This has probably been asked many times before, but why do American sports fans feel comfortable with calling the winners of the Super Bowl, “World” Series and their NBA winners “World Champions”?
Barely anybody else even plays those sports. The AFL (Australian Football League) winners don’t call themselves “World Champions” of Aussie Rules. The winners of the Irish Gaelic Football league don’t call themselves “World Champions” of Gaelic Football. The winners of the Indian Kabaddi title don’t call themselves “World Champions” of Kabaddi.
So why is the team that wins the Super Bowl “World Champions” of a sport that nobody else plays? Shouldn’t they at least have to beat the winner of the Canadian league in order to claim that title?
Well, to be perfectly pedantic, if no one else in the world is playing it, then the champion of everyone playing it in the world is the champion of the world, even if it’s all just one country.
Of course, with what the rest of the world (slyly) calls “gridiron football”, the NFL isn’t even properly the only league playing it.
Let’s just say it reflects marketing reality and adjust our expectations accordingly. The NFL is a marketed product, and the titles are all marketing artifacts. And 110% of all marketing is lying in some fashion..
ETA: BTW, I usually refer to the winner of the Super Bowl as “those lousy bums” since it’s never my team. But even if it were my team, I probably wouldn’t call them “world champions.” Maybe “Super Bowl champions.” Or “NFL champions”, which is about as technically accurate as you can get.
Pretty much the only sport that declares it’s winner “World Champion” is baseball, probably because when the first World Series was played, no other countries played the game. The winner of the Super Bowl is the “Super Bowl Champion”, the NBA calls it’s winner the “NBA Champion.”
Canadian football is a different game from American football. The rules are different, even the number of players is different.
I’ve definitely seen the winners of the NFL and NBA titles being called “World Champions”. eg Drew Brees holding up the Super Bowl trophy as the TV announcers waxed lyrical about the way that the New Orleans Saints were now the “World Champions” of American Football.
And yeah, Canadian football is slightly different. They only play three downs, IIRC. But, and here’s my point, the winner of the Grey Cup isn’t labelled by the Canadian media as “World Champions” of Canadian football.
Calling one’s teams “World Champions” when nobody else even plays the sport involved seems to me to be a peculiarly American thing.
That’s certainly not true with the NFL. I still remember growing up watching NFL Films canned repeats of the Super Bowl and the announcer’s voice at the end gravely intoning “(City Name Sports Team)…World Champions.” And as far as I know the NFL still officially calls the winners that.
American sports aren’t contested exclusively by Americans, that’s why. The best players in those sports end up in American leagues the overwhelming majority of the time. NFL teams don’t have to play Canadian teams to determine who’s the best; that gets decided by the fact that all the best college football players go to the NFL, and other guys go and play in the CFL.
Here’s a different take: why do non-Americans CARE what we call our sports champions?
I guarantee that, if the champions in Gaelic football printed up t-shirts or souvenirs saying “World Champions” on them, nobody in the United States would begrudge them the right to do so. Nobody inthe U.S. would care at all.
Same with the Aussie rules football champions, whoever they are. If the best Australian team wanted to call themselves “World Champions,” I guarantee that NOBODY in the United States would indignantly ask, “How can you call yourselves World Champions?”
For that matter, does anybody worry that Martians or Vulcans might be offended by bodybuilding tournaments or beauty pageants calling their winners “Mr. Universe” or “Miss Universe”?
It’s just puffery, nothing more. It’s not worth wondering about, let alone getting offended.
I never thought of that! Shit, we’re gonna be in big trouble.
I can’t recall hearing the NBA or NFL champs being referred to as “World Champions”. It certainly can’t be that common. In the case of the NFL, the Super Bowl winners are guaranteed to be world champs anyway since there’s no real competition anywhere but the U.S.
Griping about the “World Champions” in baseball makes a certain amount of sense, given that the top Japanese team might be able to triumph in a best of seven series over the top American major league team. But hey, it’s traditional, there’s a separate world competition every few years (in which the “American” players are divided among numerous teams from the competing countries) and it hardly seems worth caring about.
It does happen. It’s not a meaningful statement, but given that the best players tend to migrate to U.S. leagues from overseas, it’s not as arrogant as people sometimes make it sound.
I don’t see this as much of a problem until some other team in some other country decides to call itself the World Champion of baseball, football or basketball. Then we’d just have to play a game to decide. It is all marketing!
It would be a ridiculous thing to say, since the Canadian Football League is a minor league. The best team in the history of the CFL, put up against the worst team in the NFL today, and playing 100 games, would lose every game. Objecting that the CFL isn’t included in the NFL’s definition of champion is like complaining that a high school baseball team isn’t allowed to go up against the Cardinals to see who the real World Series winner is.
The “World Champions” appellation is sometimes used in the NFL and NBA (but not in the NHL, wherein the term “Stanley Cup” has a much greater cachet) but it’s not an official term. It’s largely swiped from baseball, which is the oldest of the American sports leagues, and which uses it because
Its championship match is called the “World Series,” and “World Champions” is easier to say than “World Series Champions,”
It was, in any case, literally true when the World Series was created and is still largely true. No baseball league in the world is of the same quality, and
When the term was first used “World” also carried the meaning of “big time” or “awesome,” so World Series not only meant “the biggest baseball playoff series in the world,” which it absolutely is, but it also carried a meaning similar to “Super Bowl.”
Football and basketball just happen to borrow the term. And in fairness, there isn’t any better pro football or basketball around.
astorian makes an interesting point; why does anyone else care? I’m Canadian and do not care that an NFL team might be called the “World Champions.” Come on, I know the CFL’s not up to snuff.
Off topic, but a fun trivia fact I sometimes hear trotted out in the Niagara region: the Hamilton Tiger-Cats once beat the Buffalo Bills in an exhibition game. Darn those tricky CFL rules.
You know, BTW, that the hot rumor around here is that in 2013 the Bills are going to move to Toronto and the Tiger-Cats are going to move to Buffalo. So the Bills are going to be your problem soon enough…
A quick check of the standings will show you that the Bills are 5-2 this year and lead their division. Maybe we can make some jokes about those awful Detroit Lions next.
