Halfway down the Danube

"I won't link to the Taylor-Theisman hit" Ugh, I can still picture it.

There's one exception: placekickers and punters are allowed to "fake it", although there's a certain amount of sneering about it.

Fakes do happen in baseball. Viz the infamous '99 phantom tag, when Chuck Knoblauch convinced the umps that he'd tagged José Offerman by the sheer force of his acting ability; or Buck Martínez's showboating at the second-round U.S.-Japan game of the '05 World Baseball Classic.

Still, it's a different kind of thing. They don't involve faking /injury/, and they always involve an ump failing to do his or her job. (Plus, maybe Martínez really did believe that Nishioka ran early. What do I know of Buck Martínez's inner life?) They're really like Maradona's "hand of God," and about as common.

And Japan went on to win the Classic anyway. OTOH, I have no idea how the 1986 World Cup turned out. I'm sure I could find out easily enough, but it's only soccer.

OTOH, the NFL did see fit to introduce a rule to prevent players from faking injuries at the end of a half to stop the clock. And I suspect that if injury to a player were cause for an immediate turnover in gridiron, you'd see an awful lot more players faking them.

Bernard, I like to remember that Taylor, not previously recognized as a nice player, or even as a worthwhile human being, immediately realized what happened and screamed for medics to come on the field.

(The people on the sideline thought he was taunting at first.)

Josh, that's a little like saying, if the river was whiskey, I would buy a boat. Probably true, but.

That sort of rule hasn't been a historical option for a hundred years (I think, someone correct me if I am wrong), and I am pretty sure that Roosevelt, Camp, and others understood that much about perverse incentives. Football was about the athletic virtues and the strenuous life, not a place for Hasty Pudding theatricals.

Butkus played for two years in agonizing pain with that knee. pitter-pat.

soccer is for little girls.

Josh, that's a little like saying, if the river was whiskey, I would buy a boat. Probably true, but.

Well, sure. By the same token, it's easy to say "football players don't dive" when they'd gain precisely no advantage from diving.

That sort of rule hasn't been a historical option for a hundred years (I think, someone correct me if I am wrong), and I am pretty sure that Roosevelt, Camp, and others understood that much about perverse incentives. Football was about the athletic virtues and the strenuous life, not a place for Hasty Pudding theatricals.

Given that the original gridiron rules were pretty much rugby rules with a couple of changes (at least according to Wikipedia), you'd have to go back even further than that.

But rules are shaped by taste. If the American preference was for diving, flopping, shamming, or otherwise wearing the blackface of pain, the rules would have been tweaked through time to accommodate it.

(The way the shot clock was shortened in basketball, or the height of the pitcher's mound was dropped in baseball, in response to other tastes.)

Instead, as you note, the rules are being extended in the opposite direction.

I'm not sure I believe that explanation. Why should Americans have such a taste, as opposed to the rest of the world?

[shrug] Divergent cultural evolution. Some of it's adaptive -- it plays very well into the national myth of stoicism and toughness -- and some is contingent. But it certainly exists, as a brief glance through this comment thread should tell you.

Americans like sour chocolate too.

Minor quibble: the U.S. has a strong national myth of toughness, no doubt. I'm not as sure about stoicism. Frex, Americans love to kvetch, and it doesn't seem to me that griping is much frowned upon, in either fictional or real heroes. I'm thinking about those memoirs, again: in the popular ones, authors say that horrible things were indeed horrible, but they made it, rather than saying that it wasn't so bad.

E.g., "Do your job, no matter what's happening, but don't worry about whether the upper lip is stiff or floppy."

I could be misreading either American culture or the meaning of the word "stoicism," however.

Well, my but that Eggers piece is really "not actually funny". I will grant however that I am sure that he delivered the exact tone and content that the Observer editors desired.

"When children in the United States are very young, they believe that soccer is the most popular sport in the world." "On Saturdays, every flat green space in the continental US is covered with tiny people in shiny uniforms, chasing the ball up and down the field,"

Implying _all_ children and stating _every green space_, These are preposterous overstatements. This surely represents reality in the city Eggers grew up in, Lake Forest, Illinois (median income for a household $136,462; 93.80% White, 1.35% African American, 0.06% Native American, 3.45% Asian) but to claim that his experience is at all representative of the United States is laughable.

Americans don't play soccer for the same reason they don't adopt the metric system, or haven't heard of foreign pop unless it British or Bocelli (never heard of Celentano though), import foreign movies etc. It's because all these are popular/used in the rest of the world and adopting them now would be considered somehow a cultural "defeat". It's perceived as foreign.

Stefan, it's not a nativist dynamic.

I mean, are you threatened by curling? Do you fear your country being taken over by curling rinks? Do you think your nation's bodily fluids will be sapped by a granite puck? Will it be a cultural defeat for your homeland should you dare pick up the devil's broom?

Americans simply don't care enough about soccer to be threatened by it.

Carlos, a better example (for an Italian) would be baseball. I can't understand why they didn't pick it up, what with all those GI's bringing the perfect game to their shores, but they didn't. And the reason doesn't seem to have been a rejection of all things American. The sport just didn't make any sense to them, just as soccer doesn't make much sense to me.

Stefan, I have to agree with Carlos, and in the strongest possible terms. Your assertion that Americans refuse to adopt foreign ideas and tropes simply flies in the face of the facts.

After all, I presume that you are aware of the popularity of Latin music (of various types) in the United States, or the incredibly rapid spread of various Japanese cultural imports, from Pokemon to manga to karaoke to sudoku. Or, ugh, Hello Kitty.

If the U.S. is going to be nativist about anything, my friend, it's going to be most strongly directed against things Mexican and Japanese. Only ... uh ... cultural imports from those places aren't rejected.

You're correct about movies, but have you ever really met /anyone/ who said they don't like foreign movies because they think it would be un-American to watch them? And can find a single person who has said that the U.S. should reject the metric system simply because foreigners use it?

Since your statement seems so contrary to the evidence, I would like to ask for how you formed your opinion that the adoption of foreign ideas is viewed as a "defeat" by Americans.

By the way, who the heck is Bocelli? My Ipod is full of European pop music that I'm ashamed to admit to my friends that I like --- ever hear of Baby Alice? --- and I haven't a clue who you're talking about. (If you listen to Baby Alice you will immediately understand that the reason that I'm not proud of liking the stuff has nothing to do with the fact that they're Swedish.) Or is he (or she) not really pop music, but more trancy, like, say, Tiësto? Or perhaps an Italian version of La Mala Rodríguez? Inquiring minds want to know.

Faking injuries is actually not an integral part of soccer and is generally regarded with distaste. It disrupts an otherwise beautiful game and that's why it is against the rules.

Stefan - it's not about cultural defeat. Think about it: two of the three most popular US sports are fast and go, go, go!, with constant threat to limb and life. I mean, wrestling? Monster trucks? Fox news?

If the US were a person, I'd diagnose her with ADD. Anything that isn't loud and fast and colorful isn't interesting. Anything that doesn't provide constant stimulation is probably suspiciously European...

[Taking this to its logical end, I finally know why Bush invaded Iraq. He was just not able to sit still anymore! I'm sure I'm not liking that thought.]

I know, there are innumerable counter-examples. But this seems to be true: Soccer is boring to Americans because it's slow sometimes, the scores are low, and the gore factor is minimal.

Heh. I can live with that.

[FWIW, there is gore in soccer. Just less and less spectaclar. But even I remember this injury well enough. Don't click on it if you are squeamish.]

We also already have the 'pastoral sport' niche filled with baseball. Maybe beyond capacity, in fact.

Claudia, probably AYSO's accidental infantilization of soccer in the U.S. has put more of a kibosh on the game than the dullness factor. I mean, this country is fascinated by videotaped poker games.

Also, the "-ER" version of American football, the XFL, died an ignominious and quick death. I believe it was the worst-rated event on American network television up to that point.

Divergent cultural evolution should explain interests in different sports on its own, though, right? And, not meaning to come over as snarky, your explanation seems to imply that the rest of the world has a lower level of moral rectitude than the USA.

? No, it only means that Americans want different things from their sports.

I'm not Thomas Friedman; I'm not going to make wild extrapolations on national character (a concept I don't particularly believe in) from a minor cultural quirk.

Curling will most likely be adopted in my homeland if it was an international phenomenon, just like soccer was adopted in early 20th century. We have imported lots of things culturally over the years, good or bad.
I’m not saying that Americans feel threatened; they’re just not interested, partly because of a cultural resistance in front of foreign trends.
We’re setting the trend culturally, not following others. This is what is subconsciously felt by most Americans.
There is nothing wrong with it, it’s just a fact.

Dearest Claudia:

Your comment:

"Taking this to its logical end, I finally know why Bush invaded Iraq. He was just not able to sit still anymore!"

Caught my attention and there may be more than a little truth to this. A prevelent argument in 2003 was, "How long can we let troops sit in the Kuwaiti desert?"

This argument actully had weight for me, like a hyper-active child, we had to go. Hummmmm...

As to the issue of diving...it is a blight on the game.

Best Wishes,

Traveller

Um. Stefan, you're still working from the premise that Americans subconsciously care about soccer, but are denying it out of cultural resistance.

This is not the case. Americans have an absence of care about soccer. There's no reaction involved. It's just not there.

I don't know how more plainly I can put it.

"I’m not saying that Americans feel threatened; they’re just not interested, partly because of a cultural resistance in front of foreign trends."

Just doesn't work, man. As Noel pointed out, there are any number of foreign trends that Americans are interested in. Just not this one.

"Claudia, probably AYSO's accidental infantilization of soccer in the U.S. has put more of a kibosh on the game than the dullness factor."

I don't know that I buy that, either. (Or the dullness, factor, either.) As the parent of a small soccer-player, myself, I don't particularly think of the game as childish or not worthy of attention at the adult level.

At a guess, here's what I think is happening:

A) Parental interest in a game drives youth interest. I had buddies in Rutherford who were 1st generation out of Italy, and they enjoyed adult soccer because that's what their parents watched and talked about. Guys who were second generation or more tended to gravitate towards more traditional U.S. games, so something is working to dampen the effect over time.

B) There's a lag in exposure after spikes in interest. Those who were kids in the 70s were the first exposed to the game on a mass basis, and they just now have kids that might be encouraged to either play or watch the game by somebody to whom it is not entirely new.

C) The lag is reinforced by competition from already well-entrenched games. Much of what drives interest in adult sports is water-cooler banter and, more recently, the phenomenon of fantasy leagues. If you go to talk sports with a buddy at work, he or she is more likely to share American Football, baseball, basketball or hockey as a common language. Soccer has lost the first-mover advantage and has less network value, and any adoption faces an uphill battle against the existing topics of conversation.

Also, the "-ER" version of American football, the XFL, died an ignominious and quick death. I believe it was the worst-rated event on American network television up to that point.

Too fakey. Struck me as being a cross between football and professional wrestling. Some marketing doofus saw that a segment of the male populace likes wrestling (while knowing full well that it's fake) and Oppie and Anthony and tried to mix that with something that same demographic (as you noted) definitely wants to keep real.

Bernard, I do think there's an infantilization factor involved, because American kids lose their interest in soccer at an age when interest in sports tends to increase. 1 Corinthians 13:11.

First-mover advantage: yup. American 'sport space' was filled by homegrown sports at the beginnings of our mass entertainment industry, just like Britain.

Let me reframe the question a bit. Why didn't other nations professionalize their own sporting traditions?

American 'sport space' was filled by homegrown sports at the beginnings of our mass entertainment industry, just like Britain.

Let me reframe the question a bit. Why didn't other nations professionalize their own sporting traditions?

Crikey! I thought we did. "Up there, Cazaly!" and all that.

Except the cricket. But we adopted that so we could beat the Poms. Which we usually do. Both forms of Rugby, same same.

[And we're better at hockey than the Americans, too. Which is why they've retreated to their Disney-on-ice version.]

Yes, Syd, Australia too. (Although I'm still not sure Australia isn't a hoax created for reality TV. Your winters are our summers? Ri-ight.)

And Disney-on-ice? Must be that evil, violent Disney twin, Walt.

Echoing Bernard's comments (what a strange thread this is!): don't count on Mexican-Americans to popularize U.S. soccer. First-generation immigrants follow Mexican soccer. They don't give a rat's ass about MLS, and think the Chivas-USA is a joke. Second-generation immigrants don't give a rat's ass about soccer, although they follow the Mexican team in the World Cup. Third-generation, well, I just refereed an article that used census data to show that third-generation Mexican-Americans are either disappearing into wormholes or failing to identify themselves as "Mexican-American" in fairly massive numbers. I suspect, therefore, that their support for soccer isn't large.

www.econ.unt.edu/research/pdf/00-13RTJmls.pdf

or, more recently (if less scientifically):

soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/ story?id=360866&root=mls&

AFAICT, there are 50 players of Mexican descent (80% American-born) in major league baseball. In soccer? Not so much. Ni modo.

Noel

P.S. I went to an XFL game. For the cheerleaders. The game was secondary. Well, tertiary. The experience inspired some FAN postings.

"But we adopted that so we could beat the Poms. Which we usually do. Both forms of Rugby, same same."

funny that, I could have swore

Ah well you did say usually

Given what has been stated about the stereotypes of football and soccer in the US (football- necessarily brutal, playing through pain; soccer- daycare), Why is it that the fan base for football is almost 50% women? While no other major US sport can claim that level of gender parity, I would imagine that neither can most soccer leagues.

(Hoping Miz Claudia isn't looking) Speaking of women in football Why are there no European soccer cheerleaders?

Why is it that the fan base for football is almost 50% women?

Frankie, there is Sexy Ref.

But he's only one man. So it must be the interest inherent to the game.

Gentlemen, I just realized the one-word killer argument that should finally destroy the (rather strange) argument that Americans don't like soccer because it Wasn't Invented Here.

Canada.

To expand: all of Carlos's points about an "absence of care" apply to Canada, a place not noticeably closed-off to foreign influences of any sort.

End of argument. As mention of Canada does, in fact, often succeed in doing. My class would be much harder to teach without that country.

Oh, right. Canada. Yes. I'll be there with the girlfriend for about a week at the end of July. Drive to Montreal, then to Toronto for a family event. Any suggestions for things to do, see, or eat?

Go for the smoked meat tour when you're in Montreal. Schwartz's is the canonical tourist stop, but Snowdon Deli is excellent too. And get a bagel while you're at it.

Noel, if you're visiting Toronto then you really ought to see the Bata Shoe Museum and the Islands. You might also want to go to the CN Tower, but if you've been to Seattle's Space Needle or San Antonio's Tower of the Americas then there's not really a lot about it that's new to see (though the moon out on the lake is pretty nice if you decide to eat dinner in its restaurant).

The Toronto Zoo is also quite impressive, especially in that since it's fairly far from the downtown core so there's much more space. It's one of the few zoos in which I felt that the elephants got almost enough space.

That, and you should go out for Korean in the Korean business district on Bloor west. Because Korean food is awesome.

I would say that interest in the World Cup is much higher in Canada (well, Ontario) than in the US. Probably because of the large number of recent (post WWII) British and European immigrants. Every time Italy wins, cars honking everywhere. The European Cup is big too.

Related -- a Slate article on the NHL's failure to catch as on the number four American sport (beaten by NASCAR, Bullriding? Poker!? Spelling Bees!??!).

Soccer hasn't caught on, in the US, for much the same reason that ice hockey hasn't, as both can end with one team or the other celebrating the end of play with the score tied.

My god, if you don't think the Guardian football/soccer coverage is hilarious you either do not understand the game or humor. Listen to their world cup podcast some time, it is light years ahead of anything you can find on US TV.