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As the hype of the Rugby World Cup dies down, discussions of many different topics have entered The Roar. But I would like to raise this question – who is the greatest sporting nation in the world?
Surely it would have to be the United States. I mean just ask one of them and the reply would be “Well, Dallas won the NBA, Green Bay Packers won the Superbowl and the Cardinals took out the World Series of Baseball… so it’s got to be us, right?”
The Yanks, despite their insecurities, are in with a shot.
What about New Zealand? They’ve just won the Rugby World Cup, and number one in netball as well as a good show in the FIFA World Cup.
The Poms seem to have a pretty good hold of things at the moment as do Spain, Russia and a few other European Countries. And don’t forget the big guns, China.
And there’s no need to hold back on your confidence in Australia as well, they’re in with a red hot chance.
The Process
The main problem is in deciding how to determine which country is better than the other. There so many different ways to do this.
I’ve chosen a way to give a lot of countries the best chance of winning.
I chose the ten most popular sports in the world according to players registered (as of the 17 Sep) in the country and then ranked the countries from one to ten.
For sports that are played primarily as individuals, the top 50 rankings were used and the countries were ranked on who had the most players in the Top 50.
If there were the same amount of players, the higher ranking was chosen. And for the sake of the argument, the male codes were used on all occasions except obviously netball and except tennis, where they are both equally celebrated.
Here are the top 10 most popular sports in the world in order; (there is no weighting on any of the sports in conjunction with their ranking)
1. Football
2. Cricket
3. Field Hockey
4. Tennis
5. Volleyball
6. Baseball
7. Golf
8. Basketball
9. Rugby Union
10. Netball
Here are the top eight countries after the ranking based on how many sports they’re in the top 10 world rankings:
Top Countries after World Rankings
Here are the top eight countries with their top four sports only
Now the problem is determining how to order the teams from best to worst.
We get the top four best sports for each country and whichever one has the lowest total is the winner. If the points were even it went back on their fifth best sport ranking.
And the winner is… it’s a tie! Australia and America! Who would’ve thought Australia wouldn’t have cricket as one of its most successful sports?
As per the rules it must go back on the fifth ranked sport which was cricket for Australia and tennis for America.
And the winner is…
Australia!
Australia has won it after their ranking in cricket of five was better than America’s tennis ranking of eight! It’s to time to celebrate everyone run down to your local pub and spread the good news! Yell out of the car window! Let’s rejoice in the fact that we are the best!
So don’t worry Australia, although we may have lost to the All Blacks once again, here is one thing we have over the Kiwis, and the rest of the world for that matter.
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