Wikipedia says the first mention of formal rules of football and the use of a referee is by Richard Mulcaster, headmaster of Merchant Taylors School, in 1581. The first explicit ban on handling is from a school in Aberdeen a century later.
I think there's a difference in that football clubs in a sense require unsuccessful trainees to exist in order for the successful trainees to have someone to train with, whereas successful films and actors aren't dependent on unsuccessful actors in the same way.
Because there's no training or practice involved in being an actor? Because acting is a solitary profession that can be practiced alone in the privacy of your parents' basement?
It seems to me that, very much like your football academies, acting classes only exist if there's a supply of people who want to act taking them, and the numbers mean that most of those won't get anywhere.
And yes, I agree with you that football academies should be open and honest about the chances of their kids becoming well-paid football professionals, but I don't expect that that would make much difference, any more than the fairly small number of Hollywood stars stops prospective actors from imagining that they will be the next big thing. After all, people buy lottery tickets.
Exactly. So there's no actual reason to give the English version precedence and credibility over the the Aztec version. The Aztecs didn't write the history, the conquerors did. The evidence can be oral history.
I think there's a difference in that football clubs in a sense require unsuccessful trainees to exist in order for the successful trainees to have someone to train with, whereas successful films and actors aren't dependent on unsuccessful actors in the same way.
Because there's no training or practice involved in being an actor? Because acting is a solitary profession that can be practiced alone in the privacy of your parents' basement?
It seems to me that, very much like your football academies, acting classes only exist if there's a supply of people who want to act taking them, and the numbers mean that most of those won't get anywhere.
Fair point, I might not have thought that through ...
Exactly. So there's no actual reason to give the English version precedence and credibility over the the Aztec version. The Aztecs didn't write the history, the conquerors did. The evidence can be oral history.
And is there any oral history indicating that association football and its relatives descend from Aztec ballgames? Why on earth would they?
Exactly. So there's no actual reason to give the English version precedence and credibility over the the Aztec version. The Aztecs didn't write the history, the conquerors did. The evidence can be oral history.
No actual reason? You mean apart from the continuous evidence of the playing of "get the ball to the goal" type games in the country in which the rules for Association Football and Rugby Football were developed, dating back to a time long before anyone in that country had heard of an Aztec? But nevertheless you suggest that the possibility that those games descended from the Aztec ball game rather than the English one is equally viable?
Occam's razor leaves your rather absurd suggestion in small pieces on the floor.
I'm not sure it is fair to refer to sport as a monolith. Should we distinguish between amateur and professional, between individual and team, and so on? If someone goes out running each morning, is that sport? There are people who run marathons and are delighted and proud if they can even finish, never mind winning; is this sport? Does sport have to be competitive? Must it be public? Must it be a physical acitivity? How about chess or bridge or go? Must there always be winner and losers in a sport?
Well, to my mind, "sport" must be both competitive and active. If you go running every day, or do yoga or something, then that's physical activity, but probably not sport, although it could be training for one. Bridge and chess are competitive, but not physical, so not sport.
Marathon running is interesting - it covers both the competitive sport (those fast whippet-shaped people who run unfeasibly fast) and people who are raising money for charity dressed as Spongebob (still a big physical challenge, but not a sport). Somewhere in the middle are the amateur runners who are trying to beat their personal best, or just finish at all. Are they sportsing? Does it have to be binary?
Dunno. The colonial victors wrote the history. Doesn't mean it's right. Democracy is also attributed to Europe while indigenous people discuss that Euro contact with them was the impetus. I've learned to be sceptical of European cultural imperialist claims as Canada works through Truth and Reconciliation.
There's reasonable scepticism and then there's ignoring the historical record.
Whose historical record? That's the point.
Are you suggesting the order banning football in London in 1314 (and similar orders under various monarchs over the following two centuries) was forged or are you suggesting that football crossed the Atlantic pre-Columbus?
Perhaps (and like me) he's wondering about the rest of the world. Perhaps soccer as we now know it started in what is now the UK, but the question is whether (and what) other football games developed elsewhere. I said "perhaps" because soccer did not have a following here until after WW II with the arrival of many migrants from mainland Europe - it was not brought by earlier UK migrants.
The problem of unrealistic expectations is probably seen most accutely in (British) academy level male footballers. Unlike the USA there isn't any kind of "not quite pro" college level competition. University sport is very definitely an amateur thing, with the possible exception of people in some more niche things like (field) hockey, and athletes studying sport related degrees at Loughborough.
For teenage footballers with decent talent the goal is to get a professional contract. They will go and train full time, and although things are improving on that front, they often tend to ignore studying to pass exams assuming they will make big bucks playing and it won't matter.
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. In 40 states, a college football or basketball coach is the highest-paid state employee (source: fanbuzz.com). Big-time college football and basketball teams generate large sums of money for schools, and the people who actually do the work get nothing, frequently not even an education or degree, because they are encouraged or even required to devote themselves to their sport. The vast majority of them will not play professionally, but they are playing in what are functionally the minor leagues for those two professional leagues. (Baseball and hockey have minor league systems, in which players get paid. They also recruit from universities, which baseball and hockey players don't get paid but do have a decent chance of getting a degree, since they don't tend to bring in a lot of money for their schools.) The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which regulates college sports, insists that players remain amateurs and talks about "student-athletes" in high-minded terms, but this simply means Division I football and basketball players are highly exploited. One guess as to which skin color predominates among them.
The problem of unrealistic expectations is probably seen most accutely in (British) academy level male footballers. Unlike the USA there isn't any kind of "not quite pro" college level competition. University sport is very definitely an amateur thing, with the possible exception of people in some more niche things like (field) hockey, and athletes studying sport related degrees at Loughborough.
For teenage footballers with decent talent the goal is to get a professional contract. They will go and train full time, and although things are improving on that front, they often tend to ignore studying to pass exams assuming they will make big bucks playing and it won't matter.
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. . . .
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. In 40 states, a college football or basketball coach is the highest-paid state employee (source: fanbuzz.com). Big-time college football and basketball teams generate large sums of money for schools, and the people who actually do the work get nothing, frequently not even an education or degree, because they are encouraged or even required to devote themselves to their sport.
The whole thing is fundamentally dishonest. If college sports players are not students first and sports-players second, then they're not students at all, and the whole concept of them representing an educational establishment in a sporting contest is morally bankrupt. But there's no point trying to insist in minimum standards that the players would have to maintain, because the colleges will cheat.
Burn the whole thing down. It's a lie, and it's fundamentally flawed.
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. In 40 states, a college football or basketball coach is the highest-paid state employee (source: fanbuzz.com). Big-time college football and basketball teams generate large sums of money for schools, and the people who actually do the work get nothing, frequently not even an education or degree, because they are encouraged or even required to devote themselves to their sport.
The whole thing is fundamentally dishonest. If college sports players are not students first and sports-players second, then they're not students at all, and the whole concept of them representing an educational establishment in a sporting contest is morally bankrupt. But there's no point trying to insist in minimum standards that the players would have to maintain, because the colleges will cheat.
Burn the whole thing down. It's a lie, and it's fundamentally flawed.
The whole thing looks strange from the UK - the only people here who have any idea or give a monkey's about how a university team is doing are the people on the team itself.
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. In 40 states, a college football or basketball coach is the highest-paid state employee (source: fanbuzz.com). Big-time college football and basketball teams generate large sums of money for schools, and the people who actually do the work get nothing, frequently not even an education or degree, because they are encouraged or even required to devote themselves to their sport.
The whole thing is fundamentally dishonest. If college sports players are not students first and sports-players second, then they're not students at all, and the whole concept of them representing an educational establishment in a sporting contest is morally bankrupt. But there's no point trying to insist in minimum standards that the players would have to maintain, because the colleges will cheat.
Burn the whole thing down. It's a lie, and it's fundamentally flawed.
The whole thing looks strange from the UK - the only people here who have any idea or give a monkey's about how a university team is doing are the people on the team itself.
There are a handful of exceptions (the Boat Race being a particularly odd one) but nothing on the scale of the US. The president of the Athletic Union one year when I was at university was from the US having fled the pressure of a sports scholarship to get back to sport being a fun thing to do when not studying.
How the hell does anyone run 26 miles? You might as well tell me these people can fly.
In the 1970s I walked 50 miles in 16 hours on snowshoes, on another occasion 150 miles in 40 days on snowshoes. This is at 14 years old. It wasn't a nice boarding school. They wanted to give challenges to boys.
Re soccer. Many societies played what we called 'murder ball' when it was played with goals 4 miles apart with nearly 200 boys participating, 2 balls, at night through dense bush. The game as it is played today has rules which got refined later and it became soccer. The influences on this development may come from a number of places.
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. In 40 states, a college football or basketball coach is the highest-paid state employee (source: fanbuzz.com). Big-time college football and basketball teams generate large sums of money for schools, and the people who actually do the work get nothing, frequently not even an education or degree, because they are encouraged or even required to devote themselves to their sport.
The whole thing is fundamentally dishonest. If college sports players are not students first and sports-players second, then they're not students at all, and the whole concept of them representing an educational establishment in a sporting contest is morally bankrupt. But there's no point trying to insist in minimum standards that the players would have to maintain, because the colleges will cheat.
Burn the whole thing down. It's a lie, and it's fundamentally flawed.
Indeed, the colleges do cheat, and have been caught at it often enough that some of them are embarrassed sufficiently to do something about it (and speaking as one with experience of the church and the public service, being embarrassed enough to do something about it takes a bit of doing).
Shipmates have long tolerated my anecdotes of having met people on the Camino who... etc etc... but walking for 25km while chatting does acquire a healthy store of acquaintances. One of them was a newly-minted BSc from the University of Georgia who had paid for a good slice of her tuition as a science tutor for two football players and a gaggle of the swimming team. She told me that the exams and paper submission requirements were not fictional or symbolic, and that they had to meet them. Several of the students had... ignored the requirements of their high school days, and were encouraged to do so by secondary schools determined to have athletic victories at all costs.
Much of the special tutoring (another cost of the athletic programme) was to remedy the high school gap, and ensure a transition to university level work. She said that she was lucky in her charges' determination to use the opportunity to get an education they could not dream of affording otherwise (US$12,080 for Georgians and US$31,120 for out-of-state, and that doesn't count room and board). Her charges all got through and, over the second glass of orujo blanco casero, she confessed that she was humbled by their eagerness to learn, and doubly so when two of her swimming charges told her that she had inspired them to become teachers. She also spoke with derision (orujo!!) for the academic programmes which simply crammed them for exams. A Scots teacher at the table said if we were to prostitute ourselves, we should be good whores and make sure that they knew their physics. I fear that the Spanish waitstaff were impressed by the table's exuberance.
As an amateur, my purpose when i engage in sport is to win. Period. Full stop.
Interesting. This is extremely alien to my mindset. Also what do you do in a situation where winning is essentially impossible? I see sport as more a kind of ritual, like ballet or liturgy. "Winning" does play a key role in this ritual as a goal which must be fundamentally of no importance, but which both sides agree to treat as though it is of immense importance.
Just winning doesn't give a reason to pick tennis over chess over discus throwing over the egg-and-spoon race.
Presumably winning fairly is more important than just winning. Unless you're Trump. Winning fairly is defined by the rules of the game, so it's inseparable from participating in the game as such. And since winning requires someone to lose and some of the time that will be you, I can't see how winning can be one's motivation for playing a game, as opposed to a motivation while playing a game.
These days when I play games it's almost always with the Daflings, in which case I'm aiming to win only just often enough that they feel they're actually overcoming opposition, and otherwise I want them to win.
Letting Dafling major win while still appearing to be putting up a fight is much easier than it used to be.
I have played both competitive chess and tennis. Both sports have the purpose of winning. I have been members of teams in both of these sports. To not attempt to win is vastly unfair to your teammates.
"Winning" could be defined in various ways. If you're a runner, achieving a personal best might be a "win", even if you didn't win your race. If you're a tennis player playing against a superior player, managing to only lose a set 6-4 might be a good result, or which you could feel proud. If, on the other hand, you're the good player, there's not much pleasure in stomping on someone significantly worse.
Most people I know who do competitive anything choose to enter competitions where they will be challenged, and where they can feel proud of a win, rather than entering easy competitions where they could hoover up meaningless trophies.
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. In 40 states, a college football or basketball coach is the highest-paid state employee (source: fanbuzz.com). Big-time college football and basketball teams generate large sums of money for schools, and the people who actually do the work get nothing, frequently not even an education or degree, because they are encouraged or even required to devote themselves to their sport.
The whole thing is fundamentally dishonest. If college sports players are not students first and sports-players second, then they're not students at all, and the whole concept of them representing an educational establishment in a sporting contest is morally bankrupt. But there's no point trying to insist in minimum standards that the players would have to maintain, because the colleges will cheat.
Burn the whole thing down. It's a lie, and it's fundamentally flawed.
The whole thing looks strange from the UK - the only people here who have any idea or give a monkey's about how a university team is doing are the people on the team itself.
I can imagine it must look very strange indeed. I can’t speak for everywhere in the US, but in my corner of it, college/university affiliation and loyalty is typically taken very seriously—much more seriously than loyalty to professional teams. Part of that may have to do with there not having been any professional teams here until relatively recently, while college alumni are everywhere. (It also doesn’t hurt that we have a history of some really good college basketball teams.) And part of it may have to do with strong rivalries between local schools, which adds fun to the loyalties.
I know I’ve mentioned on the Ship before the old joke that of course North Carolina has an established religion—college basketball. (In other parts of the South, it would be college football.) And lots of people who didn’t go to college still have loyalties to a college team.
I rarely watch professional football and never watch professional basketball, but college football and basketball is a whole ‘nother matter. I can remember when I was in junior high school (age 12ish–15ish), the whole school being given easy busy work so we would “work” while the conference basketball tournament was played over the school’s PA system. And in pre-internet days, it was very common for people to bring TVs into offices so folks could watch the tournament.
I recognize fully that there are some major problems with the current collegiate sports system—problems that have been brewing a growing for decades. The system is broken. Very broken. The problem is worse at some colleges and universities than at others. And the problems often primarily center on football and men’s basketball, though it can be seen from time to time in other sports as well.
I don’t know what the fix is. The current system is out of control and is unsustainable. There have been opportunities and recommendations to correct course over the years, but those recommendations have been largely ignored and those opportunities squandered. And all the while, the problem has gotten worse and worse.
Meanwhile, the reality is that Americans love college sports, and as reflected in the Supreme Court arguments last week, the challenge at this point of fixing the problems without destroying what people love about the sports is a big one.
And college sports do provide opportunities for some kids who otherwise couldn’t afford college. (Yes, that’s a whole different problem.) As illustrated by @Augustine the Aleut, lots of those kids do take advantage of the opportunity. What’s good for those students has to be of primary concern. (And as I’ve said, I do have a vested interest in the matter.)
You say "Meanwhile, the reality is that Americans love college sports"
The assumption must make it hell for anyone who couldn't give a rats' arse. I know it can sometimes be difficult over here for people who care nothing for football*, especially blokes.
Fix? I think the fix is, as it always is with sport, to remember it's just playing games. And that there's nothing wrong with people who aren't interested. Put sports in their proper place, as just a passtime that some people are into and some aren't, and a few people are able to make into a career, and it all looks more sensible.
I'd be most concerned for the poorer students who are not good at sports. Who's rooting for them?
I have played both competitive chess and tennis. Both sports have the purpose of winning. I have been members of teams in both of these sports. To not attempt to win is vastly unfair to your teammates.
Yes, I certainly agree with that. But I would suggest that it implies that your aim is not "to win... period". It is "to do your best to attempt to win" in order "to be fair to your teammates" (and your opponents too). The ceremony and social contract are in fact more fundamental than winning.
You say "Meanwhile, the reality is that Americans love college sports"
The assumption must make it hell for anyone who couldn't give a rats' arse. I know it can sometimes be difficult over here for people who care nothing for football*, especially blokes.
Fix? I think the fix is, as it always is with sport, to remember it's just playing games. And that there's nothing wrong with people who aren't interested. Put sports in their proper place, as just a passtime that some people are into and some aren't, and a few people are able to make into a career, and it all looks more sensible.
I'd be most concerned for the poorer students who are not good at sports. Who's rooting for them?
*soccer
Mmm. I've sometimes wondered if the quasi-religious aspect mentioned by @Nick Tamen might be the core of the problem. There are comments like that about lots of different sports - Bill Shankly's "It's not a matter of life and death; it's more important than that" springs to mind. He was joking, except he kind of wasn't. Are we trying to make sports bear a load they aren't really fitted for? Does that make it all go wrong?
A bit like "Bake Off". I really liked it but it seemed a shame for people to start investing it with national meaning and significance.
That Bill Shankly comment always makes me shudder. To my mind it exposes a fundamental sport-obsessed collective sickness in our society, that we do let this stuff matter. In any healthy society we'd ask "what the hell is that supposed to mean?" But we all knew.
Some of this discussion makes me wonder if church and liturgy might be enhanced if there were referee and penalties.. What sort of offences might merit penalty? short of crucifixion of course. It might be helpful to have penalties at vestry/parish council meetings too. The possibility for offences and fouls as well as nature of penalty is perhaps worthy of thought.
Both sports have the purpose of winning. I have been members of teams in both of these sports. To not attempt to win is vastly unfair to your teammates.
I made a distinction earlier between one's motivation while playing the sport and one's motivation to play the sport.
While playing your motivation is to win. Playing a sport just is attempting to win. But once one's not playing then one might just as well ask what the point of winning at that particular game is, and that can only be answered by describing the value of playing that particular game whether you win or not.
You say "Meanwhile, the reality is that Americans love college sports"
The assumption must make it hell for anyone who couldn't give a rats' arse. I know it can sometimes be difficult over here for people who care nothing for football*, especially blokes.
Not really, at least not in my experience. Americans in general love college sports, at least around here, but I know lots of people who don’t care at all, and I’m not aware of them getting any grief at all about it. I’m terrible at sports, especially sports involving balls, but I only got occasional grief about it, and next to none after I was 12 or so. I was more likely to be on the receiving end of assumptions that I’m good at basketball simply because I’m tall, and always have been.
Motor racing in general, and F1 in particular, have always had a purpose, to further the development of automobile engineering. In addition, of course, to the general purpose of all professional sport, which is to provide entertainment.
Motor racing wastes petrol and resources. The R & D would happen anyway. A business with onlookers not a sport.
As some have suggested, sports already have a great deal of purpose. Fostering a sense of identity and belonging, is perhaps the biggest one among them.
When I played cricket this was very important for me. I especially enjoyed the game if we were competitive. The same applies when I now watch sport.
My football team is about to be relegated from the Premier League but we will be back. Today we had a really good win and that is something to be celebrated.
I love the "we" bit. Not right of course - it's actually them unless you count vicarious attraction.
If you play sport where money or prizes are involved, it's better referred to as business. Sport is a participation sport where the only goal is enjoyment.
That Bill Shankly comment always makes me shudder. To my mind it exposes a fundamental sport-obsessed collective sickness in our society, that we do let this stuff matter. In any healthy society we'd ask "what the hell is that supposed to mean?" But we all knew.
I agree - why do supporters and participants have to be so tribal and competitive? It's relaxation for goodness' sake. If is isn't that, it's business - do people honestly think that big clubs see supporters as anything other than punters to be fleeced?
If you play sport where money or prizes are involved, it's better referred to as business. Sport is a participation sport where the only goal is enjoyment.
I think you need to qualify this a bit. I've played any number of competitive things where it's cost you a few quid to enter, and the top few finishers get some fraction of the pot back as prize money. That has nothing to do with business - the sums of money involved are small.
Maybe if you do well, it pays for a couple of pints or your bus fare.
That's an entirely different arrangement from professional sports, where clubs are businesses and players are employees.
Organized sports have to have funding so they can run. Events, tournaments etc do have entry fees and prizes as part of what stimulates interest and collects people together as a temporary community. Banquets, beer gardens, speeches, entertainment. It's all part of the entertainment. This is not the same as charging admission to a stadium for people to watch their fav team play another.
There's a quote in the back of my head with respect to professionals at the rubber bridge table, from some wealthy bridge player or other back in the day, where he says that he doesn't mind paying for another chap's racehorses, but objects to paying his rent.
Because of course if one plays high stakes rubber bridge at the sort of club where that happens, there are some players that on average win, and some players that on average lose. But the guy in the quote sees a considerable difference between rich folk playing for "fun money" vs playing against people without money who are trying to make a living by beating rich people at cards.
An interesting point is that American schools do not, in general, make profits from their athletics programs. See https://www.bestcolleges.com/blog/do-college-sports-make-money/. Football does well, but many sports do not, and it is not clear that even football always makes a profit.
why do supporters and participants have to be so tribal and competitive?
Because human nature (along with that of virtually every other higher primate) is to be tribal and competitive. At least in the modern day we’ve (largely) restrained that instinct to competitions where nobody gets killed.
why do supporters and participants have to be so tribal and competitive?
Because human nature (along with that of virtually every other higher primate) is to be tribal and competitive.
So we can't rise above our "nature?"
To be fair, that we can doesn't mean we will. We have to be really careful here with "is" and "ought to be". I think Marvin is describing the "is" as he sees it.
It seems to me that it's a matter of proportion. There's nothing wrong with being tribal and competitive in the sense of supporting team A and wanting to see them win. When their loss causes depression and violence, when supporters of team A start getting into fights with supporters of team B, then the tribalism and competitiveness is out of all proportion for what's behind it and at stake. And its a slippery slope; I had a friend who was a big Arsenal supporter and while he was by no means a hooligan, the way he'd talk about Spurs supporters made my skin crawl. What other people on the supporters' boards he'd frequent would say was worse. It looked like part of a spectrum to me, which ran all the way up to violence.
My old Dad, RIP, used to get annoyed when sports commentators would talk about a match as being "vital" or "crucial". No it isn't, he'd say, nothing important rides on it. It doesn't actually matter. It doesn't change your life, unless you choose to let it. His comment on the Grand National was usually "I assume it was won by a horse".
Liverpool will win the league - if not, some other team - Stewart Henderson.
why do supporters and participants have to be so tribal and competitive?
Because human nature (along with that of virtually every other higher primate) is to be tribal and competitive.
So we can't rise above our "nature?"
My old Dad, RIP, used to get annoyed when sports commentators would talk about a match as being "vital" or "crucial". No it isn't, he'd say, nothing important rides on it. It doesn't actually matter. It doesn't change your life, unless you choose to let it. His comment on the Grand National was usually "I assume it was won by a horse".
Liverpool will win the league - if not, some other team - Stewart Henderson.
My Dad's take - there's only one way to back a horse: between the shafts of a cart
why do supporters and participants have to be so tribal and competitive?
Because human nature (along with that of virtually every other higher primate) is to be tribal and competitive.
So we can't rise above our "nature?"
Expressing it through (relatively) harmless sporting contests rather than actual battles is rising above it.
Maybe. I've often heard this propsed and maybe it has something to it. On the other hand the sporting contest can be subsumed into and aggravate the problem. E.g. Celtic and Rangers, the Nike riots between Greens and Blues in Byzantium, the 1936 Olympics, India v Pakistan cricket matches.
Comments
Because there's no training or practice involved in being an actor? Because acting is a solitary profession that can be practiced alone in the privacy of your parents' basement?
It seems to me that, very much like your football academies, acting classes only exist if there's a supply of people who want to act taking them, and the numbers mean that most of those won't get anywhere.
And yes, I agree with you that football academies should be open and honest about the chances of their kids becoming well-paid football professionals, but I don't expect that that would make much difference, any more than the fairly small number of Hollywood stars stops prospective actors from imagining that they will be the next big thing. After all, people buy lottery tickets.
Fair point, I might not have thought that through ...
And is there any oral history indicating that association football and its relatives descend from Aztec ballgames? Why on earth would they?
No actual reason? You mean apart from the continuous evidence of the playing of "get the ball to the goal" type games in the country in which the rules for Association Football and Rugby Football were developed, dating back to a time long before anyone in that country had heard of an Aztec? But nevertheless you suggest that the possibility that those games descended from the Aztec ball game rather than the English one is equally viable?
Occam's razor leaves your rather absurd suggestion in small pieces on the floor.
Marathon running is interesting - it covers both the competitive sport (those fast whippet-shaped people who run unfeasibly fast) and people who are raising money for charity dressed as Spongebob (still a big physical challenge, but not a sport). Somewhere in the middle are the amateur runners who are trying to beat their personal best, or just finish at all. Are they sportsing? Does it have to be binary?
Perhaps (and like me) he's wondering about the rest of the world. Perhaps soccer as we now know it started in what is now the UK, but the question is whether (and what) other football games developed elsewhere. I said "perhaps" because soccer did not have a following here until after WW II with the arrival of many migrants from mainland Europe - it was not brought by earlier UK migrants.
There are huge problems with big-time university sports in the US. In 40 states, a college football or basketball coach is the highest-paid state employee (source: fanbuzz.com). Big-time college football and basketball teams generate large sums of money for schools, and the people who actually do the work get nothing, frequently not even an education or degree, because they are encouraged or even required to devote themselves to their sport. The vast majority of them will not play professionally, but they are playing in what are functionally the minor leagues for those two professional leagues. (Baseball and hockey have minor league systems, in which players get paid. They also recruit from universities, which baseball and hockey players don't get paid but do have a decent chance of getting a degree, since they don't tend to bring in a lot of money for their schools.) The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which regulates college sports, insists that players remain amateurs and talks about "student-athletes" in high-minded terms, but this simply means Division I football and basketball players are highly exploited. One guess as to which skin color predominates among them.
(Full disclosure: One of my kids is a college athlete on athletic scholarship in a non-revenue-producing sport—i.e. not football or basketball.)
The whole thing is fundamentally dishonest. If college sports players are not students first and sports-players second, then they're not students at all, and the whole concept of them representing an educational establishment in a sporting contest is morally bankrupt. But there's no point trying to insist in minimum standards that the players would have to maintain, because the colleges will cheat.
Burn the whole thing down. It's a lie, and it's fundamentally flawed.
The whole thing looks strange from the UK - the only people here who have any idea or give a monkey's about how a university team is doing are the people on the team itself.
There are a handful of exceptions (the Boat Race being a particularly odd one) but nothing on the scale of the US. The president of the Athletic Union one year when I was at university was from the US having fled the pressure of a sports scholarship to get back to sport being a fun thing to do when not studying.
In the 1970s I walked 50 miles in 16 hours on snowshoes, on another occasion 150 miles in 40 days on snowshoes. This is at 14 years old. It wasn't a nice boarding school. They wanted to give challenges to boys.
Re soccer. Many societies played what we called 'murder ball' when it was played with goals 4 miles apart with nearly 200 boys participating, 2 balls, at night through dense bush. The game as it is played today has rules which got refined later and it became soccer. The influences on this development may come from a number of places.
Indeed, the colleges do cheat, and have been caught at it often enough that some of them are embarrassed sufficiently to do something about it (and speaking as one with experience of the church and the public service, being embarrassed enough to do something about it takes a bit of doing).
Shipmates have long tolerated my anecdotes of having met people on the Camino who... etc etc... but walking for 25km while chatting does acquire a healthy store of acquaintances. One of them was a newly-minted BSc from the University of Georgia who had paid for a good slice of her tuition as a science tutor for two football players and a gaggle of the swimming team. She told me that the exams and paper submission requirements were not fictional or symbolic, and that they had to meet them. Several of the students had... ignored the requirements of their high school days, and were encouraged to do so by secondary schools determined to have athletic victories at all costs.
Much of the special tutoring (another cost of the athletic programme) was to remedy the high school gap, and ensure a transition to university level work. She said that she was lucky in her charges' determination to use the opportunity to get an education they could not dream of affording otherwise (US$12,080 for Georgians and US$31,120 for out-of-state, and that doesn't count room and board). Her charges all got through and, over the second glass of orujo blanco casero, she confessed that she was humbled by their eagerness to learn, and doubly so when two of her swimming charges told her that she had inspired them to become teachers. She also spoke with derision (orujo!!) for the academic programmes which simply crammed them for exams. A Scots teacher at the table said if we were to prostitute ourselves, we should be good whores and make sure that they knew their physics. I fear that the Spanish waitstaff were impressed by the table's exuberance.
Interesting. This is extremely alien to my mindset. Also what do you do in a situation where winning is essentially impossible? I see sport as more a kind of ritual, like ballet or liturgy. "Winning" does play a key role in this ritual as a goal which must be fundamentally of no importance, but which both sides agree to treat as though it is of immense importance.
Presumably winning fairly is more important than just winning. Unless you're Trump. Winning fairly is defined by the rules of the game, so it's inseparable from participating in the game as such. And since winning requires someone to lose and some of the time that will be you, I can't see how winning can be one's motivation for playing a game, as opposed to a motivation while playing a game.
These days the purpose is exercise and improving my mental health. Sod winning.
Letting Dafling major win while still appearing to be putting up a fight is much easier than it used to be.
Most people I know who do competitive anything choose to enter competitions where they will be challenged, and where they can feel proud of a win, rather than entering easy competitions where they could hoover up meaningless trophies.
I know I’ve mentioned on the Ship before the old joke that of course North Carolina has an established religion—college basketball. (In other parts of the South, it would be college football.) And lots of people who didn’t go to college still have loyalties to a college team.
I rarely watch professional football and never watch professional basketball, but college football and basketball is a whole ‘nother matter. I can remember when I was in junior high school (age 12ish–15ish), the whole school being given easy busy work so we would “work” while the conference basketball tournament was played over the school’s PA system. And in pre-internet days, it was very common for people to bring TVs into offices so folks could watch the tournament.
I recognize fully that there are some major problems with the current collegiate sports system—problems that have been brewing a growing for decades. The system is broken. Very broken. The problem is worse at some colleges and universities than at others. And the problems often primarily center on football and men’s basketball, though it can be seen from time to time in other sports as well.
I don’t know what the fix is. The current system is out of control and is unsustainable. There have been opportunities and recommendations to correct course over the years, but those recommendations have been largely ignored and those opportunities squandered. And all the while, the problem has gotten worse and worse.
Meanwhile, the reality is that Americans love college sports, and as reflected in the Supreme Court arguments last week, the challenge at this point of fixing the problems without destroying what people love about the sports is a big one.
And college sports do provide opportunities for some kids who otherwise couldn’t afford college. (Yes, that’s a whole different problem.) As illustrated by @Augustine the Aleut, lots of those kids do take advantage of the opportunity. What’s good for those students has to be of primary concern. (And as I’ve said, I do have a vested interest in the matter.)
The assumption must make it hell for anyone who couldn't give a rats' arse. I know it can sometimes be difficult over here for people who care nothing for football*, especially blokes.
Fix? I think the fix is, as it always is with sport, to remember it's just playing games. And that there's nothing wrong with people who aren't interested. Put sports in their proper place, as just a passtime that some people are into and some aren't, and a few people are able to make into a career, and it all looks more sensible.
I'd be most concerned for the poorer students who are not good at sports. Who's rooting for them?
*soccer
Yes, I certainly agree with that. But I would suggest that it implies that your aim is not "to win... period". It is "to do your best to attempt to win" in order "to be fair to your teammates" (and your opponents too). The ceremony and social contract are in fact more fundamental than winning.
Mmm. I've sometimes wondered if the quasi-religious aspect mentioned by @Nick Tamen might be the core of the problem. There are comments like that about lots of different sports - Bill Shankly's "It's not a matter of life and death; it's more important than that" springs to mind. He was joking, except he kind of wasn't. Are we trying to make sports bear a load they aren't really fitted for? Does that make it all go wrong?
A bit like "Bake Off". I really liked it but it seemed a shame for people to start investing it with national meaning and significance.
While playing your motivation is to win. Playing a sport just is attempting to win. But once one's not playing then one might just as well ask what the point of winning at that particular game is, and that can only be answered by describing the value of playing that particular game whether you win or not.
Perhaps, although I almost always hear such comments as jokes, not as something that anyone seriously believes.
Motor racing wastes petrol and resources. The R & D would happen anyway. A business with onlookers not a sport.
I agree - why do supporters and participants have to be so tribal and competitive? It's relaxation for goodness' sake. If is isn't that, it's business - do people honestly think that big clubs see supporters as anything other than punters to be fleeced?
I think you need to qualify this a bit. I've played any number of competitive things where it's cost you a few quid to enter, and the top few finishers get some fraction of the pot back as prize money. That has nothing to do with business - the sums of money involved are small.
Maybe if you do well, it pays for a couple of pints or your bus fare.
That's an entirely different arrangement from professional sports, where clubs are businesses and players are employees.
Because of course if one plays high stakes rubber bridge at the sort of club where that happens, there are some players that on average win, and some players that on average lose. But the guy in the quote sees a considerable difference between rich folk playing for "fun money" vs playing against people without money who are trying to make a living by beating rich people at cards.
Because human nature (along with that of virtually every other higher primate) is to be tribal and competitive. At least in the modern day we’ve (largely) restrained that instinct to competitions where nobody gets killed.
To be fair, that we can doesn't mean we will. We have to be really careful here with "is" and "ought to be". I think Marvin is describing the "is" as he sees it.
It seems to me that it's a matter of proportion. There's nothing wrong with being tribal and competitive in the sense of supporting team A and wanting to see them win. When their loss causes depression and violence, when supporters of team A start getting into fights with supporters of team B, then the tribalism and competitiveness is out of all proportion for what's behind it and at stake. And its a slippery slope; I had a friend who was a big Arsenal supporter and while he was by no means a hooligan, the way he'd talk about Spurs supporters made my skin crawl. What other people on the supporters' boards he'd frequent would say was worse. It looked like part of a spectrum to me, which ran all the way up to violence.
My old Dad, RIP, used to get annoyed when sports commentators would talk about a match as being "vital" or "crucial". No it isn't, he'd say, nothing important rides on it. It doesn't actually matter. It doesn't change your life, unless you choose to let it. His comment on the Grand National was usually "I assume it was won by a horse".
Liverpool will win the league - if not, some other team - Stewart Henderson.
My Dad's take - there's only one way to back a horse: between the shafts of a cart
Expressing it through (relatively) harmless sporting contests rather than actual battles is rising above it.
Maybe. I've often heard this propsed and maybe it has something to it. On the other hand the sporting contest can be subsumed into and aggravate the problem. E.g. Celtic and Rangers, the Nike riots between Greens and Blues in Byzantium, the 1936 Olympics, India v Pakistan cricket matches.