American Sport

[jay-ell]

Pedro's brother played rugby in college, but I never went to a match. Which is probably a shame, because now I'm at a stage in my life where I would pay a lot of money to see hard-bodied 22 year olds beat each other senseless in the mud, and I don't even have the memories to look back on.

[Carlos del Vaca]

I miss the hell out of playing soccer.  I pretty well gave it up when we had kids.  Now I would have to lose 40 pounds before even thinking of stepping on the pitch.  I would probably die, quite literally, if I attempted to play a full match.  But if I could whip my ass back into shape I could find an over-40 league, now that I am eligible for such things.

Also, what Cort said about watching the match with the crazy fans.  So much more fun than sitting still the whole game.

[Doc]

Rugby doesn't have that girly padding either.

[greenkoolayd]

What you need more of is rugby. More non-stop violence than the other sports.

IINM, aussie-rules football is rather badass.

[littlefallsmets]

too much standing around pontificating

But but... this is EXACTLY why baseball is so awesome.

So much time with which to ARGUE and THEORIZE and DIGRESS.

This is why baseball is the BEST thing.

Of course, as we have established here that arguing and theorizing and digressing are basically all I am good at, perhaps this makes a little TOO much sense.

[jay-ell]

But but... this is EXACTLY why baseball is so awesome.

So much time with which to ARGUE and THEORIZE and DIGRESS.

This is why baseball is the BEST thing.

Of course, as we have established here that arguing and theorizing and digressing are basically all I am good at, perhaps this makes a little TOO much sense.

Cann'd for self-awareness 

[Lister]

I disagree that the USA doesn't produce natural football-playing athletes.  They just all grow up to play other sports that pay better.

Randy Moss as a striker?  LeBron James patrolling midfield?  Reggie Bush... anywhere?  If we had a culture built around football rather than American football, I think we just might have won a World Cup or three.

Now, granted, some of our stars would curl up and die on the pitch (Peyton Manning, C.C. Sebathia, Tony Gwinn), but in a world where our Big Three sports never existed, I don't think Landon Donovan would ever have made it to the pro level.

American sports tend to allow for specialization to a degree that few others do (possibly Cricket?  I don't know how that one goes).  C.C. Sebathia can throw a ball 90 feet to a spot where he knows where it is going and you don't.  Tony Gwinn could see what that ball was doing in flight and hit it into a spot where other players couldn't get it.  Barry Bonds replaced his blood with pure rocket fuel and sent baseballs into orbit.  Peyton Manning has a cyborg brain that figures out what 11 opposing players are going to try to do, and then throws a ball where none of them will be.  American football positions have evolved to the point where humans without specific attributes simply can not play them.  You must weigh 290+ pounds to play on the offensive line.  You must be at least six feet tall to play the Quarterback position.*  You must be able to run 40 yards in 4.5 seconds or under to play wide receiver or defensive back.  You must be made of scrap iron and anger to play fullback.

Football has different skillsets for different positions, sure, but everyone needs to run, everyone needs to have ball skills, everyone needs to be accurate passers.  You can have standouts, but no one aside from the Keeper (or Henri) is going to do something that nobody else on the pitch can do at all.  If you don't know the game, you probably can't guess what position someone plays just by physical attributes.  Heck, aside from being enormously, spectacularly fit, few footballers would stand out in a crowd of similarly-dressed people.

And then, yes, there's the fact that there's no discrete way to slice up a game other than minutes or penalties, and this makes it difficult for media to cover them.  American games rarely have more than 60 seconds of continuous action before the play definitively ends.  The spectacular plays can be distilled and described in a sentence or two.  Popular American sports have been born of and shaped by the rise of the media that covers them -- baseball gave birth to the sports writer and, later, the live radio broadcast.  American football began its growth on broadcast television and still drives the industry today.  Basketball practically couldn't exist without television.  All three sports have natural breaks in the action that allow for review, analysis, and most importantly commercials.  All three lend themselves to highlights and sound effects and music videos and rock 'n' roll.  There's the Shot Heard 'Round the World, the Immaculate Reception, The Catch.  Hill to Laettner.  Bill Buckner.  Jordan's game winner in his last shot as a Bull.  The Music City Miracle.  Kirk Gibson.  Willis Reed.  Flutie's Hail Mary.  These moments live forever, and they're complete.  Self-contained.  Discrete.  It's much tougher for that to happen in football, unless it's a PK or corner.

Also you can't watch football games without those godawful droning horns now.

*Some people have claimed that Doug Flutie played quarterback, but since it was for the Bills no records exist of it and thus it is classified as a rumor.

[littlefallsmets]

These are some damned good points, Lister.

In baseball and football both... and to a lesser extent, basketball... there is a statistic for every action, every movement. Even if the offense fails on that play, there is a definite quantifable outcome. A hit or a walk or a strikeout or a flyout for every batter. A run or a pass or an incomplete pass or a run for a loss for every snap. With a properly written scorecard or drivechart, the entire story of the game, incriment by incriment, can be unfurled.

Is it somehow particularly American that we enjoy this so much? That we can capture in numbers a step-by-step stat-by-stat coherent and detailed narrative for our games? Hell, that was one of Ronald goddamned Reagan's first jobs, reading the play-by-play breakdowns off a tickertape to fraudulently pose as an announcer on the actual scenes of baseball and football games.

It is disconcerting, to Americans on any part of the American spectrum, to be told that there's something going on that can't be broken down into a series of steps, whether it is a series of steps forward or a series of defenses set against undesirable progress?

"One little lithe dude passes it slightly to the right to another little lithe dude... who passes it slightly ahead to a third little lithe dude... who then passes it backward to the first little lithe dude, for some reason..." somehow this is just not our mindset? We want a damn storyarc? Hits, runs, yards, completions building to a crescendo of Win or Lose?

A shared national delusion that all things good and bad happen with purpose, in steps and for reasons apparent to all?

[robot_god]

Americans don't like soccer for the same reason they don't use the metric system.

[Doc]

Americans don't like soccer for the same reason they don't use the metric system.

A culture of contrarians?

[AugustWest]

Hill to Laettner. 

Fuck that shit.  Duke sucks and Laettner is a scumbag of the first degree.  His ass should have been tossed out of that game.

[dejavroom]

A culture of contrarians?

DING, people. Like, DING. Well, kinda. I really think it boils down to what your culture taught you to see and appreciate.

But yes, football is loved to the point of apoplexy across all social classes, all the whole dang world over... And let's not even mention Formula One...

[littlefallsmets]

We'd rather all go broke off getting the flu than be like other countries, you have us there.

But would social justice be WORTH trying to figure out what's actually happening in a rugby match?

[CortJstr]

But yes, football is loved to the point of apoplexy across all social classes, all the whole dang world over... And let's not even mention Formula One...

What do you mean here? A friend of mine is obsessed with Formula One as she says it's the single most scientific sport in the world and attracts a lot of science nerds.

Soccer in the US is basically like Poland: in our minds it exists only to be mocked. A few weeks ago I as at my parents for one of the NFL playoff games. The kicker came out for one team and the announcers noted he also plays for the an MLS team but used the team's old name. A few seconds later they corrected that the team had changed names, then immediately asked why they bothered since nobody would notice. See also: any time soccer is mentioned on SportsNight.

[littlefallsmets]

Watching "Major League" on Comedy Central for the nine thousandth time, I cannot imagine how anyone could not love that game.