modern pentathlon?

The modern pentathlon ranks very highly on my list of current Olympic events that are unworthy of this honor. I have no doubt it is an athletic endeavor. A great many things are athletic endeavors and they are not sports at the Olympic level. Rugby, chess boxing, MMA, American football are all athletic activities, even cerebral as well at times, but none of them are in the Olympics. Of course, there are certain criteria the Olympics put forth for inclusion such as global appeal, but a handful of competitors from many countries does not equate to global appeal. Perhaps what I find most off-putting is almost any sport that involves a horse. If the horse is doing most of the work, I'm not sure why the human gets the medal. Now if a person jumped over barriers and ran through water, that would be fun to watch. Actually, is is fun to watch and it is called the steeplechase. If the person carried the horse, or perhaps a smaller animal like a wolf, that would be far more impressive. A combination sport like horse-back riding mixed with archery would be fun and not horse-centric. It would be about accuracy while moving. That seems like something the Mongolians and some Central Asian countries might do very well in. But things like dressage or any activity that involves a tax-deductible dancing horse seem out of character with the seemingly egalitarian Olympic ideals.

trying to explain baseball

As a companion piece to yesterday's post trying to explain football, today is a brief bit on baseball. Unlike American football, baseball is at least popular in some other countries so it is not asked about as often. For instance, I have never had to explain to a Venezuelan why baseball is played in the U.S. However, it does receive its fair share of complaints from non-Americans who find fault with the game, especially its pace. However, in contrast to American football, those complaints are very similar to the same ones that non-fans from America also have about baseball.

American football is of course not something for everyone in the U.S. However, even domestic non-fans understand the sport's place in American culture and can at least comprehend why the sport is so popular because they end up surrounded by signs of the sport's obvious popularity. This is an insight foreigners rarely have and explaining football's popularity is much more difficult because it is hard to easily explain how football is able to hold great cultural significance to someone who has not lived in that culture. Contrast this with baseball which, despite being America's pastime, has ceded the number one spot of professional sports to its beefy football brother. In doing so, it also draws less fascination from foreigners who rarely ask why baseball is poplar in the U.S. Well, at least the ones I talk with. Instead, they ask why is the sport so slow and they instantly get their answer on why it is not the dominant sport in the U.S. The "too slow" refrain is all too common, but also not fair. Again, Jack comes through with a theory on why many dislike baseball based on a lack of understanding of the finer points of the sport.

I have yet to get a really good opportunity to explain baseball to a non-fan here. It doesn't come up as a topic as often as American football, but perhaps I can win someone over.

In a note related to yesterday's pool party, I met one of the two Peace Corps Volunteers in Balkanabat. She lives with the family of one of our employees. There are only 29 PCVs in Turkmenistan and that number is gradually going down.

trying to justify american football

Living overseas, I sometimes find myself trying to explain to people why American football is so popular in the U.S. It usually goes with the corollary of explaining why international football (aka: soccer) is not as popular in the U.S. as it is in the rest of the world.

Thank goodness, my friend Jack has addressed part of this question before. Others have also answered, but none of them are as cool, so we'll disregard their comments. But seriously, my stock answer has focused on explaining how football is part of American culture through its existence as a youth sport and into high school and then into college. Athletics in American high schools has some similarities with youth sports in other parts of the world. However, sports in American colleges and universities is very different than collegiate athletics in the rest of the world. And with football being this monolithic presence on many large university campuses, it holds a well-entrenched place in the typical week of many college students and plenty of non-students. I have met many people who were huge fans of the state school's football team just because they lived in the same state.

History partly explains why American football is popular here but not many other places. The sport developed into its more or less modern form here so it has incumbency status. With history and culture being what they are, and now combined with business being what it is, football is not going away anytime soon. Nor will it be supplanted by another sport, especially not soccer for commercial dominance in the U.S. The interesting question to ask is if soccer would be as popular in the U.S. as it is in the rest of the world if football had never existed? I am not convinced it would be. There's a certain joy within the American spirit that seems to relish being different than the rest of the world. This is a much deeper social question about American society, but at its core is the concept of American exceptionalism.

Anyway, there's another pool party tonight and I'm sure this will come up again like it always does. Yes, a pool party. And yes, it is a difficult life.

flopping and officiating

The flopping and faking of injuries in soccer is a disgrace to the sport. It makes me cringe any time a player goes down clutching his angle, shin, knee, face (you know who you are Keita), etc and rolling around on the ground like someone in a stop, drop and roll instructional video. I played soccer for many years up into high school for school and club teams. We played hard, sometimes aggressively, and yes, people ran into each other, fouls were committed, and general contact occurred. But I never saw a teammate or opponent go down in apparent pain who was not actually hurt and did not need to be substituted for. (Cramps and getting the wind knocked out are other matters, but I’ve never seen anyone use those as a ploy for slowing down the game or drawing a free kick). This is why it pains me to see these professional athletes, some of whom have been made wealthy and famous by their sport, disgrace that same sport with such contemptible behavior. Put more simply, it is cheating.

Unfortunately, it will never end as long as there is no real consequence for the actions. I was pleased a few World Cups back when they started to dole out yellow cards for blatantly fake falls and play acting. However, many plays are still missed and much over-acting of actual fouls occurs in an attempt to induce a yellow or even red card instead of a simple free kick. Much like the need for some instant replay to improve the quality of the officiating, post-game reviews of penalties, both real and imagined is necessary. This review must come with consequences that includes suspension from international play, league play, and fines (as a function of player pay as players make highly variable pay). This is the only way it will have teeth and, if not stop, at least strongly curtail the flopping, because if I wanted to watch that, I’d be watching the fishing championship on the Outdoors channel. Regrettably, much like drug-testing in baseball, financial reform on Wall Street, and energy policy legislation, if it ever happens, it will be weak and ineffectual.

Perhaps the biggest hindrance to improved officiating in soccer is FIFA President Sepp Blatter, who has taken the stance of a luddite when it comes to using technology to improve the games. He has been critical of the use of replay or other means to assess when goals are scored because “the game must be played the same way no matter where you are in the world.” Excuse me? "Men, women, children, amateurs and professionals all play the same game all over the world.” No they don’t. If you think those kids playing on that dirt pitch over there is the same thing as professionals on a sod field with professional horticulturists looking after the grass, then you’re a moron at best, and a disingenuous liar at worst. Sometimes you play with just one linesman, sometimes none, sometimes two, who knows. But let’s not avoid the use of technology to improve the fairness of the sport at its highest level while hiding behind some “think of the children” mantra. Tennis has successfully brought technology into their officiating at high levels and it has not ruined the amateur and developmental levels of the sport. Soccer could do likewise, if only a bloated relic of the past wasn’t dragging it down.

group H

In World Cup Group H, it's interesting to see how the standings are going into the final games of the round-robin group stage. We could end up in a situation where Chile, Spain, and Switzerland are all 2-1 with Hondurus taking the 0-3 drubbing. Or, we could up with Spain at 3-0 with Hondurus, Spain, and Switzerland each at 1-2. Tie-breakers are great.