This morning I was musing about the national sport. To what degree does the national sport of a country reflect the national character and to what degree does it influence it? For a century baseball was without question America’s national sport. Baseball’s heroes were American heroes, its stories American stories, and its myths American myths.
In roughly the third quarter of the last century, partly driven by how non-telegenic baseball is and the transition from sports being something you participated in or experienced in person to its being something you watched on television, football began to elbow baseball aside. I haven’t looked it up but I’m confident that more people watched the Superbowl this year than watched the World Series.
Football is very different from baseball and requires different traits and abilities. Do we reflect those traits now?
On a disquieting note I worry that professional wrestling is becoming our new national sport. Everything about it is artificial, contrived, and exaggerated. Our politics certainly resemble professional wrestling more closely than it does baseball or football.
The major problem with baseball is that the game time has doubled in the last 100 years. In an age where most sports is watched on TV, its exceedingly boring to spend half a game watching players stand around and spit.
https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/1/29/7921283/baseball-game-length-visual-analysis
Andy hits the nail on the head. And football is past it’s peak. Look, let’s get real. Lacrosse is becoming the national sport. OK, maybe not.
Seriously, I think the graying of America explains the waining of sports enthusiasm.
And coming hard on the home, stretch, MMA, aka 21st century blood sports.
for consideration is baseball one player (the batter) vs a team, while football is team vs team.
Actually, wrestling tops them all on a worldwide basis. With over one BILLION social media followers.
https://corporate.wwe.com/investors/news/press-releases/2019/03-11-2019-230853631
But the new national sport may soon be sports betting, on line, on your phone, at your desk or in your bed. There’s really no reason anyone has to hang onto their paycheck past Friday nite anymore.
https://www.omaha.com/news/nebraska/after-u-s-supreme-court-ruling-could-sports-betting-become/article_74ba06d2-2715-5800-85b2-a88e7af9c2d6.html
Baseball is probably the best sport for radio broadcasting. It worked really well with high quality play by play and commentators. Football is much better for TV. Soccer is one of the best TV sports and works well in person also. You can actually count on the game being close to two hours. But to answer your question, I dont think there is that much relation to the favored sport and national character. Soccer is popular in such a diverse group of countries that I find it hard to see the commonality. (Football is so expensive I doubt that it spreads widely. Lacrosse is in the same boat so cant see it spreading much either. Soccer just needs a ball and open ground.)
Steve