Month: August 2011

Finally, in Part 14 of this mess I finished with my excessive analysis of America and how it perceives sports, finishing with the facts that we dominate the Olympics, measured by the only metric that matters: medal count. Now, I want to look at the big three sports in the US: football, baseball and basketball.   All three are essentially purely American inventions/creations and in each we have systems of development worth discussing in the context of all of what’s gone before.

As well, for reasons I discussed yesterday, each has a tendency (due to massive incentives) to draw a large population of American athletes into them.  There’s a third reason they need to be discussed that applies to the Olympic lifting issue specifically but I’ll get to that shortly.

Of those three, football is an almost exclusively American sport although a handful of other countries do have leagues.  There is no international competition (i.e.… Keep Reading

I promise, no more endless bits about sociology and American sport.    In Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting: Part 13 I gave the final necessary background to understand some of the screwiness of sports in this country including a look at gender issues along with the amateur professional issue.  Frankly, given how messed up the system is and given the nature of the Olympics and the requirement for amateur status, it’s amazing that America does anything at the Olympics.  Yet we do.  Quite a lot of something actually.  Let’s start with the American sports ‘system’.

The American No-System Sports  System

As I discussed at some point last week, the US is very decentralized.  The spread of our country, the local pockets of culture, the immigrant nature of our people keeps pretty much everything in this country from having much overall consistency except existing under the same flag.   Case in point, laws can vary drastically between different states. … Keep Reading

Finishing with Part 13 and  having bored you to death with too much information about the culture, etc. of the USA (#1) all of last week I will finally move towards a more detailed look at sports in the USA in more specifics.  Some of it will be more sociological rambling, all of it is background that I feel is relevant to this series.  And since it’s already out of control, I might as well go all the way and make it totally out of control.  I am an American and we have to do everything to the extreme.

Today I’m going to look at some general ideas about sports (both in universal terms and in America) along with some more great American sports hypocrisy.  Then I’ll finally look at the US and its sports dominance (such as it is) to lead into tomorrow and Wednesday’s discussions.  Before I can do that, however,  I need to make a quick return trip to the Land down Unda’ because this is funny as hell.… Keep Reading

I was originally going to make this part of every article but it’s too long.  So it’s going here and I’m just linking out to it.  Response to this series, which I agree has gotten totally out of control, has been varied. Many like it or are at least amused by it.  While I don’t mind attaboys or whatever, I don’t really care since I don’t do anything in my life to make anybody happy but me.  Like it or don’t like it, I’m doing what I’m going to do.   Many wish I’d just get to the point and I will be talking about OL’ing next week, promise.

But there is another category of responses that I want to address in detail because it’s going to make me buy a high powered rifle and start murdering people.

What This Series Is About

A point I’ve made once or twice but apparently need to address again is this: I am attempting to write a series on the issue of Olympic Lifting in the United States, building up a tremendous amount of background to a sport that is, for anybody who bothers to read the article series title, Olympic Lifting.  … Keep Reading

Ok after going too long in Why the US Sucks at Olympic Lifting Part 11 yesterday, I promise, this is the last piece of background and next week I will move on to look at American sports domination, a couple of odd exceptions and then into Olympic lifting.  Today I will finish with my broad stroke generalizations about American sports as a whole by moving from the sports level to the athlete level.  Because just as our sports have to fulfill certain requirements, so do our athletes.

I finished yesterday by pointing out why we don’t like soccer and mentioned that one of the biggest reasons (along with the others) was that soccer can end in a tie.  This goes against American mentality and especially American sports mentality.  The point of sports is to establish who’s the best, who’s the worst, who’s the winner and who’s the loser.  But in America it goes further than that. … Keep Reading