US Sport

[Janny]

As an English person without satellite TV (yes, we still have only 4 channels!!), I don't get to watch much sport from America. But these are, in my view, the best sports.
I ask you people, and I think the Scandinavian influence may bias this, which is the best sport played in the US? I am personally for ice hockey (it seems like the ultimate version of my sport grass hockey) but I don't know much about it beyond my copy of NHL 2003 and a bit I saw on Transworld Sport about Bertuzzi's punch.

So, the best US sport. Discuss.

[Lizra]

Basketball! NBA basketball! After that I prefer (my) little kids playing soccer.

[gollum9630]

the NBA sucks, its always rigged so that the same team wins year after year. If you want to watch good basketball watch the NCAA championshipd. But the best North American sport to watch is the NHL. The pace is fasst with hard hits and lots of action. Even crappy teams like the Devils have won championships.

[Insidious Rex]

NCAA basketball then followed shortly after by Pro hoops. In my opinion. But these arent the most popular. I think the most popular sports among americans is:

1. Baseball (americas past time after all. it borders on religion here)
2. Football (american... of course)
3. NASCAR (in the past 10 years has shot up in popularity here)
4. Basketball (Jordan is gone. Is James the new basketball massiah?)
5. Golf (because of 3 things: Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods & Tiger Woods)
6. Hockey (theres a huge drop off between the others and hockey for various reasons)

Soccer although massively popular on a world scale still only has marginal popularity here in comparison to the others. Americans like big fast explosive sports. Soccers subtleties and low scoring unfortunately put a lot of americans off. they like seeing home runs every 3 minutes and quarterbacks getting their heads knocked off by line backers. they like flash and style and arent concerned so much with substance. in a way this appetite has corrupted a sport like baseball which at its core is a slow moving chess like methodic game with few explosions of athletic furry. now we have homeruns everwhere and free agency making some teams permenantly better then others and we are up to our neck in steroids. and some people are surprised?

[gollum9630]

I dont know how you americans enjoy baseball and say soccer is boring. Whenever watch a baseball game i see little or no action at all. I have seen homeruns, but those are not that great, and i rarley ever see amazing diving catches. Whenever i watch soccer i always see amazing saves but the goalkeepers, and amazing plays but the offence.

Your guys football also sucks. Canadian football uses bigger balls, longer fields and we have 3 downs instead of 4 resulting is more passing plays and less rushing. Not counting last years superbowl but the Grey Cup finals are usually closer in socre then the superbowl finals

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by gollum9630
Even crappy teams like the Devils have won championships.

Obviously this is coming from a sore loser since they have been one of the BEST teams in the NHL for many years. Unlike any of the canadian teams.

[Ruinel]

Softball! *used to play softball*

[brownjenkins]

i'd put football at the top... it's also probably the most balanced sport due to strong spending caps... it's one of the few sports where any given team can win any given year

baseball, and to a lesser extent the nba (and even college hoops and football), are terribly imbalanced due to money... there are a whole host of teams that have absolutely no chance at a championship because they get enormously outspent (or out-recruited at the college level, which boils down to money even though it is not given directly to the players)

hockey is a little less this way... even though they have no caps, the money involved is much less so a big spender can bring a lousy team to the top pretty quick if they want

is money an issue like this at all in soccer?

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by brownjenkins
baseball, and to a lesser extent the nba (and even college hoops and football), are terribly imbalanced due to money...

well i would hesitate to lump college basketball equally in with college football. they are both huge money makers for their respective schools but when you have a playoff system like the NCAA Tournament that involves 65 teams in a head to head do or die playoff series then its nearly impossible to predict the outcome where as college football champions are pretty much down to two or three schools by the end of the year (including this past year as ridiculous as it was). You had a situation this year where teams like St. Josephs and Gonzaga were two of the top teams all year long. That would NEVER EVER happen in college football. EVER. Baseball is absurd. The NBA a little less so (immediate impact of draft picks is a huge factor in the NBA and not at all in baseball). Football can be a free agency joke at times too. And College football is the sport equivalent of rank aristocracy in which a few schools make no apologies for being born into a system of self serving king makership. But college basketball, while it DOES have its faults, seems by far the most unrigged of all the big time sports in my opinion.

[gollum9630]

Originally posted by jerseydevil
Obviously this is coming from a sore loser since they have been one of the BEST teams in the NHL for many years. Unlike any of the canadian teams.

and what place are they this year. 7th in the east. Pitiful, seeing as even Toronto is ahead of the devils, and Toronto sucks big time. But the Canucks are 5 the in the west, and seem to have been in the top 5 all season long.

[jerseydevil]

Originally posted by gollum9630
and what place are they this year. 7th in the east. Pitiful, seeing as even Toronto is ahead of the devils, and Toronto sucks big time. But the Canucks are 5 the in the west, and seem to have been in the top 5 all season long.

Actually - the Devils are 6th and they are routinely behind in the season - but come ahead in the playoffs. With the Devils everyone should know that it isn't over till the very end.

[The Gaffer]

Originally posted by brownjenkins
is money an issue like this at all in soccer?

Is the pope catholic? does Alex Ferguson s*** in the woods?

It's ALL about money these days in soccer. If you've got loads, you buy the best players, win more competitions, get more TV revenues, sell more merchandise and therefore get loads more money.

There's a huge imbalance between the rich and poor clubs. Look at Chelsea: they spent over £100 million on new players in about 6 months and have leapfrogged to the top.

This is also exploited at the junior level, where the most promising youngsters are signed up by the richest clubs as young as age 14.

Having said that, at the grass roots you still have thousands of people turning out every weekend to follow their home team. Even in the English third division the crowds are in the thousands. There must be close to a million people attending football matches (i.e. soccer) each Saturday in the UK.

I like the NFL rules which seem to prevent teams from exploiting their success in this way. They've tried to regulate similarly in Europe, but have fallen foul of EU free trade legislation (i.e. it's been ruled an unlawful restraint of trade to regulate the transfer of players, wages, etc)

[brownjenkins]

i figured soccer might have the same money issues

college basketball is one of the better sports in terms of fair competition, and the playoff system adds a lot to it... but money is still an issue, the teams who hire the multi-million dollar coaches get the best players and, more often than not, end up in the final four

i put football at the top because any team has a chance to go from the bottom to the top over a 5-year period, give or take... and success depends much more on management than money

[Lizra]

There's an editorial in my local paper today (by syndicated columnist Gene Lyons) that says this (among many other things)


........ "The NBA has turned itself into a world-class league. I recently watched a game between the Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Spurs featuring players from seven countries on the floor at the same time. (France, Argentina, Turkey, Mexico, Germany, Canada, and the United States) Meanwhile, NCAA competition has grown visibly weaker. The top US high school players now skip college, or stay only a year or two. Believe it or not, NCAA admissions reforms have also cut into the player pool just as more Division 1 teams are pushing to become competitive. There's less talent available and it's spread much thinner. "

"In ten years, nobody's going to watch college basketball for the same reason nobody watches college baseball. If you're used to big leaguers, it's just not very entertaining. "

"Plus, the NBA's a cleaner transaction: The money's right up there on the table where everybody can see it. "

There's a bunch more, but I'm tired of typing. (Our scanner's not hooked up. ) Maybe his column's published on the internet somewhere? Anyway, it was sort of interesting.

[Beruthiel's cat]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
NCAA basketball then followed shortly after by Pro hoops. In my opinion. But these arent the most popular. I think the most popular sports among americans is:

1. Baseball (americas past time after all. it borders on religion here)
2. Football (american... of course)
3. NASCAR (in the past 10 years has shot up in popularity here)
4. Basketball (Jordan is gone. Is James the new basketball massiah?)
5. Golf (because of 3 things: Tiger Woods, Tiger Woods & Tiger Woods)
6. Hockey (theres a huge drop off between the others and hockey for various reasons.

And now for my take on these sports...


1. Baseball! I can't wait to worship at the Green Cathedral (well, the local, minor league one, anyway). I went to Opening Day several years ago... it was 36 degrees Farenheit! I made it through the seventh inning -- we were getting whupped anyway, so I left...)
2. Football is not my favorite. Reminds me of some kind of macho, Roman arena sport. Plus, any team I support tends to end up joke fodder.
3 NASCAR?? That's a sport?? Guys in cars going around in circles for 3 hours?? Right...
4. Basketball. No, I'm afraid I don't care for it. My dad is a big fan and when I was a kid I was forced to go with him to his pick-up games. I just can't rid myself of the association with the smell of a sweaty gymnasium.
5. Golf. I'm acutally starting to appreciate it, in no small part due to Tiger Woods! Also, the PGA Championship was played in my city this past year and it was so much fun. It really psyched up my community!
6. Hockey! Love it! Full of action, absolutely the most fun to watch in person! It originated in Canada, but it's pretty well permeated the US now with teams in the South, even! (Doubtless due to all the Northerners fleeing to warmer climes...)

Those are my opinions, anyway!

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Lizra
"In ten years, nobody's going to watch college basketball for the same reason nobody watches college baseball. If you're used to big leaguers, it's just not very entertaining. "

Thats a pile of crap. Basketball is a fundamentally different sport then baseball. Baseball is a component sport. its a bunch of specializers. and it takes talent that needs to be developed for years and years and years. thats why you draft kids out of high school and never hear from them again for 6 years. But in basketball raw talent is more on the surface of the sport. so the talent level in college can still be very high. i mean we are talking about what 2 or 3 high schoolers who make it in the pros in a year? do we really think that thats enough to destroy college basketball? come on. i used to hate that kids left early also. but now its even among all teams so it only increases the competition and its changed the game somewhat such that you build teams with the idea that a super talented player will only be with your squad for 1 or 2 years max. people were bemoaning the end of college basketball in the early 80s because of this. and it hasnt happened yet. tell that guy to relax and watch how good duke is in 2020.

[Lizra]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
[B]Thats a pile of crap.

Glad to hear it!

[gdl96]

According to my gov teacher, NASCAR is the most popular sport in the country.

[jerseydevil]

You know the only sports that matter are the ones where New Jersey is in the finals.

[gollum9630]

so this year no sport matters