Yes, it does. If the Japanese baseball league started offering bigger contracts than MLB, how many of the top American players would go? 10%? 20% at an absolute maximum, perhaps. Even significant international participation isn’t anywhere near the same thing as true international competition.
Americans can’t win, in debates like this.
Ordinarily, we’re condemned for our supposed jingoism! Now, we’re being condemned for NOT taking any real interest in international competition!
The reality is simple: Americans are quick to embrace foreign athletes. Fans in Boston LOVE Dominican David Ortiz. Fans in Seattle ADORE Japanese Ichiro Suzuki. Fans in Houston are crazy about Chinese Yao Ming. Fans in Dallas love German Dirk Nowitzki, fans in San Antonio love Argentinian Manu Ginobili, fans in New York love Panamanian Mariano Rivera, fans in Washington love Russian Alexander Ovechkin… the list goes on an on.
So, we’re NOT insular xenophobes who don’t welcome the best foreign athletes. Quite the contrary. It’s just that we prefer to watch our favorite athletes play for our favorite teams, NOT for other countries. Not even for our OWN country!
New Yorkers regard BOTH Mariano Rivera AND Derek Jeter as Yankees. The fact that Rivera is Panamanian and Jeter is American is unimportant. They want to see Rivera and Jeter working together to win championships for the Yankees. San Antonio fans regard French Tony Parker, Argentinian Manu Ginobili AND Virgin Islander Tim Duncan as SPURS, first and foremost. They want to see those guys working together to win NBA titles for the Spurs.
International competitions, like the WBC or the FIBA tournament look to Americans like silly, meaningless exhibition games. Given our druthers, our favorite athletes from ALL countries would skip those tournaments entirely, lest they get hurt and miss the “real” games.
I doubt one basketball fan in a hundred even knows Tim Duncan is from the Virgin Islands.
Well, they are the US Virgin islands. In a lot of ways it’s not very different then being born in DC.
I think the issue is that most people agreeing with the OP are saying “So you’ve got a couple of players from other countries in your teams. So what?”
I mean, many of the All Blacks (NZ Rugby team) are actually from various Pacific Islands (or of Maori/Pacific Island descent). I’m fairly sure the same is true of many of the Australian “footy” teams. It’s not an especially unusual situation, in other words.
More importantly, having a few international players in your teams is an entirely different kettle of fish to playing the national teams of other countries as part of the sport. I mean, there are certainly Latin American and Japanese players in US Baseball teams- but the World Series of Baseball doesn’t involve a US National Team (or even the best “local” team) playing (say) the French or Spanish or Australian or Egyptian National/Best “Local” teams. That’s what the OP is talking about.
Look, would you read the thread again, and perhaps consider the possibility that you are reacting to a slight that simply isn’t there? Who’s condemning Americans? Who called them insular xenophobes? (Hint: no-one.)
You appear to be answering the question, “why do Americans hate foreigners who play their sports?” I’m sure you’re answering it very well, but no-one has asked it, or indeed anything like it.
Indeed, the “bad” things said about Americans in this thread have all been said by Americans. I’m one of them.
We are parochial, egotistical jackasses when it comes to things outside our borders. If you don’t do it our way, you’re doing it the wrong way. We’ve behaved like that pretty much from the moment we set up shop here as a new nation. And ever since we’ve had the muscle to force our way on people in the world, we’ve been really obnoxious about it at times.
This attitude spills over into sports. We like our version of football, mostly because it’s OUR version. It doesn’t matter that you see at least as much action, and much more scoring in Aussie Rules, or plenty of tough as nails, head-to-head contests in Rugby, or lots of free-flowing play in Gaelic, or the world’s most popular sport (at least in terms of geographical area covered) for very good reasons in soccer. We don’t care about that. We don’t care that everyone else finds our brand of football mildly interesting at best. It doesn’t matter. WE created it, WE like it, and we aren’t going to bother being interested in anything else in the way of football.
Ditto Basketball (which, of course, a large amount of the rest of the world agrees is fun!), ditto baseball (which has SOME of the rest of the world interested in it massively). We enjoy hockey somewhat, though that love affair is always tempered by the fact that we already had basketball for the winter, and hockey isn’t really ours.
Hell, even in auto racing, we insist on making our own brand massive (NASCAR), while everyone else watches it and wonders why making perpetual left-hand turns is at all interesting.
And that’s just the way it is, folks. We like what we like, we like what we ourselves create, and we aren’t really interested in what the rest of the world does in the way of sport. Of course, when the rest of the world asks us why we don’t like their games, we don’t have the chutzpah to simply say, “Because we didn’t invent it, duh!” Instead we denegrate the foreign sports in an attempt to establish why no self-respecting person would find them interesting (too boring, too little scoring, too effeminate, too silly, too etc. etc. etc.). This has the result of simply making us look stupidly silly to the rest of the world, which simply shakes its head and accepts our idiocyncracies with sad exasperation, then ignores our opinions on the subject.
We, of course, being quite self-involved, interpret this as hatred for American sports, American attitudes, etc. :rolleyes:
In sum on the OP: we don’t miss or regret the absence of national team play because in the sports we like, we dominate, and our club leagues are the pinnacle of the sport. Thus, efforts to create national team play don’t find as much favor, because you simply won’t find an Argentina v England rivalry out there that will make it worth our while.
Or so we think, anyway. 
Interesting side note: NFL football was wildly popular in the UK in the late eighties. I remember staying up late to watch the Super Bowl in 1990, and nearly every other (male) kid in my class at school did too.
I’m a Tampa Bay Buccaneers fan because that’s the team I picked back then, not because it was the closest team when I moved to Florida. Weird coincidence.
Indeed. I was a Cowboys fan because it was the only team I’d ever heard of, due to their stadium being in the intro sequence to Dallas.
Of course these days one of my best mates is from Phillie so in the interests of maintaining that friendship I’ve abandoned the Cowboys for the Eagles.
Good for you. When I take over the world, and have the Cowboys fans rounded up and shot, you’ll be spared. 
Yankees fans too, right??
And this is something an English or any other football/soccer fan will never be able to comprehend…you Americans are so damn fickle when it comes to sports allegiances.
How you can simply abandon one team for another is beyond our ken 
I’ve been a Manchester City fan since I was knee high to a grasshopper, nothing and nobody could ever make me “abandon” MY team for another.
That I say without fear of contradiction but I have to add that some of us do have a second favourite team, in my case it’s Rochdale of division 2 of the football league.
It’s Rochdale for no other reason than the fact that I lived in that town for almost 15 years. If City were ever to play Rochdale my whole support would be for City
Remember that most Americans don’t really have a “local” team. I’m in Florida, which has more NFL teams than any other state (except California, which has twice the population) and the nearest team is still 90 miles away.
Most people are several hundred miles from their local teams. Since there’s only one NFL division, there are only 32 teams. It’s not as though you can find a local Third Division equivalent team and cheer for them.
Personally, I never even think of the “World” aspect of the term. When you consider it has been called that since 1903 its easier to just think of it as a weird old name, like The Ashes or the Georgetown Hoyas.
Oh, hell, yes. 
Well, in my case, I grew up about 3 miles from Lambeau Field. I’ve been a Packers fan since I began to care about football. There’ve been periods in which I wasn’t particularly proud to be a Packer fan…but I’ve always been one, and I can’t picture a scenario in which I would cease being one.
But, as Really Not All That Bright notes, a fair number of fans don’t have a “local” team, and so, their allegiances may move around, depending on the success of a team, or individual players.
As an European with the same set-in-concrete allegiances as Chowder was refering to, I’ve always wondered what happens when a franchise is sold/bought/moves. I understand this is possible and happens (the only one I - as a noob - can think of is are the Dodgers), but what happens to the fans? Are they still fans or does a move automatically mean that any allegiance is forfeited?
That’s true, but the winners of the Super Bowl are often referred to as “world champions” which is especially weird when you consider that they play in the National Football League.
Depends on the circumstances of the move, largely. The LA Rams had pretty underwhelming fan support, and nobody seemed to mind too much when they left town. I know a few people from California who are still Rams fans, even though the team is now ~1,000+ miles away. On the other hand, the (old) Cleveland Browns more or less upped and left for Baltimore in the middle of the night (and it’s not like they were doing badly in Cleveland) and Cleveland fans detest their old team, which changed its name and is now the Ravens.
The people of New Orleans were up in arms about proposals to move the Saints after Hurricane Katrina, and the idea was quietly dropped.
ETA: a lot of people here tend to follow players rather than teams. I know there are people who abandoned their Green Bay Packers allegiance when Brett Farve left. I suspect that if Peyton Manning switched teams (rather than retiring), a good chunk of the Indianapolis fanbase would go with him.
I seriously doubt that last statement. Maybe there are people in Detroit like that… 
I’ve been a Cubs/Packers/Bengals (second team to root for, because needed to have one in the AFL to root for)/Maple Leafs fan since I was very small. I’ve never lived near any of them, but my parents are from the MidWest, so at least I’ve got some reason to have liked the area. I can’t imagine switching.
Anyone who does switch isn’t a real fan. What you really see in America is a lot of people who watch sports, but aren’t really fans (supporters).
It happens fairly regularly, in all of our major sports.
Examples that I can think of off the top of my head (not an exhaustive list):
Baseball
Brooklyn Dodgers -> Los Angeles
New York Giants -> San Francisco
Milwaukee Brewers (first version) -> St. Louis (Browns) -> Baltimore (Orioles)
Boston Braves -> Milwaukee -> Atlanta
Philadelphia A’s -> Kansas City -> Oakland
Washington Senators (first version) -> Minnesota (Twins)
Washington Senators (second version) -> Texas (Rangers)
Seattle Pilots -> Milwaukee (Brewers)
Montreal Expos -> Washington (Nationals)
Football
Cleveland Rams -> Los Angeles -> St. Louis
Chicago Cardinals -> St. Louis -> Arizona
Dallas Texans -> Kansas City (Chiefs)
Los Angeles Chargers -> San Diego
Baltimore Colts -> Indianapolis
Oakland Raiders -> Los Angeles -> Oakland
Cleveland Browns (first version) -> Baltimore (Ravens)
Houston Oilers -> Tennessee (Titans)
Basketball
Minneapolis Lakers -> Los Angeles
New Orleans Jazz -> Utah
Buffalo Braves -> San Diego (Clippers) -> Los Angeles
Baltimore Bullets -> Washington (Wizards)
Rochester Royals -> Cincinnati -> Kansas City (Kings) -> Sacramento
Charlotte Hornets -> New Orleans
Seattle Supersonics -> Oklahoma City (Thunder)
Vancouver Grizzlies -> Memphis
Hockey
Kansas City Scouts -> Colorado (Rockies) -> New Jersey (Devils)
Atlanta Flames -> Calgary
Quebec Nordiques -> Colorado (Avalanche)
Hartford Whalers -> Carolina (Hurricanes)
Winnipeg Jets -> Phoenix (Coyotes)
Minnesota North Stars -> Dallas (Stars)
It depends on a couple of factors:
- How bitter was the departure of the team – former Baltimore Colts fans still curse Bob Irsay for moving the team in the middle of the night, and former Cleveland Browns fans still curse Art Modell for moving the Browns to, of all places, Baltimore
- Whether they get another team to move to their city (or an expansion team)
I’d say that, usually, most fans of the team in the old market don’t maintain their allegiance to the team after it moves away.
I count myself fortunate that the Packers’ strange public ownership structure means it’s virtually impossible that they will ever move from Green Bay.