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In the early hours of Monday morning as I passed the time before kick off in the 2011 Women’s World Cup final, I stumbled across an article of such unnecessary vitriol I was left stunned.
It came from Chicago’s the Daily Herald, and in it, writer Mike Imrem claims “boys in the United States become men by playing the manly sport of football, not the sissy sport of soccer.”
Nice.
I also particularly like the line “I love women but not women’s soccer.”
It struck me as not just inappropriate but also opportunistic for a column like this to have been published on the day the US women’s national team would compete in a World Cup final. It felt like someone wanted to play spoilsport while grabbing as much attention as possible.
Imrem’s article is just one facet of an interesting dynamic taking place in the United States where the game, which is reaching newfound heights, is trying to understand its place in the American sporting landscape at the same time as capitalising on this latest success.
Once again the parallels between the sport in the US and Australia mean that the experience our American friends are going through can be quite instructive for the game at home.
A couple days before Imrem’s article was published the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay wrote one of the most succinct articles on the topic I’ve read in a while.
In it Gay essentially argues that not only will football never be the dominant sport in the US, but he asks the question who cares anyway? The theory being that a sport’s popularity should have little bearing on ones enjoyment of it.
However, what really piqued my interest was a section that came towards then end of the piece.
“But there’s too much stubborn clinging in the U.S. to the idea that the worthiness of a sport is equal to the size of its audience, and in particular, its television ratings. If you’re not drawing big numbers like the NFL, if you’re not famous enough to sit in a director’s chair the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club to announce your next job, you’re supposedly outside the Zeitgeist,” wrote Gay.
“Why is mass appeal essential to some people’s appreciation of a sport? In other cultural arenas, we’re eager to prove ourselves as niche cool hunters: seeking out restaurants that others can’t get into; raving about television shows like “Breaking Bad;” clicking around Pitchfork.com for the next alterna-genius. Many of us thrive upon being early adopters; the second everyone else likes it, we drop it altogether (Weezer; Ryan Gosling; Brooklyn).”
Gays’ question is one I’ve been wrestling with since I first read it.
From a local perspective, why does it matter whether football can stand toe to toe with the AFL or NRL or any other sport in this country?
The only thing that truly matters is that the game becomes self-sustainable.
Beyond that, surely the rest is at most subjective, if not entirely irrelevant.
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