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Why America hates football

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy program at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.[1] He has written 10 books on American foreign policy and the edited 12 more.[2] He most recently co-authored That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back with The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.[3]


Why America hates football


The best-selling author of The Meaning of Sport explains

Michael Mandelbaum
Sunday 1 August 2004
Observer Sport Monthly

While people from Oslo to Athens and from London to Vladivostok were avidly following the European football championship in June, Americans ignored it. In the United States, the only way to see the Greece-Portugal final, or any other match in the tournament, was to make a special, costly arrangement with a satellite broadcasting company or to find a pub that was showing one of the games. Any such pub would invariably be located in an obscure corner of a large city and filled with people speaking languages other than English.

Euro 2004 was the latest episode in the long history of American indifference to the world's favourite sport, which continues despite strenuous efforts to put the game on the same footing as America's three major team games: baseball, American football and basketball. Why have these efforts failed?

One reason has to do with the existing popularity of the big three. Even in as large and wealthy a country as the United States, where the national appetite for playing, and even more so for watching, games is enormous, the cultural, economic and psychological space available for sport is limited and that space is already taken. Baseball, American football and basketball have long since put down deep roots, claimed particular seasons of the year as their own (although they now overlap) and gained the allegiance of the sports-following public.

A fourth team sport, ice hockey, is widely played across the northern tier of the country and has a professional league with teams located across the border in Canada and throughout the United States, even in cities whose climates are so benign that ice has never formed in them: indeed, the franchise in Tampa, Florida, won this year's championship. The presence of four major team sports - more than in any other country - has made the barrier to entry in the competition for the affections and the dollars of American sports fans extraordinarily high, so high that even the world's most popular game has not been able to surmount it.

One in particular of those three sports - basketball - poses a singular obstacle to the national acceptance of football. The two are too similar for them both to succeed. Each belongs to the family of games whose object is to put a ball (or similar object) in a goal.

Because the two games are similar, they have the same kind of appeal. Both are easy to follow; you can immediately understand the point of each one. The rules and strategies of cricket, baseball, rugby and American football, by contrast, are less straightforward. The action of a basketball game and of a football match are easier to follow than that of other team sports as well because the ball is larger than in cricket and baseball and is never hidden in a tangle of bodies or a scrum, as it is in American football and rugby.

Football and basketball are also easier to play than the other team games. They do not require elaborate equipment and satisfactory informal games can be staged without the full complement of players. And both football and basketball players can perfect their skills practising entirely alone.

Spectators see the same thing in the two games: episodes of spontaneous coordination, with players devising and implementing schemes for scoring. They see, that is, acts of creation. If architecture is, as is sometimes said, music set in concrete, then football and basketball may be said to be creativity embodied in team sports.

The two games are both played partly in the air. Basketball players spring off the floor to launch shots at the basket and soar to capture missed shots as they bounce off the rim, even as football players leap upward to intercept a kicked ball with their heads to control it, tap it to a team-mate, or redirect it into their opponents' goal. Football and basketball are therefore the team sports that most vividly evoke a common human fantasy: to leave the ground and fly through the air.

This is why, perhaps, football and basketball are the team sports with the widest global appeal. It is no surprise that each of the two has established a beachhead in the last great expanse of unoccupied sports territory, the People's Republic of China. Their marked similarities, however, also mean that the two sports duplicate each other. They provide the same satisfactions. For spectators they are, in a sense, alternatives. North Americans don't need football because they already get what it has to offer from basketball.

There is, too, the problem of the frequency with which football matches end in a draw. Americans want conclusive results from their games. Baseball and basketball have rules forbidding draws: the two teams must play until one of them wins. Draws were more common in American football until two decades ago when, responding to the national irritation with them, the managers of the sport changed the rules. Now collegiate games cannot end in draws and professional contests very rarely do.

Most American sports fans would regard the method used for deciding international championship matches that end in a draw even after extra time - the penalty shoot-out - as absurdly arbitrary and no more fitting a way to determine a winner than flipping a coin.

There is a remedy for what is, in American eyes, football's gravest defect. The game's rules could be changed to make scoring much easier, which would mean that even if the match were drawn at the end of 90 minutes, one or the other team would almost certainly score in extra time.

Altering the rules to encourage scoring is an old and well established practice in American sport. In the course of the 20th century, baseball, American football and basketball each did so several times. The changes helped to sustain, and indeed to expand, the popularity of all three, since, as one astute student of baseball put it, 'offense [scoring] is making things happen. Defense is keeping things from happening. People would much rather watch things happen.'

To do the same thing for football might well require dramatic modifications in the way the game is now played - the abolition of the offside rule, for example, or awarding points that count in the final score for corner kicks, which, as in prize fights that do not end in knockouts, would give an advantage to the side that makes the most determined efforts to score.

Why has this not happened in the US? One possible reason is that such changes would make the American version of football substantially different from the game played everywhere else, and here Americans are reluctant to be out of step with the rest of the world. If that is the case, then the failure of the world's most popular sport to gain full acceptance in the world's most sports-obsessed country suggests that there are, after all, limits to American unilateralism.

· Michael Mandelbaum is one of America's leading authorities on US foreign policy and international relations and the author of The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century (Public Affairs)
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Who is Michael Mandelbaum :???: How many folks listen to him daily :???: Is he the voice of some political party :???: ....

I don't like soccer- never watch it... Didn't like it when my kids played it (probably because I don't understand it- same as with hockey) - but it was a better activity for them than sitting playing video games- or watching TV...And while helping them to develop physically- it also gave them their first real look at a team sport and working as a team to accomplish a goal...

But its a lot different me not enjoying soccer and saying so- then when a leading spokesperson for the ultra rightwing of the Republican Party comes out and bash's the sport as un-American and in doing so bash's all soccer moms for being un-American ....

Pure stupidity... It'll sell some news articles for her- and make her a few bucks---- but what will it do for the entire Republican Party... :???:
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
Who is Michael Mandelbaum :???:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mandelbaum

Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy program at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.[1] He has written 10 books on American foreign policy and the edited 12 more.[2] He most recently co-authored That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back with The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.[3]

Contents

1 Education
2 Career
3 Writing
3.1 Bibliography
4 References
5 External links

Education

Mandelbaum earned a PhD in political science from Harvard University.[4] He was also educated at Yale University and King's College, Cambridge where he was a Marshall Scholar.[5]
Career

Mandelbaum was named one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine "for teaching America how to be a hegemon on the cheap."[6] He is on the Board of Directors of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.[7]

Mandelbaum worked on security issues at the U.S. Department of State from 1982-1983 on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in the office of Under Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger.[8] He served as an adviser to Bill Clinton.[9] Speaking on behalf of the United States Information Agency for more than two decades, Mandelbaum has explained American foreign policy to groups throughout Europe, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Middle East.[10]

For 17 years, starting in 1986, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where he was also the director of the Council’s Project on East-West Relations.[11] Mandelbaum was a Carnegie Scholar (in 2004-2005) of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.[12] From 1984-2005 he was the associate director of the Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program on Relations With the Former Communist World.[13]

He has taught at Harvard University, Columbia University and at the U.S. Naval Academy.[14] He also has taught business executives at the Wharton Advanced Management Program in the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.[15]

Mandelbaum is a frequent commentator on American foreign policy. From 1985-2005 he wrote a regular foreign affairs analysis column for Newsday.[16] His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time and The Los Angeles Times.[17] He has appeared as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,[18] Charlie Rose (talk show),[19] Nightline,[20] and PBS NewsHour.[21]
Writing

His first book The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons, was published in 1979.[22] The Economist called it “an excellent history of American nuclear policy...a clear, readable book.”[23] He wrote The Dawn of Peace in Europe in 1996.[24] Of it, Walter Russell Mead in The New York Times Book Review called it a "brilliant book that combines the most lucid exposition yet of the post-cold-war order in Europe with a devastating critique of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy."[25]

In 1988, he published The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries.[34] Publishers Weekly said "Mandelbaum's book is brilliant and enjoyable...[he] charts how nations find ways of acting together in diplomatically organized groups for defensive purposes, and he analyzes certain countries' specific roles and histories. His knowledge of philosophy, politics, history and economics results in a stunning delineation of centuries of military actions, political maneuverings and cultural uprisings."[35] In 1996, he wrote The Dawn of Peace in Europe.[26] Walter Russell Mead in The New York Times Book Review called it a "brilliant book that combines the most lucid exposition yet of the post-cold-war order in Europe with a devastating critique of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy."[27]

In 2002, he published The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century.[28] The New York Times Book Review said it was "A formidable and thought-provoking tour d'horizon. Best of all, it gives readers something to argue about."[29] In 2006, he wrote The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first Century,[30] in which he argues that United States dominance in global affairs is better than the alternatives.

In 2010, he wrote The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era.,[31] in which he argued the 2008 economic crisis and United States economic obligations will redraw the boundaries of American foreign policy. Published in 2011, That Used To Be Us addresses the 4 major problems America faces today and their solution. In his view, these problems are: globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption.[32]
Bibliography

The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons (1979)[33]
The Nuclear Revolution (1981)[34]
The Nuclear Future (1983)[35]
Reagan and Gorbachev (Co-written with Strobe Talbott 1987)[36]
The Global Rivals (Co-written with Seweryn Bialer 1988)[37]
The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1988)[38]
The Dawn of Peace in Europe (1996)[39]
The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century (2002)[40]
The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Basketball and Football and What They See When They Do (2005)[41]
The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first Century (2006)[42]
The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (2010)[43]
That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (Co-written with Thomas Friedman 2011)
The Road to Global Prosperity (2014) [44]
 

hypocritexposer

Well-known member
Oldtimer said:
I don't like soccer- never watch it... Didn't like it when my kids played it (probably because I don't understand it- same as with hockey)

You must be a racist...but, we already knew that.


World Cup: Is it racist to hate soccer?

"Every World Cup, it arrives like clockwork," says Dave Zirin in The Nation. The sound of soccer driving the "right wing noise machine utterly insane." Zirin argues that the "far right" — specifically, conservative pundits Glenn Beck and G. Gordon Liddy — dislikes soccer not because they find it boring, but because it doesn't fit with their "monochromatic" view of what it is to be American — namely, white and middle class.

http://theweek.com/article/index/204034/world-cup-is-it-racist-to-hate-soccer
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
hypocritexposer said:
Oldtimer said:
Who is Michael Mandelbaum :???:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Mandelbaum

Michael Mandelbaum is the Christian A. Herter Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy program at the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies.[1] He has written 10 books on American foreign policy and the edited 12 more.[2] He most recently co-authored That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back with The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.[3]

Contents

1 Education
2 Career
3 Writing
3.1 Bibliography
4 References
5 External links

Education

Mandelbaum earned a PhD in political science from Harvard University.[4] He was also educated at Yale University and King's College, Cambridge where he was a Marshall Scholar.[5]
Career

Mandelbaum was named one of the top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine "for teaching America how to be a hegemon on the cheap."[6] He is on the Board of Directors of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.[7]

Mandelbaum worked on security issues at the U.S. Department of State from 1982-1983 on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in the office of Under Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger.[8] He served as an adviser to Bill Clinton.[9] Speaking on behalf of the United States Information Agency for more than two decades, Mandelbaum has explained American foreign policy to groups throughout Europe, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, India and the Middle East.[10]

For 17 years, starting in 1986, he was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, where he was also the director of the Council’s Project on East-West Relations.[11] Mandelbaum was a Carnegie Scholar (in 2004-2005) of the Carnegie Corporation of New York.[12] From 1984-2005 he was the associate director of the Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program on Relations With the Former Communist World.[13]

He has taught at Harvard University, Columbia University and at the U.S. Naval Academy.[14] He also has taught business executives at the Wharton Advanced Management Program in the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.[15]

Mandelbaum is a frequent commentator on American foreign policy. From 1985-2005 he wrote a regular foreign affairs analysis column for Newsday.[16] His writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time and The Los Angeles Times.[17] He has appeared as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,[18] Charlie Rose (talk show),[19] Nightline,[20] and PBS NewsHour.[21]
Writing

His first book The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons, was published in 1979.[22] The Economist called it “an excellent history of American nuclear policy...a clear, readable book.”[23] He wrote The Dawn of Peace in Europe in 1996.[24] Of it, Walter Russell Mead in The New York Times Book Review called it a "brilliant book that combines the most lucid exposition yet of the post-cold-war order in Europe with a devastating critique of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy."[25]

In 1988, he published The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries.[34] Publishers Weekly said "Mandelbaum's book is brilliant and enjoyable...[he] charts how nations find ways of acting together in diplomatically organized groups for defensive purposes, and he analyzes certain countries' specific roles and histories. His knowledge of philosophy, politics, history and economics results in a stunning delineation of centuries of military actions, political maneuverings and cultural uprisings."[35] In 1996, he wrote The Dawn of Peace in Europe.[26] Walter Russell Mead in The New York Times Book Review called it a "brilliant book that combines the most lucid exposition yet of the post-cold-war order in Europe with a devastating critique of the Clinton Administration's foreign policy."[27]

In 2002, he published The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century.[28] The New York Times Book Review said it was "A formidable and thought-provoking tour d'horizon. Best of all, it gives readers something to argue about."[29] In 2006, he wrote The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first Century,[30] in which he argues that United States dominance in global affairs is better than the alternatives.

In 2010, he wrote The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era.,[31] in which he argued the 2008 economic crisis and United States economic obligations will redraw the boundaries of American foreign policy. Published in 2011, That Used To Be Us addresses the 4 major problems America faces today and their solution. In his view, these problems are: globalization, the revolution in information technology, the nation's chronic deficits, and its pattern of energy consumption.[32]
Bibliography

The Nuclear Question: The United States and Nuclear Weapons (1979)[33]
The Nuclear Revolution (1981)[34]
The Nuclear Future (1983)[35]
Reagan and Gorbachev (Co-written with Strobe Talbott 1987)[36]
The Global Rivals (Co-written with Seweryn Bialer 1988)[37]
The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1988)[38]
The Dawn of Peace in Europe (1996)[39]
The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy and Free Markets in the Twenty-first Century (2002)[40]
The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Basketball and Football and What They See When They Do (2005)[41]
The Case For Goliath: How America Acts As The World's Government in the Twenty-first Century (2006)[42]
The Frugal Superpower: America's Global Leadership in a Cash-Strapped Era (2010)[43]
That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back (Co-written with Thomas Friedman 2011)
The Road to Global Prosperity (2014) [44]


ZOOM- right over his head! :roll: :wink: :lol: :lol:
 

hopalong

Well-known member
It'll sell some news articles for her- and make her a few bucks---- but what will it do for the entire Republican Party... Say what?


Who is this HER you referring to?????
spend to much time at Stockmans bar again?? or was it the MONTANA,, or Allies they are all basically side by side,,, you could stagger from one to the other,,, all within walking distance to you house,,, WELLLLL maybe crawling for you!!!

Or is this just another one of your ""I HATE WOMEN"" posts that you are famous for...
 
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