Two Foers

[dogofthefuture]

I just finished two books by authors with the last name Foer. It's not a coincidence. While searching the library's catalog for one, I saw the other and thought it sounded interesting.

The random one was How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization by Franklin Foer. It certainly kept my interest, tracing the various

Comments

[dogofthefuture]

It's funny, because I knew, I just knew that someone would object to this. So, fair enough, let's give it a fair rundown:

Please tell me the American analog of:

Celtic/Rangers, wherein fans hate each other because of religion, screaming and singing such witticisms as "Fuck the Pope" and "We're wading in Fenian/Protestant blood."

Barcelona/Madrid, where the ancient hatred of Catalan vs. Castilians are played out.

The violent anti-Semitism of clubs in Eastern Europe, holding up banners about how "The trains are leaving for Auschwitz" and such. This was 5 years ago, mind you, not in 1942.

The violent anti-anyone-not-white racism of clubs that still is quite popular, apparently, when a black player gets the ball. Whatever may have happened in Jackie Robinson's day, these days and really since the 70s at the latest, it largely doesn't. Certainly nobody in the stadium makes ape noises when a black player gets the ball. This shit still happens in Europe or did, at least, in 2004 according to the book I read.

I'm not saying we're "better" than them. I'm saying that at least when it comes to sports, we've so far managed to avoid this stuff. Yes, Philly and Boston fans are dicks. Give it another few hundred years and maybe we will. But for now, so far mostly so good.

Perhaps I am wrong. Convince me.

[yiskah]

This is all really interesting - my interest in football itself is pretty marginal but I am fascinated by the culture that surrounds it (particularly in the UK, which is - obv - what I know most about). I guess it's linked to the point about football being 'socialist' (large clubs notwithstanding), as unlike the other big international team sports (rugby, cricket), you need neither a lot of space, nor a lot of equipment, nor a nice soft grassy area on which to fall down - you just need a ball and 2+ players. All over the world, football's the game I've almost invariably seen played by poor kids in the street (the exception being in India, where they played cricket). So because of that it became linked - in the UK, at least - to the white working-class (given that the UK didn't have substantial non-white immigration until the 1950s), a group that's become increasingly disenfranchised over the past several decades, leading in part to the ugly manifestations you describe above.

Anyway! This is probably all in the book, sorry. I should read it.

Never read the JSF book you mention, but I thought Everything Is Illuminated was stunning - would recommend it if you haven't already read it (but I imagine you have).

[dogofthefuture]

True enough - really, all you need is a ball and some space. (To be fair, that's all you really need for American football too, as long as you know the rules.) I actually have no problem with the game itself, though honestly I'm not interested in watching or playing it. It's the fanship that I was thinking of.

I actually have read Everything is Illuminated. I thought it was... okay. Didn't really grab me quite the way Extremely Loud did.

[yiskah]

Oh, really? I assumed you needed a soft surface for falling down on, and a considerable amount of padding and protective gear - however I now next to nothing about the sport other than what I've seen in the movies.

[dogofthefuture]

Nah, you can play "touch" football, where a tackle is just touching the person with the ball. My friends and I played a lot of this in the street growing up. I'm sure people who had to drive up the street hated us because we'd take our sweet time about getting out of the way, and then glare at the driver for interrupting our *game*.

There was plenty of bumping and jostling, of course, but probably a lot less than you'd see in a rugby scrum, and likely no worse than what happens in soccer.

[errforce1]

I haven't read the Foer book, so I can't really make a relative comparison, but on an absolute scale there seems to me to be a fair amount of socio-political baggage attached to an awful lot of American sports. From working class kids cursing "cake-eaters" at hockey games, to MIT fans chanting "that's all right, that's ok, you'll all work for us someday.." to Mississippi, where they had to actually ban carrying sticks into the stadium to bring this to a halt...



[while they're still a major feature of NASCAR events]

... to a bunch of dicks at Arizona State...

... to Kansans and Missourians getting their Civil War on..



[what the fuck?]

... to the class resentments displayed in pretty much any state in the Union where there is a major land-grand institution and a separate university.. (or sometimes just for the hell of it)...

While you don't see as much of the open segregation that characterized professional sports into the 1950s (and Sixties in the case of the "Southern" Washington Redskins) and continued in high school and college sports into the 1970s, you don't have to look very long to find more recent incidents....

Then there's all the in-your-face "redneck pride" culture war stuff associated with a lot of "outdoor" sports--our local outdoor sports big-box store hosted a Todd Palin event two years ago, and they sell plenty of merchandise that caters to that element...

etc., etc.

Anyhow, like I said, I can't say exactly how the level of sociopolitical drama associated with American sports is compares with that in global soccer, but I do think there's a substantial amount of it out there.

[dogofthefuture]

I'm not saying there's none. But nowhere NEAR the level of stuff that's attached to soccer clubs, especially the European ones.

[errforce1]

That I can't really speak to--I don't see a whole lot of daylight between "Burn abolitionist scum" and extolling the Holocaust. More broadly, my point was that there is a lot of tribalism, triumphalism, resentment, and so forth tied up in American sporting culture, which your original post seemed to discount too quickly. Anyhow.

[dogofthefuture]

I guess the disagreement here is not whether it exists, as to how much there is - and again, while I wouldn't say there's none, I just don't there's as much. It occurs to me, though, that I'm mostly thinking of professional sports, not college. There might be a lot of stuff that goes on there that I don't know about, not following college sports.