A Difference in Sporting Cultures

The US is unique and insulated from world sports for several reasons:

1. We have 50 states and 350+ million citizens. We already have intense rivalries between cities and states, whether they stem from college ball, baseball, basketball, football, hockey or whatever. These intensify as fan bases butt heads across sports (think Yankess/Red Sox and Jets/Patriots). We are like 50 little countries (ie the E.U.) and so we don’t need to travel across the globe to find rivalries.

European nations are typically smaller, with fewer major cities. However, each nation’s largest city is much bigger in headcount than a typical American metropolis. When you have a few huge cities that represent an enormous percent of your population (the UK has 5 cities with more than 1 million residents; Spain has 4), it must be difficult to create profitable leagues within their own borders. The US has the opposite – lots and lots of cities that can support a sporting team, whether they be professional, minor leagues, or college sports (we have at least 50 metro areas with more than 1 Million residents). We dont have to fly through international airports to find large cities to play against. Many are a greyhound bus ride away.

2. We are big and far. Big = 4 time zones for the continental US, more if you count AK and HI. It’s hard enough catching a west coast game living in EST. PPV boxing starts at 11:00 PM. Can you imagine if our regular season games were played across the ocean adding 5 more time zones between teams? All of Europe and all of South America and all of Africa as continents occupy a similar area measured across in timezones as our country (between 3-5). I am not getting up at 4:00am to watch baseball.

3. We have virtually no neighbors. Its hard to play international sports if you don’t have any neighbors. The US is different from South America, Europe, and other areas because we only have 2 neighbors – Mexico and Canada. In fact, I doubt if more than 100K Americans ever crossed the Mexico’s southern border into Central America on vacation. It’s too far, and too different. Whereas Canada is a close neighbor (speaks English (mostly), similar economies, politics, low crime, etc.) Mexico is a world away. And that difference is exacerbated as you travel south to Central America and South America (and the Caribbean). In Europe, the nations do have different languages varied cultures, but they are all on roughly equal socioeconomic footing, meaning they are all modern, 1st world nations. We do have ties to Canada for sports, but we don’t travel south very often for much of anything, let alone sports.

4. We are not terribly interested in other nations’ inferiority complexes.. Europe’s rivalries have been ongoing for a hundreds of years, back to when kings fought over land across Europe. This continued for centuries, and some of us even witnessed 2 world wars fought on European soil with our own eyes. On the other hand, most people in America started somewhere else, and generally came here to escape the wars and feuds and poverty and persecution that ravaged their homelands for countries. Sport events like the Olympics were the battle ground for “Cold War” where nations could battle it out in the arena (think back to the movie “Miracle” based on the US/USSR rivalry). A lot of Americans are not terribly interested in the deep seated hatred between the various European, or African nations. There isn’t a tremendous amount of national pride at stake for the US since we arent trying to position ourselves in the world anymore. An early exit from the world cup doesn’t mean we are any less powerful than we were before. But in Europe and other nations, they’ve been trying to outdo each other for much of recorded history, and international sports in yet another battlefield.

If your that good, your going to play overseas for more money.

It takes youth to create interest. Where I live (Charlotte) people here were Dolphins, Falcons, Redskins and Steelers fans because they never had a hometown football team. Then came the Panthers. The parents here are still fans of their original teams (I am a Jets fan, obviously) but the kids grow up also rooting for the home team.

Soccer will take off in America 10-15 years after the kids take to it, because that is how long it will take for those kids to grow up, get jobs and spend money on tickets and have kids of their own. So if I was MLS or US Soccer, I’d spend every penny I had on promoting to the kids today. And it starts with a strong showing in the World Cup, and bring those players home like champions (like Michael Phelps after the Olympics.) Don’t let up and get those players out to meet the kids, do soccer camps with the stars for a week in each major city throughout the summer, or whatever.

Also, take a few million dollars per major metropolitan area and give it to the local high schools for a soccer program. $25K per high school is enough to hire a part time coach and buy equipment, etc. A $25M investment is 1000 high schools (of the 25,000 high schools in America) that are otherwise cutting sport programs that will now push soccer to the youth in gym class. By selecting the schools with the largest enrollments that do not otherwise have a decent soccer program, you can reach more youths than by choosing some school out in Appalachia (WV). Even if it doesn’t develop into kids playing soccer, it will at least familiarize them with the game and rules and generate interest in the league that is barely making a profit.

Sure, it wouldn’t pay dividends for years, but better that then trying to convince a guy like me to make some more room in my heart and wallet for another sport I dont care about.

PS – America has better soccer talent than who we field today, [no offense]. There just isn’t enough soccer programs to determine who has the natural talent because we are (rightly so) focused on football, baseball, and basketball. As soccer grows in popularity, we might find more kids have a natural talent for it, and over some decades, we’ll be able to uncover the Michael Jordan of soccer somewhere in Iowa or Oregon. Then it is a virtuous circle where we get better because we have more interest because we got better…..

Actually, it’s often called soccer in Australia and other nations where another form of football is prevalent. Plus, the word soccer originated in England, where it was a play on “association.”

As an add on to this, in the NHL Draft , Americans were just selected at an all time high (10 or 11 Americans drafted depending on your definition, Cam Fowler was a Canadian in US Developmental) and a lot of them were from irregular Hockey Markets like Florida and California.

That news is compounded by the fact that Russians were selected at an all time low, due to there not being a talent exchange agreement between the NHL and KHL (Russian Super League, basically Russian equivalent of the NHL but with money). That means teams weren’t willing to burn Draft Picks on Russians who might never be able to play in the US.