Yesterday I had a post on American football, which provoked an irate comment from a reader. I’m used to irate, somewhat defensive reactions from American football fans when I critique the sport. As today is the Super Bowl, the biggest sporting event in America—but definitely not in the world—, I think I’ll recidivate with some observations on this curious game, which is truly an American exception (and a little bit Canadian too, to be fair).
First, I wonder if the TV announcers will inform the audience during the game that the Super Bowl is being watched by an audience of “one billion” around the world, as they used to back in the 1980s (and in the era before satellite television), as if living rooms, bars, and cafés in France, Finland, Turkey, Kenya, India, China, Brazil, and you name it were packed with people at 3 o’clock in the morning watching a game almost no one knew a thing about, of teams and players they’d never heard of, and of which they really couldn’t care less. I thought it was a complete hoot that anyone could say such a thing, let alone imagine it. In point of fact, the worldwide TV audience for recent Super Bowls has been on the order of 100 million for the whole game and spiking to 150 million for part of it (most no doubt for the half-time show). At least 97% of this is in the US, with most of the rest in Canada and among Americans abroad. Really, the near totality of the world’s non-American population has never heard of the Super Bowl, let alone has an interest in watching it. For the anecdote, when the Chicago Bears went to the Super Bowl in 1986, I was living in Cairo. I very much wanted to see the game, as I was a Bears fan and they’d had a great season and with a great team. Impossible. I couldn’t even get it on shortwave radio, let alone on television. Even the Marines at the US embassy had to wait a couple of days before receiving the video cassette tape. If you had asked 100 people at random in Tahrir Square what they thought of the Super Bowl, you would have received 100 blank stares.
Beginning in the late ’80s Canal+ in France began broadcasting the Super Bowl but for subscribers only (so the image was scrambled). In 1997, when the Green Bay Packers went to the Super Bowl for the first time since the Lombardi era, I absolutely had to see it, having been a childhood Packers fan in Milwaukee during that era (if you want to hear about the 1967 season, including the famous “Ice Bowl,” I will tell you all about it). The only place to watch it publicly in Paris was at American-themed restaurants with special Super Bowl nights. I went to the Mustang Bar in Montparnasse, from midnight to 4 AM. It was packed. Almost all Americans. Beginning in 2007 the Super Bowl shifted from subscription TV to France 2 and now W9. The NFL, in an effort (futile) to market its product abroad, is most certainly giving the broadcast rights away for next to nothing, if not for free. The proof: there is minimal to no advertizing during the game. Try watching a football game where ads are replaced by a round-table of specialists—here, Frenchmen who’ve played football in the US at some level—analyzing the game, or just the announcers yakking on while nothing is happening on the field. One realizes how much dead time there is in American football. It makes the watching experience tedious.
I mentioned the effort of the NFL to market itself abroad, to go global in the age of globalization. The NFL is looking at the NBA, MLB, and NHL, with their increasing numbers of non-American players (plus non-Canadian for the NHL) and audiences abroad—particularly for the NBA—, and wants to get in on the act. So it now holds a regular season game a year in London and exhibition games in Tokyo and Mexico City (the games quickly sell out, which is normal; it’s like the circus rolling into town for a day). It’s a joke. The NFL has no chance whatever of spawning significant interest abroad. One would think they’d have learned something from the failure of NFL Europe. First, the NFL is trying to promote itself—the league—and not the sport of American football itself (unlike FIFA, which promotes soccer in parts of the world where it is not dominant by building youth and amateur leagues; promoting the sport itself, from the bottom up). The NFL is acting like a businessman trying to market a product and make money. But a sport is not a product. It’s a lot more that that; it’s a culture and a practice, and a taste for which is developed young. If one does not become hooked on a team sport by, say, the age of 12, it will likely never happen.
For this reason, the NFL has no chance of gaining a significant audience abroad, as the game is not played anywhere except as a variant in Canada. No sport can take off somewhere if it is not actually played there. And if one does look at a sport—as it is played—as a product, American football is a bad one, or at least totally unadapted to the world market. It is unexportable. The reason why the NBA is followed around the world and with increasing numbers of non-Americans playing for it is because basketball is a big sport in much of the world and America has long been the best at it (though that’s beginning to change). It is America’s most successful sporting export (actively promoted abroad by the YMCA not long after it was invented and codified in the US). Basketball is an easy sport to learn and can be played by just about anyone (of a certain height at least). Baseball, which was brought to the countries where it is played—notably Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Japan—by American soldiers or oil company personnel, is also a relatively easy sport to learn and can be played by anyone (one does not need to be big, strong, and/or tall, or even run particularly fast). And it’s a great game, though one has to grow up with it to think this.
Not the case with American football. It is a minor sport in Germany—thanks to US soldiers, who introduced it there—and the NFL has a niche audience in Britain—dating from the 1980s, when NFL games were broadcast on Sunday nights on ITV and at a time when the soccer First Division was in crisis on account of rampant hooliganism and decrepit stadiums—, but that’s about it. One of the reasons for this is that there are other oval ball games out there that are objectively superior to American football and with greater growth potential, most notably rugby, both union and league. I used to think rugby was a game of little interest—and by definition inferior to US football—until I watched it for the very first time in 1999—France-New Zealand in the semi-final of the Rugby Union World Cup—and tried to figure out its rules and logic. I decided there and then that it was in fact a superior game to US football. And this has been reconfirmed in every game I’ve seen since. In 2009 I went to the Charléty stadium in Paris to see my very first rugby league game (France-Australia). Rugby league, which is a minor sport in France compared to union—it’s mainly played in northern England and eastern Australia—, is considered to be close to American football, so I was interested in seeing it. Again, it is a superior sport to its distant American cousin and for several reasons, which I enumerated at the time for a skeptical American friend:
First, American football has become a freak show, where the average weight of players is now around 250 lbs (113 kg), and with linemen over 300 (136 kg). This is grotesque. Rugby players are beefy but some 35 lbs lighter on average.
Second, American football is violent and dangerous, with a significant percentage of former players suffering dementia after age 50 from all the concussions they sustained during their careers. The NY Times had a number of investigative articles on this at the time and which finally got the US Congress interested (and obliged the NFL to stop denying reality). This is, BTW, the main reason why soccer has taken off in the US among middle and upper-middle class boys: because their parents don’t want them playing football and getting hurt! Rugby is not so violent or dangerous. And as one may have noticed, their players don’t wear helmets or pads.
Third, the action in football is too halting and, as mentioned above, with too much dead time. The ball is in play for maybe seven seconds, followed by 45 during which the players huddle, pat each other on the bum, or just stand around. Football players spend way more time doing nothing on the field than doing something. In rugby, the action is continuous, with few breaks in the play. A few NFL teams have gone to no-huddle offenses but they’re still the exception. The dead time in American football and the incessant breaks in the action are invariably the first critiques one will hear of the game by a non-American who has tried to watch it. (Another critique is its excessive complexity)
Fourth, and related to the above, there are 60 minutes on the clock in football but only 12 minutes or so of real action. But—and here’s the kicker—the games last for at least 3 hours! This is way too long. There are 80 minutes in rugby, almost all action, and the games last a maximum of 1 hour 50 minutes (as with soccer). The rugby league game I went to started at 3:30 PM and I was thankfully out of the stadium at 5:20.
One particularity of American football may be added that sets it off from all other team sports—and renders it all the more unexportable—, which is its hyper-specialization. Every team sport involves specialization of players at given positions but all have a chance to handle the ball and score. E.g. in basketball, all players—forwards, guards, and center—dribble and shoot, in baseball all players—be they outfielders, basemen, or even the pitcher (except in leagues with the stupid DH rule)—get to bat (likewise in cricket), in soccer and hockey all players (including the goalkeepers) can move the ball or puck and take a shot on goal, in rugby (and in Gaelic and Australian rules football) everyone moves the ball. But not in American football. In addition to the particularity of having the team split into two—offense and defense, plus specialized kickers and punters—, only six or seven of the 22+ players have the right to handle the ball and score, except in cases of fumble recoveries or interceptions. The role of most of the players is blocking and tackling, to be the foot soldiers for the general (the quarterback) and his officers (running backs and receivers). This is not an issue for spectators but I think it is for the players themselves, at least when they start playing the game as children. This is an empirical question—which I have admittedly not looked into—but I cannot believe that the vast majority of boys who start playing football as children don’t wish to be quarterback, running back, and/or receiver. Do any willingly choose to be a guard or tackle? This is why American football can only be played in organized leagues with adult coaches assigning positions, deciding who will be quarterback, wide receiver, offensive guard, linebacker, etc, and which then becomes the player’s specialty. And a perverse effect of this: insofar as linemen have to be big, otherwise normally built boys will put on bulk, thereby becoming fat, if not obese. I’m sorry but to put it colloquially, I think all this sucks.
Another problem with American football. It cannot be played by girls. Women play everything nowadays—even rugby and judo—but not US football. Sure, some play flag, but flag is not taken seriously. It will never be the softball equivalent of baseball’s hardball.
Conclusion: American football is interesting to watch if one grew up with it but, objectively speaking, it’s a lousy game and with zero export potential. And in view of the manifest danger it poses to the health and lifespan of its players, it may well decline over time, as has boxing. With all this said, I’ll now go watch the Super Bowl, if I can stay awake for it.
@Arun: As an avid sports fan for much of my life, I’ve read countless words on the pros and cons of many, many different games. I cannot recall ever reading a better analysis. Well done.
One other reason that American football cannot hope to be exported to the rest of the world: the Olympics. Sports that are not in the Olympic games have little chance of developing international popularity. When baseball was re-introduced, some European nations began to develop some interest. Now, though, with the elimination of the sport from the Olympics, it’s hard to imagine anyone in Europe caring about baseball.
But at least baseball has a chance because it is so popular in the Hispanic world and in Asia. Football is hopelessly American.
@dojero: Thanks. I appreciate it. The link between exporting sports and their presence in the Olympics never occurred to me. I thought it was ridiculous that softball and beach volley, among others – that are played in only a handful of countries -, became Olympic sports in the first place. As to this helping them develop internationally, this is an empirical question where a cause-and-effect would have to be demonstrated. I would imagine that if this were the case, it would be in countries where the sport already has some existence. I can’t imagine that sports in our day and age develop ex nihilo. As for baseball in Europe, it is actually played here and there, albeit as a minor sport. In the 1980s the CBS news magazine ’60 Minutes’ had a story about amateur baseball in Italy. Wherever there was an lengthy US military presence, with bases and all, one can expect it to have left traces of at least one of the big three American team sports.
BTW, I watched the entire Super Bowl last night. It was a good game! Only the third football game I’ve watched from beginning to end over the past two decades, since moving to France from the US.
@Arun: Living it northern Italy, I can say that I have seen no evidence of anyone playing baseball. My son went to school here and I also saw no evidence of it at the “high school” level. I know that a baseball stadium was contemplated (built?) in Rome as part of that city’s interest in having the 2012 or 2016 Olympic games there (this was before baseball was dropped as a sport).
But we have a huge basketball fan base here and the Italians I know follow American basketball in the same way that they follow their own league (if not more). When there was talk of Kobe Bryant coming to play in Italy this year (when the NBA players were locked out), it was headline news.
I was rooting for the Giants, though I didn’t watch the game (too late for me). I actually remain enthusiastic about baseball these days. I pay on the Major League Baseball site in order to be able to stream all the games. Day games there are a pleasure here…watching a ball game at 1900 is great. But most of the time, I simply ignore the scores of any game I want to watch and then take it in the next day.
Perhaps I was blinded by my personal love of baseball…I certainly have no empirical evidence that the Olympics matter or that it can become a sport in Europe.
Here’s something on baseball in Italy http://www.fibs.it/it-it/home.aspx
I don’t follow MLB anymore, not having lived in the US for almost twenty years. MLB is the kind of sport that has to be followed almost daily given the number of games, and with the studying of box scores and all that. I do keep up with what happens in the World Series but that’s about it. A couple of things happened with baseball in the ’90s that I didn’t like. One was interleague games between the AL and NL and splitting the conferences into divisions à la football and with wild card teams qualifying for the playoffs. This radically upended tradition and for the sole purpose of making yet more money for the owners. Secondly, I was turned off by the doping/steroid scandals and that placed an asterisk next to the home run records. Like everyone I followed Mark McGuire’s and Sammy Sosa’s competition to break Roger Maris’ record (and watched the game where McGuire hit his 62nd home run). But it was eternally tarnished by the steroid revelations.
Roger Cohen has a not bad column today comparing US football to soccer
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/opinion/the-puzzle-of-two-footballs.html?
Here’s one quote from it: “A rugby-style game was formalized and militarized with the introduction of painted lines on the field, the scrimmage confrontation rather than the free-for-all scrum, the forward pass, and drives (‘March, march on down the field,’ was how Yale serenaded it) orchestrated by a quarterback playing general and masterminded by a hands-on coach cast as generalissimo.”
And this: “For much of the rest of the world, used to the fluidity of football in its English iteration, this superpower football is a bruising, staccato, technical, over-plotted travesty bereft of flow.”
@Arun: Thanks for both links, especially the Italian baseball. As you may have noticed, Italian baseball is anemic; there are eight teams in the league and it’s teetered on the brink of bankruptcy more than once. I live in Turin and there is no team here. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that there is any team anywhere that gets the complete commitment and adulation that Juventus receives. I came here without a clue about soccer, but it is impossible not to become engaged in the sport if you live in Turin.
I don’t disagree with you about the need to follow baseball closely if one wants to be a fan. I still manage to do that and enjoy the experience. I think baseball is the best sport at virtually all levels of competition. There are two significant differences between baseball and every other team sport: it is timeless (no clock) and it is a team sport that demands individual performance. Play starts with the confrontation between pitcher and batter, just two people facing each other, with 8 others standing around with little to do. Suddenly, contact is made and the ensemble is fully engaged. In an instant, we go from the individual performance of a hitter or pitcher to the collective performance of the team.
It’s possible that cricket shares these characteristics; I have no understanding of that sport and have never been able to generate interest in learning it.
@dojero: The NBA developed a sizable following in France in ’90s, in the wake of the Dream Team in the Barcelona Olympics and a critical mass of stars at the time (led by Michael Jordan, of course). It declined somewhat when Jordan et al retired. Don’t know where it’s at today. NBA games are broadcast on cable here, that I know. And the French players in the NBA (Tony Parker, Joakim Noah et al) get a lot of press here (far more than the French basketball league and its leading players).
Re baseball, I’ve been saying for years that of all the team sports I’ve watched enough times – which is most – this is the one that most impresses me in terms of the skill level of the players. The hair trigger reflexes of baseball players, their powers of concentration, and hand-eye coordination are simply incredible: making the split second decision to swing or not at a fastball coming at you at 90+ mph, for a baseman to field a ground ball coming almost as fast, or an outfielder catching a fly ball on the run. Ordinary mortals cannot do this. I don’t think there’s a harder position to play in any sport than a baseball shortstop. When it comes to the overall skill level of the players, the only other sport that really impresses me is soccer, of what the players can do with their legs and with no hands (basketball is also impressive for the hand-eye coordination). In US football, one clearly has to be highly skilled and mentally quick to play quarterback but for the other positions, it’s mainly brawn or speed.
@Arun: It’s easy for me to talk about baseball endlessly. Like many American men of my generation, I became attached to it at an early age by going to games with my father. The Field of Dreams experience, if you will (a wonderful movie, but a better book…Shoeless Joe…the movie substituted a fictional black activist writer from the sixties, where the book used J. D. Salinger).
My father had spent his war years in New York and so was a diehard Yankee fan (Joe DiMaggio et al). I don’t believe in hero worship and can honestly say that the only hero I ever had was Mickey Mantle (before I knew better). It’s interesting to me that you refer to shortstop as the toughest position. Mantle started as a shortstop before becoming the greatest center fielder in the game’s history (a deliberately provocative remark, of course). I was fortunate to see him play many times in my youth and I was never disappointed by the experience, even when he struck out (I thought his swing was so beautiful that it didn’t matter).
Baseball has also produced the best writing of any sport…no one better than Roger Angell (whose work appears often in the New Yorker). There’s a new book out to continue that tradition of excellence called The Art of Fielding, which has received great reviews everywhere (I haven’t read it yet).
Oddly enough, the other sport that produces great writing is boxing, which I consider to be barbaric (though like everyone else, I loved Muhammed Ali). I suppose it’s because boxing takes some men to their most visceral feelings…it’s what football really wants to be.
@dojero: We are totally on the same page on this. One of the great things about baseball is not only its qualities as a sport but also that it inspires literature, even philosophical reflection (on timelessness – as there’s no clock – and infinite space, as there is no fixed dimension to the outfield). I don’t think this is the case for other sports (and certainly not US football). And I am convinced that the plethora of statistics in baseball – and that so many American boys commit to memory – helps in developing important quantitative skills.
Mickey Mantle: I had a baseball card of him (which I can visualize right now). He was still a player in my day, though the Yankees were a sub .500 team by then. You give away your age in talking about him
Giving away mine, the first game I ever went to was in 1965: the Milwaukee Braves, in a double-header at Milwaukee County Stadium. I saw Hank Aaron. Joe Torre was catcher.
Thanks for that, Arun. As a rugby fan, I am vindicated by your analysis…
As I am sitting in a train, two comments on the subject out of sheer boredom.
First of all, Canal + also showed NBA basketball on saturday nights, and “en clair” to boot. The show was run by George Eddy (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eddy). Those NBA matches were the high point of my and my brother’s week-ends. Basket-ball is big in France, and was big before the NBA. That and wrestling were actually big in France in the 1930s: my grandfather lived in the South of France, where he used to bet on wrestling matches far into the 1960s. That would suggest that even the most iconically American sports might have mixed histories.
As to baseball, the Nordic countries and especially Finland have developed a strange version of it, in Finnish pesäpallo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pes%C3%A4pallo). The story is interesting: it was created in the 1920s as a training sport for young boys. The goal was to give young Finns some skills that could be used in a military context: throwing, running, ducking, etc. A bore to watch, but for generations of Finnish boys it was the standard collective sport in school.
Sorry for that long rant.
@louisclerc: Basketball is certainly played in France and there’s the Ligue Nationale, but on the professional level it trails far behind soccer and rugby union in terms of interest. And one of the iconic clubs, Limoges, almost went bankrupt several years back. I’ll bet the NBA is followed more closely here. Thanks for the info on pesäpallo. Interesting. I hadn’t heard of it.
A very interesting piece. You were fortunate to discover rugby with France vs New Zealand in ’99 – it still sends chills down my spine, and I’m first and foremost a football (soccer) fan.
There’s a whole back story to the rugby union/rugby league (“Jeu à XV”/”Jeu à XIII”) divide in France. Before WWII, the latter was at least as popular as the former, but it was played professionally – a dirty word to the Vichy regime, who decided to uphold rugby union, which had an upper class following. Rugby league never recovered, although I think it’s still rooted in spots in the South West (around Perpignan).
There’s a fascinating paradox in football. It’s the spectator sport par excellence, and yet it’s not very spectacular. Toni Negri, the Italian neo-Marxist, says in an interview that its appeal lies precisely in the fact that it’s quite dull. You can watch it with flickering attention, while chatting with your friend. I don’t know if it’s true only about football, but the fact remains that a significant part of the games end in draws (maybe a third of them), and a not insignificant part end in goalless draws. Its allure resides in its simplicity and the fact that it can be played anywhere, by anyone. But in terms of pure “spectacularity,” it’s an anomaly (and, again, I’m saying this as a football fan).
@Scaramanga: The 1999 France-New Zealand semi-final must be one of the greatest rugby games in history. It was certainly one of the greatest upsets in the history of sports (of any sport).
I am familiar with the conflictual history of the two rugbys in France. In 2009 I posted this item on my Facebook page. It’s a fascinating story, and very political http://blogs.la-clau.net/esteve-valls/blog/quand-vichy-zigouillait-le-rugby-a-xiii-115
Rugby league (rugby à XIII) has a minority following in the southwest, and particularly in the Perpignan area. The Catalan Dragons there is the one French club in rugby league’s Super League.
Interesting Toni Negri’s observation. Though the action in soccer is continuous it is sufficiently uneventful that one doesn’t need to be riveted to what’s happening on the field. Likewise with baseball, where one can have long conversations with one’s neighbor in the stadium, with only one eye on the game. And of course US football, with all its dead time. Basketball does rivet one’s attention, though.
On draws – or tie games, as we say in America -, they were common in ice hockey until the NHL introduced the post-overtime shootout. And a tied score in baseball at the end of nine innings will lead to extra innings, just as with extra time in basketball. Ties are not possible in either sport. Ties in US football can happen but have become rare since the overtime quarter was introduced. As for goalless draws, this is indeed a soccer anomaly.
@Arun: Was Eddie Mathews still on the Braves at that point? I remember Torre as a catcher of course. And I remember Hank Aaron before he was known as a home run king. In those days, Aaron was just a great all-round hitter. His home runs were not noticeable because they were neither daunting in style nor as frequent as one might think. Aaron’s home run accomplishments were as much a result of his longevity as of his ability to hit the long ball. His best home run total was 47; in the year you saw your first game, he hit 32.
A Mantle home run, on the other hand, was a thing of awesome beauty. No one could hit the ball further (that may be literally true…some say that Mantle’s home run in Griffith Stadium in Washington was the longest homer ever hit). But I enjoyed watching him field as much as hit. He covered the Yankee Stadium center field with incredible speed. DiMaggio was famous for running gracefully, reaching everything in the field with seeming ease. Mantle on the other hand ran hard (sort of like the difference between Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal in tennis). The only thing as wonderful as watching Mantle run down a fly ball was watching him run down to first base to beat out an infield hit. 3.1 seconds, I think. Look at pictures of Mantle in 1956 (the year of his triple crown) or 1957 (the year he surpassed his batting average from the triple crown year) and you’ll see an amazing human specimen. And consider that he never trained particularly hard. And that steroids didn’t exist.
When I was a kid, I used to disdain my father’s eloquent waxing on the Yankees of the 30s and 40s and the great Joe D and the good ol’ days. Now I realize he was right…except that the good ol’ days were a bit later on.
@dojero: Eddie Mathews was still with the Braves in ’65 but I only know that ’cause I checked. On this general subject, my primary school classmate Sandy Tolan wrote a fine book, Me and Hank: A Boy & His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later. I highly recommend it
Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero, Twenty-Five Years Later
@Arun: Sounds like a good book. But I confess that I don’t believe that Aaron’s lesser status than Ruth even after he broke the career home run record is not only about the racial divide in America. From the perspective of the sport, it is inarguable that Ruth was the greatest player of all time. As I pointed out before, Aaron’s career home run record owes more to his longevity than to his home run capability. Consider that Ruth was hitting more than 50 home runs when whole teams weren’t reaching that level and Aaron only won the home run title in his league two or three times in the 23 years that he played.
Having said that, there’s also no question that Aaron’s race made him an target for all that is ugly about America. Tragically, this has been true in sports forever, dating back to Jack Johnson’s persecution as a heavyweight boxer (and the slew of great white hopes sent against him). Aaron suffered in the same way that Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Muhammed Ali and countless others did for being better than their white counterparts.
The sad thing is that Americans never learn from these experiences. I note in one review of Tolan’s book, there is mention of a black veteran who saw in Aaron that black Americans could be anything they want to be. It’s this terrible lie that permits the American people to continue to be racist while forgiving themselves for the sin. The most recent example is, of course, Barack Obama’s victory. Many Americans wanted to believe that this somehow proved the myth about American opportunity. There was talk about a post-racial America. Of course, the lives of millions of black people haven’t changed at all during Obama’s presidency. And one of his many failures is that he hasn’t addressed the racial divide during his term. It was certainly possible for him to point out, while he was working on his health care bill, that blacks suffer from the lack of health care far out of proportion to their population size. And he could have done the same when talking about the housing crisis and the job crisis.
Ranking Aaron among the all time greats of the game is difficult, since his strength is his consistency over a long career, as opposed to having reached the highest levels ever reached in the sport in a single season. There’s no doubt, though, that he’s among the greatest who ever played, just as there’s no doubt that Ruth was greater.
[...] the occasion of the Super Bowl—which begins in a couple of hours—here is my ‘Reflections on American football‘, that I posted the day of last year’s Super Bowl. As I explicated in some detail, [...]