Formula 1 is certainly more popular than NASCAR. Top F1 drivers are household names - certainly moreso than any current NASCAR driver except possibly Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jeff Gordon.
Hell, Jimmie Johnson could walk down any street in America and not one person in a dozen would recognize him, and he’s won four NASCAR titles in a row. Half of Britain would recognize Jensen Button, and he’d never even contended for a title before this season.
Fair enough. No thoughts on the other sports?
No kidding. It is apparently entirely impossible to have a conversation that even attempts to compare aspects of the USA with the rest of the world without people taking to arms. It’s bizarre.
“A pass”? A pass from a simple question? Christ almighty. No, Canada do not get “a pass” because nobody is slamming the USA except in your fertile imagination. Yes yes, fine, Canada’s favourite sports are also mostly domestic, in which respect it is also relatively rare, internationally speaking. I presume the OP specifically asked Americans because this is, y’know, a predominantly American board.
Or maybe it’s because he hates you all and secretly pisses on the flag before he goes to bed, I dunno. I give up.
As an ardent MLB, NBA, and soccer fan (domestically, MLS, as well as international club and cup play) I do think we Americans would do well to open up our leagues to follow the global soccer format. Club play in the US leagues (e.g. MLB, NBA) with regional and true “world champions” tourneys.
In the MLB, the World Baseball Classic is a step in the right direction but I don’t think anyone (including the commissioner) is taking it all that seriously. The 2006 inaugural was a great deal of fun to watch, but when 2009’s version turned out to be more of the same it wasn’t all that attractive, especially with all the holdouts. It’s difficult in a baseball to get all the league play covered in addition to an extra competition - they’re having a hard enough time with 162 games + playoffs. Limiting league play to 4 series with each of your divisional opponents + 2 series each against other teams in the league would be a start, but some shuffling would have to occur due to the odd-numbered teams within each division.
NBA seems to be moving in the direction of more international play with feelers put out to the Euro leagues and Russia. Fans have whispered amongst themselves for the past couple of years not to be surprised to see an “NBA East” based in Moscow. Don’t know if it will actually happen, but I think the NBA has the best chance of making it happen. Global appeal of the sport is high and the New Jersey Nets may soon become our approximation of the Premier League’s Chelsea, with a Russian billionaire at the helm.
Anyway, I may be of the minority but I do feel that declaring “world champions” in American sports is a bit of hyperbole. Global competition would enhance competition and make our sports more interesting.
Practically, too, you have to think of it this way: those in charge of American leagues realize that there’s a critical mass of revenue to be had from the American consumer class. I believe the NFL’s reached that point already, and MLB may actually be beyond the tipping point unless they can successfully reach out to the growing Hispanic population nationwide.
Whatever cost obstacles there are to globalizing American sports would be offset multiple times over by the opportunity to grow revenue.
Remember the two codes of rugby: rugby union and rugby league. They are really quite different. There are essentially three different versions of cricket as well: Twenty20, one day and four day (increases to five day for international matches).
There are sports that are very popular in the rest of Europe that aren’t popular in the UK. Handball is a good example. Ice hockey as well (although if listening to BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire on a Saturday for the footie is anything to go by, the interest in that is increasing all the time). Then you get oddities like bandy, which is popular here in Sweden (it is essentially the game that came before ice hockey, more football like, played outside) where the “world” cup (well, group A of) consists of a massive six teams.
And then cough there’s darts and snooker. Never underestimate the power of snooker when it comes to tv viewing. It sounds silly, but the Brits LOVE that stuff.
Well, I think most sports in Europe - even when played by a fairly small amount of countries - have international competitions as the pinacle of the sport. Here in Holland we are kind of big in Field Hockey, while not a huge spectator sport, a lot of kids play it and the internationals (even though there is maybe a handfull of countries that is actually competitive) are clearly the most visible and important. I think the same goes for sports like handball, volleyball (not on the beach), waterpolo, etc.
Even the sport korfball (which very few of you would have heard of I think) - which is really only played in Belgium and the Netherlands - has as its most important matches, the games between these two countries.
So even if few countries play the game and/or a country dominates, the international competitions are the most important. So not only for football, rugby and cricket, but pretty much any team sport I can think of.
Well, if you need helmets and pads… how much of a real man are you?
That’s cheating. Aussie rules is just a whole new level of mental.
I’m the rare American who regrets that there isn’t a bigger following of international team competition. I always cringe when I hear a league champion declare they are the champions of the world. The justifications for this claim are even more preposterous. One of the more ridiculous is that since there are many players on the team from Panama and Korea, it’s international, hence they are rightfully the “world champions,” a line of reasoning in the same camp of “I can see Russia from my house . . .”
I don’t know what I just did but I hit send prematurely and in typing up my continuation actually hit “quote.”
Anyway, I merely added that I would love to see American football become more international and my fellow countrymen would share my interest in international competition. Then we could have a Champions League of American football teams, perhaps from countries like Canada, Germany, etc. and maybe those South Pacific Islands. This is only a fantasy but I can dream.
That’s always bothered me too, although the justification I hear more often is “there are Canadian teams!” (with regard to the “World” Series).
That’s a minor distinction, though. Canadian football and the NFL (and the now defunct Arena League) are all very different, but they’re all still football.
Why is it so bothersome? There’s not a higher level of competition for hockey/football/baseball/basketball than the NHL/NFL/NBA/MLB. It’s a perfectly reasonable claim. Now if the champions of Major League Soccer were calling themselves world champs, that would be different.
There are more people in Sydney than there are in New Zealand, so rather than look at total numbers I think it needs to be done per capita. Also, it’s not about how many people play, but how many people support and watch the sport.
Australia is, IME, actually less “footy mad” than New Zealand is (one of the things I like about it here, actually!)
Also, I’d like to remind the “Oh, well, Rugby and Cricket don’t count because the only countries that really take them seriously are in the Commonwealth” brigade that India is part of the Commonwealth.
There are a billion people in India (or near enough to it). And cricket (so I am reliably informed by all of my Indian friends) is huge in India. That alone makes cricket far more “important” than (say) baseball, IMHO.
Rugby Union and Rugby League have much less in common than the NFL and CFL or even the Arena League. You could argue that Rugby League is more like American Football than it is rugby union.
Because they’re not world competitions. Even though everyone knows the major US baseball, football and basketball teams would beat the rest of the world’s clubs - I reserve judgment on ice hockey - they don’t compete against them.
It’s like a war between the US and China (with no intervention from allied nations on either side) being referred to as World War III.
Yeah, I made a similar comment in the other rugby thread that is going on at the minute:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11816944&postcount=18
I think you’re a bit confused with rugby league: a team has six tackles to make as much territory as they can. On the fifth, a team usually opts to kick, in order to push the defenders back, unless they’re on the opponents goal line, and a try is likely. If the ball carrier is tackled on the sixth, the ball is handed over to the opposition, and play resumes from the point of handover. There is no minimum territory gain requirement, unlike in American and Canadian football: if the attacking team ends up being pushed toward their own goal line, then so be it.
Also, a lot has been made about the athletic aspect of rugby union in these two threads. If you think rugby union is tiring, then try playing league for a real eye opener. Nothing but running backwards and forwards! (I’d also argue the tackling in league is on average a lot harder than union: there’s no requirement for a player to position himself ready for his team mates to “recycle” the ball, so you get attacking players speeding up into the tackles to try to break through the defence, and defending players putting massive hits in trying to knock them back. Notably, body armour (shoulder pads) are a lot more common in league than union.)
Sure they are. The world’s best hockey players play in the NHL, regardless of their country of origin. The last 2 Stanley Cup winning teams have had players from:
United States
Canada
Sweden
Finland
Russia
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Ukraine
Just because the teams are based in North America doesn’t mean the world’s not represented.