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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   4941 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 13, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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The Blue Tribe is most classically typified by liberal political beliefs, vague agnosticism, supporting gay rights, thinking guns are barbaric, eating arugula, drinking fancy bottled water, driving Priuses, reading lots of books, being highly educated, mocking American football, feeling vaguely like they should like soccer but never really being able to get into it, getting conspicuously upset about sexists and bigots, marrying later, constantly pointing out how much more civilized European countries are than America, and listening to “everything except country”.

Does this mean football (not handegg) is considered high-brow in America?

In addition to what everyone else said about Europhilia.

  1. Soccer's association with high income white liberals is part of a century-plus cycle of American upper class whites developing or discovering new sports whenever their old sports get overrun with the "wrong sort" (immigrants, plebs, Black people), part of the tension between sport as upper class hobby for personal development and sport as a professional display for entertainment. Marquess of Queensbury boxing was an upper class hobby sport, before the Irish took over as it went professional, and boxing declined in popularity as Blacks and then Eastern Europeans dominated its higher weightclasses. The biggest football game on the calendar used to be Harvard v Yale; the Ivy League was a sports league before it was a symbol of prestige. Football was taken over by Black players at the highest levels, so upper class whites transitioned to other sports where they could shine. Soccer was popular circa the 90s-2000s as a sport for suburban white kids, less violent and lower class than football, and because the freak athletes were playing football or basketball ordinary kids could shine. Soccer mom was originally a term specifically denoting an upper-middle class suburban white mom, as opposed to working class parents whose kids played football or basketball at the park. Soccer now is more mainstream, real athletic kids play it, so we're seeing rich white kids gravitate further out to shit like Ultimate Frisbee, Rock Climbing, Crossfit, or college Quidditch teams(!) to find an athletic space that isn't dominated by proles. [I write this as a white guy who didn't make the Basketball team in high school, and today owns a home rock climbing wall, I'm not talking shit on my outgroup]

  2. This was more true a decade ago when SA wrote the piece than it is today, and even more true ten years before that when SA (and I) were in school and sports tastes were being created. We're seeing way more "genuine" soccer fandom in the USA today. Much less europhilic LARPing and much more general fandom. We're not at the point where Philly cares about the Union half as much as it cares as about Eagles, but there are people who really do cheer on the team these days. We're reaching the end of the cycle of Soccer as an upper class signifier/space in America.

  3. The violence of the sport is a justification for why parents/fans move from one sport to another, but it is window dressing. Way more upper class whites today are competing in/following fight sports (MMA/BJJ) than were back in 2000, at the same time that the NFL coded more Red. The rise of the UFC was driven by early MMA champions being white Americans (Randy Couture, Matt Hughes) at a time when there were fewer and fewer white sports heroes in Basketball, Football, and Boxing.

  4. I want to highlight for those of us who are non-Americans (poor bastards) or so Blue Tribe as to be out of touch: the NFL is the mainstream in America. Close to 50% of Americans watch or attend an NFL game most years, this runs clean across ethnicities. College grads are slightly more likely to be fans than non college grads. The average income for an NFL fan is well above median. The subset of American men who self-consciously dislike football is tiny, it's not accurate to equate that subset with the entire Blue Tribe or the entire Upper Class.

We're not at the point where Philly cares about the Union half as much as it cares as about Eagles, but there are people who really do cheer on the team these days.

Something I was chatting with a friend about the other day is how a zoomed out national picture of sports where one just looks at the first page of USA Today Sports or watches Sportscenter will tend to miss the delightful tapestry of things around the country that people actually care about a lot. The most obvious starting points are sports that are major, but regional, like NASCAR. The trigger for the conversation was that here in Madison, WI, parking was difficult and bars were full for college women's volleyball. The team keeps packing our arena full to 17,000 fans and more are watching at bars around town. Who knew? There are a ton of these things around the country, with pockets of lacrosse enthusiasm, endurance sports fanatics, CrossFit games, and so on. I suppose I don't have much of a point, other than that it's actually fine if it turns out soccer doesn't compete with the NFL - it can still be profitable and popular.

I agree! I'm perpetually shocked that the broad availability of professional grade cameras and the means to stream it live, combined with the apparatus to discuss and publicize product, hasn't lead to an explosion in Livestreamed obscure sports. The combination of digital distribution channels and the podcast ecosystem means the tyrrany of tv station tastemakers should be over.

Broadcast amateur boxing, Muay Thai, college rowing, high school volleyball on YouTube. Maybe it is out there and I just haven't found it.

Once immigration from the subcontinent reaches a critical point, hopefully you'd start seeing cricket become the new sport du jour. Where the gentlemanly pace of the traditional formats might be offputting, the T20 format is more amphetemised than baseball.

It's more likely if there isn't much immigration. You want wealthy whites to be able to, ahem, pioneer the space. Too many Already skilled indians would make that impossible.

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