Unit 11: Sports in America

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Watching or attending sports events is an important part of the lives of many Americans. What are some of these sports, and how do they affect the lives of the people?

Football

American Football

Sunday morning in thousands of American homes adults are hurrying to pack frankfurters, hamburgers, and sausages, with rolls and buns, mustard and ketchup, and various relishes: onions, pickles and the like. Bags of potato chips, pretzels, and peanuts are also gathered up. There is also the portable grill to get ready as well as a cooler filled with ice, beer and soda water. All of this food is for the "tailgate" party at the football game.

The Tailgate

(Station wagon automobiles, popular a few years ago, had a rear door that opened horizontally. It was called, after the rear gate of horse drawn wagons, the tailgate. When the car was parked in a lot, the tailgate was lowered and food and drinks were placed on it. Thus, a tailgate party.)

For those many other thousands not actually attending the game, a party nonetheless is held in front of a TV set, where one can watch three different games on a single Sunday afternoon and evening. American professional football is played during the late summer (preseason), the fall (regular season), and the winter until late in January (post-season, or play off time ). All this culminates in the Super Bowl to decide the champion team for the year. There are now twenty four teams divided into two conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). These teams are located throughout the country from Seattle to Miami, from San Diego to New England.

NFL Members

Professional sports in America is entertainment, especially football. Spectators are as much interested in eating and drinking as they are in the game itself. It is a time to party. And a time to advertise products for consumption. It was not always so. Professional football used to be a minor activity on the American scene. Because games were played only once a week, a football stadium had to accommodate many paying customers, so they were quite large. The largest stadium today is the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan with a capacity of a little over 80000 seats, and the smallest is the Oakland Coliseum in California seating just 50000 people. A large area of

The Yankee Stadium

land in the middle of a city is very expensive, and it would be essentially idle for days at a time. Thus stadiums were located on the fringes of cities or a waterfront land if that was available. But this made it difficult for spectators to attend.

Interest in professional football suddenly increased with the advent of color television. It had to be color television and not the simple black-and-white sort, because without viewing colors, the players on opposing teams cannot easily be distinguished, making it quite difficult to follow the game. With color, the teams are easily distinguished, and the pageantry, the colored banners and flags, heighten the visual interest. Technically advanced equipment permitted home viewers to see a replay, sometimes in slow motion. More experienced cameramen, with more cameras available, were able to anticipate unusual plays and follow the movement of the ball more closely. And announcers were able to describe the game and explain it to home viewers, and even provide background information about the players and owners. Television producers made arrangements with the officials to take intermissions from play so that corporate sponsors could broadcast commercials during the course of the game, rather than waiting until the end of a set period. Furthermore, games could be broadcast every week, with different games played at different times. All of this led to increased interest on the part of spectators, who now were more willing to leave their comfortable homes where they could watch on television, and travel to a far away stadium to join with other fans in attendance. Notice that one can view the game more clearly at home than one can see it from most seats in an enormous stadium, so the social aspects of being there with others is an important motivation for attending the game in person. Many stadiums today have a large screen visible from the seating area and capable of displaying a television picture. So even those spectators at the stadium itself can see "instant replays" of events on the field that they were unable to see from their seats.

Cheerleaders

In addition to professional football, most colleges and universities have a varsity football team, with additional personnel in a marching band and a squad of cheerleaders, whose task is to lead the spectators in cheering for their team. The marching band and cheerleaders usually provide entertainment during the major intermission halfway through the game.

A Runner

One reason football is so popular in America may be that the game combines teamwork with individual prowess in a rough, contact competition. The football hero is a ball carrier who can evade the defensive team, all of whom are trying to stop him. This explains why runners like O.J. Simpson became famous, while those teammates who protected him from the rushing defensive players are unknown. Similarly, an effective defensive player, who is able to move through the protection and stop the ball carrier, will often become famous.

Americans like to glorify individuals who succeed in overcoming obstacles, natural ones as well as those presented by others. Perhaps this inclination is not peculiar to Americans.

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