A Ramble on Spoiled Americans

Monday, March 01, 2010 | View Comments
Sports News - March 01, 2010

It's Monday, and forming a coherent piece that draws a conclusion is proving to be extremely difficult; instead, my brain is producing a lot of half-baked thoughts. It's a ramble.


And so, I bring you these American soccer thoughts directly related to the United States' loss to Canada in the gold medal hockey game in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.


My apologies in advance if this isn't coherent or is a little more haphazardly presented than my usual fare.


The American hockey lads came very close to beating the Canadians at their own game. I say that, of course, because hockey was invented in Canada and is without question their prevailing national passion. Many, perhaps most, kids in Canada learn to skate almost as soon as they're able to walk, dreaming of one day playing hockey on the biggest stage. American kids dream of sporting glory as well, though the sports we choose in large numbers vary a bit more; for every Little Leaguer hoping to make the Majors, there are almost as many kids in Pop Warner and rec league basketball dreaming of playing in the NFL (and sometimes they're the same kids). I'm not sure of the actual statistics (and I'm not sure they matter), but the point holds; with 300 plus million people, a high quality of life standard, and a population spread out across thousands of miles, the US produces top-level athletes in a variety of sports and on a massive scale.


We Americans, perhaps because of our varied cultural histories, don't focus too well. Baseball may be the American "national pastime", but it long ago stopped being our national passion. American football might be the national passion, but because we're the only ones playing the game in large numbers, it doesn't connect us to the larger world.


Hockey does. Basketball does. Baseball does. And soccer does.


Because there's no sport here with the overriding importance that hockey in Canada or soccer almost everywhere else carries, we sate ourselves with trying to be the best in a multitude of games. We care because the teams wear "USA" across their shirts, not because they're playing a game that really matters to us as a nation. It's nice that USA basketball is back on top, but it wouldn't have cast a pall over the country if they had failed to win in Beijing two years ago. The US has failed to win an international championship in baseball since an Olympic gold in Sydney ten years ago, and even that victory was a blip on the collective radar. Hockey becomes a big deal every four years during the Olympics, but remains a niche regional sport otherwise.


To put it bluntly, Americans are spoiled. Without caring nearly as much (the way Canada does with hockey or Brazil does with soccer), we are good enough in most of the world's biggest team sports (with apologies to rugby and cricket), to contend in almost every competition. The hope is that one day, that will be true in soccer as well. I think most observers believe that eventually, it will happen.


Does that make us spoiled and greedy? Would you forsake the success of Americans hockey, baseball, and basketball for the USMNT being consistently among the best in the world? It seems like an easy question, but I'm really not sure.
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