, but in another way I'm more interested in the sport than I've ever been. I am interested in the curiosity that makes football the most popular sport in America (more so than baseball, according to surverys), whereas soccer (fútbol to the rest of the world) remains comparatively irrelevant (less so, though, during the most recent World Cup).
During the World Cup this year I wondered what made Americans resist soccer, and, moreover, why all the sports that are most popular in our country--baseball, football, and basketball--are American inventions. If anyone has a theory on this I'd be curious to hear it. I suspect that the unique melding of American history, which championed individualism and rebellion amidst a belief that America could be the City on the Hill, created a desire for our own way of life. Basically, the same thing that made us resist the metric system and degrees centigrade made someone pick up a stick and a rock and invent baseball. I imagine that Americans resist soccer today not just because it is foreign, but because the very concept of the sport jars them: in American sport, the individual superstar inevitably rises above the team, his triumphs being most obvious and irrefutable; in soccer, the best player on the field might not play into the climactic goal at all, his production a mere part of the overall team harmony. Soccer is much more geared to a continent that more readily understands and embraces the ideology of socialism, as Europe tends to do, whereas Americans seem more comfortable championing the pursuit of homerun records and quantifiable accolades. To each their own.
Spain sits atop the soccer world right now, and it's just as well, since this is a fútbol-mad nation. Even my family members here who care little for sports confess to having felt elation when Spain won the World Cup. I've attached an interesting NY Times article about the Spanish and Argentinean soccer teams (Argentina being the country I will spend two months in, from February to April next year).
For myself, these days I pretty much care only for baseball and tennis, and am very sorry to be missing the September pennant races and Nadal's quest for a career grand slam in the US Open right now. At least there's the internet.
(And, for good measure, here is a link to one of my favorite George Carlin skits about baseball vs. football. I always reference this when people ask me why I don't follow football, but few people seem to be familiar with it. Enjoy.)
This is all pretty simple...football is a meathead sport, and the United States is loaded with meatheads:)
ReplyDeleteThis was said with a little tongue in cheek as I grew up playing all sports you mentioned, and can take both sides in a discussion as to why one over the other. I played soccer from the first day it was available...call it 5 years of age, until 7th grade when I transitioned to the bigger, tougher sport of football. At this age it felt like a right of passage into adulthood as we were encouraged to hit one another, grunt, be tough. The irony is is that we wore pads...
Years later I can look back and goof about this...for I was a little bit of that meathead. I also wasn't able to think for myself and pretty much followed the crowd. Another attribute I feel many citizens of the good ole USA have had up until recent, being followers and doing what was the norm.
Today we have X games. Here is a great example in a shift from traditional games to some more unique, more extreme, go bigger, go faster, etc. It's more about the athlete rather than the team...a point you mentioned, and a true difference in mentality than could be pryed at and one could say that a country like the US may not have that team initiative, seeing as this great big land was settled as individuals claiming their piece of land. Sure communities were formed...but at the heart of the early settlers was individual success.
Jon, it's late and I should go to bed, I'm not going to even go back an reread/edit any of this, so I hope my random thoughts made sense. I could go on back and forth on this topic with you for hours, ideally in front of a bonfire in my backyard...it's a fun topic for me to dive into.
PS, props to you for throwing some Carlin in!!!