At the time of writing, I am watching a U.S. men's national team home game against Honduras. The game is in the 61st minute and the crowd is raucous. It's not just typical, amorphous crowd noise, either; it actually sounds as though professional soccer is occurring. There is discernible chanting and crescendos in volume occur as merited by the game. On the surface, this is unusual. Consider the following: the United States are trailing 3-0 and have only 10 men on the field, none of whom are named Landon Donovan or Clint Dempsey. As this is not an official international weekend, top players in ongoing European leagues are not required or, in most instances, even allowed by their clubs to participate. Instead, a fellow named Alejandro Bedoya has substituted into the game. "Who the hell is Alejando Bedoya?" I ask my girlfriend. She usually has the answers to questions similar in structure and tone when we watch the E! Channel (e.g. "who the hell is that skank?"), but in this case, she has no idea. The commentator, Max Bretos, paused noticeably between his first and last name. He has no idea, either. And Coach Bob Bradley just gave a look that could only be described as curious. No one knows him. Only Alejandro's mother and close friends know who he is.
Furthermore, consider that winning or losing this match will have a nominal effect on either team. More than anything else, the coaches are using the game to scout their own players and as an exercise in tactics. Also consider that it is 49°F in Los Angeles right now, where the game is being played. If you know anything about L.A. sports fans, you will know that this is entirely relevant; if you do not, the previous sentence should make evident my point. Despite all of this, the Home Depot Center sounds like a soccer stadium and, if not for the clumsiness of some of the players, could be mistaken for a European venue.
Of course, this scenario makes sense for one reason: the people making all the noise are Honduran. It seems all of Latin America has had their turn at drowning out American fans, and Honduras is getting their chance tonight. Southern California is, for all intents and purposes, an away match for Team USA; it's no coincidence that they play important World Cup qualifiers exclusively above the Mason Dixon line. Even in the dead of winter, demographically homogenous and bitterly cold places like Sandy, Utah and Columbus, Ohio host matches. Majorities aren't assurances of an advantage, however. In 2006 I was apart of the American crowd that was a sizeable majority in their last two matches at the World Cup, against Italy (whose fans don't travel as much as other European powers, I've come to learn) and Ghana. We weren't as tepid as, say, Lakers fans in the first quarter, or US Soccer fans in 1998, but we weren't intimidating or even mildly distracting for that matter. Sam's Army, a vocal US supporter's club, banged their drums as hard as they could and occasionally exhausted their collaborative creativity with complicated cheers like "USA! USA! USA!" or "Ole Ole Ole Ole, USA, USA." Like the team themselves, they never got going with any conviction. It was embarrassing, frankly. An established supporters club 15,000 strong can't come up with anything better than "Ole Ole Ole?" Imagine the sounds of our impotent Ole's against the voices of 30,000 English fans when we open the World Cup in Rustenburg. That's like bringing a spork to swordfight.
I don't mean to say that American soccer fans are dispassionate or fair-weather. Quite the opposite; in fact, I would go as far as to call us dedicated. Or we are at least gluttons for suffering. Our perpetually almost there team has little chance for glory; the sport itself is constantly being belittled in our country; our "superstar" looks like a child actor; and to top it all off, we play a distinctly unattractive brand of soccer. As an England fan told me at World Cup 2006: "The only problem with being a U.S. soccer fan is having to watch the U.S. play soccer." Read that sentence again in an English accent. It's almost as infuriating in its smugness as its accuracy. He was absolutely right: they don't give us that much to cheer for. All things considered, Sam's Army is nothing if not loyal. And, on the whole, a pretty soccer savvy group as well. The U.S. has the largest population of registered soccer players in the world—it shouldn't be too surprising to find that most fans are quite knowledgeable on players, history, tactics, etc. So, the question begs to be asked: Why have we been so consistently out-voiced by tiny tropical nations? Why, given our sports obsessed culture, can't we muster the energy to come up with a better song than Ole Ole Ole?
Here is a theory: as products, popular American sports (football, basketball, baseball) are designed to explicitly and, often times artificially stimulate spectator enthusiasm. The competitions themselves are constantly being punctuated by cues for the audience: we are the inventors of the full count, fourth down and goal to go, the shot clock, the two-minute warning and probably a thousand other overt signals to the crowd, "Stand up. Cheer. Your team needs you now." We put giant electronic boards in out stadiums to tell us just that, in case we somehow forget while watching the game. If the athletes fail to hold the attentions of the consumers, we have also mastered audience diversion. We fathered the 7th inning stretch and halftime extravaganzas featuring celebrities and fireworks and if we're lucky, wardrobe malfunctions. Still unwilling to hand over your applause? Well, we got some guy to dressed up as Chewbaca from Star Wars who's going to do a flip off of a trampoline and dunk a basketball. And then of course, there is our most important cultural export of the last hundred years: cheerleaders—attractive women dressed in glittery underwear whose job it is tell us, vocally and through suggestive pelvic gyrations, when to cheer, what to cheer and even how loud to cheer. We even had a football league based entirely on gimmickry called the XFL. It was like the NFL, only Vegas had thrown up on it. The league was not very good and folded after only a season, but that a football and professional wrestling crossover league would even be considered proves that we have a certain appetite for the choreography our sports experience. Professional sports in America are productions that don't bother camouflaging the theatrics. We embellish them, if anything, and that's what fans have come to relish and, more relevantly to my point, that's what makes them cheer.
Furthermore, consider that winning or losing this match will have a nominal effect on either team. More than anything else, the coaches are using the game to scout their own players and as an exercise in tactics. Also consider that it is 49°F in Los Angeles right now, where the game is being played. If you know anything about L.A. sports fans, you will know that this is entirely relevant; if you do not, the previous sentence should make evident my point. Despite all of this, the Home Depot Center sounds like a soccer stadium and, if not for the clumsiness of some of the players, could be mistaken for a European venue.
Of course, this scenario makes sense for one reason: the people making all the noise are Honduran. It seems all of Latin America has had their turn at drowning out American fans, and Honduras is getting their chance tonight. Southern California is, for all intents and purposes, an away match for Team USA; it's no coincidence that they play important World Cup qualifiers exclusively above the Mason Dixon line. Even in the dead of winter, demographically homogenous and bitterly cold places like Sandy, Utah and Columbus, Ohio host matches. Majorities aren't assurances of an advantage, however. In 2006 I was apart of the American crowd that was a sizeable majority in their last two matches at the World Cup, against Italy (whose fans don't travel as much as other European powers, I've come to learn) and Ghana. We weren't as tepid as, say, Lakers fans in the first quarter, or US Soccer fans in 1998, but we weren't intimidating or even mildly distracting for that matter. Sam's Army, a vocal US supporter's club, banged their drums as hard as they could and occasionally exhausted their collaborative creativity with complicated cheers like "USA! USA! USA!" or "Ole Ole Ole Ole, USA, USA." Like the team themselves, they never got going with any conviction. It was embarrassing, frankly. An established supporters club 15,000 strong can't come up with anything better than "Ole Ole Ole?" Imagine the sounds of our impotent Ole's against the voices of 30,000 English fans when we open the World Cup in Rustenburg. That's like bringing a spork to swordfight.
I don't mean to say that American soccer fans are dispassionate or fair-weather. Quite the opposite; in fact, I would go as far as to call us dedicated. Or we are at least gluttons for suffering. Our perpetually almost there team has little chance for glory; the sport itself is constantly being belittled in our country; our "superstar" looks like a child actor; and to top it all off, we play a distinctly unattractive brand of soccer. As an England fan told me at World Cup 2006: "The only problem with being a U.S. soccer fan is having to watch the U.S. play soccer." Read that sentence again in an English accent. It's almost as infuriating in its smugness as its accuracy. He was absolutely right: they don't give us that much to cheer for. All things considered, Sam's Army is nothing if not loyal. And, on the whole, a pretty soccer savvy group as well. The U.S. has the largest population of registered soccer players in the world—it shouldn't be too surprising to find that most fans are quite knowledgeable on players, history, tactics, etc. So, the question begs to be asked: Why have we been so consistently out-voiced by tiny tropical nations? Why, given our sports obsessed culture, can't we muster the energy to come up with a better song than Ole Ole Ole?
Here is a theory: as products, popular American sports (football, basketball, baseball) are designed to explicitly and, often times artificially stimulate spectator enthusiasm. The competitions themselves are constantly being punctuated by cues for the audience: we are the inventors of the full count, fourth down and goal to go, the shot clock, the two-minute warning and probably a thousand other overt signals to the crowd, "Stand up. Cheer. Your team needs you now." We put giant electronic boards in out stadiums to tell us just that, in case we somehow forget while watching the game. If the athletes fail to hold the attentions of the consumers, we have also mastered audience diversion. We fathered the 7th inning stretch and halftime extravaganzas featuring celebrities and fireworks and if we're lucky, wardrobe malfunctions. Still unwilling to hand over your applause? Well, we got some guy to dressed up as Chewbaca from Star Wars who's going to do a flip off of a trampoline and dunk a basketball. And then of course, there is our most important cultural export of the last hundred years: cheerleaders—attractive women dressed in glittery underwear whose job it is tell us, vocally and through suggestive pelvic gyrations, when to cheer, what to cheer and even how loud to cheer. We even had a football league based entirely on gimmickry called the XFL. It was like the NFL, only Vegas had thrown up on it. The league was not very good and folded after only a season, but that a football and professional wrestling crossover league would even be considered proves that we have a certain appetite for the choreography our sports experience. Professional sports in America are productions that don't bother camouflaging the theatrics. We embellish them, if anything, and that's what fans have come to relish and, more relevantly to my point, that's what makes them cheer.
We're now into the 75th minute. The Americans recently scored. A tall lanky fellow named Clarence Goodson headed in off a corner kick. The stadium has gotten quieter. No cannons sounded, F14 fighter planes did not buzz overhead, ditzy blondes did not jump in unison. Yawn. Soccer, at least English soccer (which is the most popular import here in the States) is, shall we say, understated. The game itself is subtle. As we Yanks are wont to point out, soccer is low scoring. It also has few stoppages and momentum is more obscure meaning there are few cues for the audience to get involved. Situational understanding becomes more of an intuition than a matter of down and distance or knowing the strike count. Off the field, there are no light shows or pyrotechnics to introduce the players, no one is solicited to sing or dance at halftime and, as far as I can tell from this side of the television, team mascots aren't going up and down the aisles of Premier League games with pneumatic t-shirt guns. There is, rather, a regal traditionalism to the game's ceremony. Like noblemen, the teams march out single file from the dressing room tunnel, each hand in hand with a cherubic British child. They politely shake hands and the game is underway. And in the stands, there seems to be equally rigid customs, generations old. The pre-kickoff singing of the club's anthem with scarves held high, the militant segregation of home and away fans, the choral synchronization of their cheers—it's almost frighteningly ritualistic. If I were entirely new to the sport, it wouldn't completely shock me to learn that live animal sacrifices are regular post-match occurrences. And that's what it makes it great. There is a grassroots mystique that lets us believe that the game is owned by the fans. There's no need for additional spectacle because that't the purpose of the audience.
In America, there are no such pretensions of ownership. We know there is some corporate entity puppeteering our fan experience to maximize their commercial assets. And we don't mind, per se. No one really gets into a big huff when we rename our stadiums AT&T Park or BuyRight Stadium. We enjoy the innovations that are ancillary to their greed. Our relationship with our teams, then, is more explicitly, consumers to manufacturers. We responsible for little more than consumption itself. Standing to sing during a game? For the American sports fan, the price of admission means someone else should be doing all the singing. Preferably someone pretty, and famous.
In America, there are no such pretensions of ownership. We know there is some corporate entity puppeteering our fan experience to maximize their commercial assets. And we don't mind, per se. No one really gets into a big huff when we rename our stadiums AT&T Park or BuyRight Stadium. We enjoy the innovations that are ancillary to their greed. Our relationship with our teams, then, is more explicitly, consumers to manufacturers. We responsible for little more than consumption itself. Standing to sing during a game? For the American sports fan, the price of admission means someone else should be doing all the singing. Preferably someone pretty, and famous.
"pneumatic" implies air-power
ReplyDeleteAnonymous… I'm making you deputy chief inspector of redundant phrasing.
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