Why cycling isn't on network TV every week
Floyd Landis capped a remarkable come-from-behind victory in the Tour de France today, even though he'll need hip replacement surgery in a few weeks. The win becomes all the more notable when you consider this year, combined with cancer survivor Lance Armstrong's seven straight titles, marks the eighth time in a row an American won the world's premier cycling event.
Had this been the eighth straight championship for a German or an Italian or a Spaniard, people in those countries would engage in wild street celebrations, and the winner would be a national hero. Here in America, the milestone gets, at best, a couple of minutes on the nightly news, and the winner -- unless he breaks into the rarefied air that Armstrong inhabits -- will enjoy a few talk-show appearances and a handful of endorsements before fading from public consciousness around the time the NFL preseason begins.
Soccer fans sometimes claim average Americans would care more about the sport if the national team consistently performed better on the world stage, but the last decade of Tour de France races belies that assertion. For almost a decade, the United States has won every single year, but cycling -- particularly when it occurs outside the confines of the sport's marquee event -- arguably is no more widely followed in the United States now than it was before Armstrong's reign. Likewise, the Stanley Cup ends up in American hands most years, but NHL broadcasts continue to gasp for air.
So why don't more Americans care about cycling or soccer or numerous other sports beloved elsewhere in the world? The answer may well be parochialism: Americans want to watch our country's best athletes compete in sports native to our country. The United States' three most widely viewed sports -- baseball, basketball, and football -- have two key things in common: First, they all were invented in America, and second, the best professional leagues those sports have to offer are stateside. The pattern isn't limited to team sports, either: NASCAR drivers compete individually, but the popularity of the races started by Americans and ruled by Americans continues to grow by the year.
The country does, from time to time, take an interest in sports started elsewhere, but usually just for a short time, and almost never without a red, white, and blue hook: Armstrong's inspiring domination, an American athlete who wins several gold medals, a World Cup played on U.S. soil, etc. A few weeks later, the fervor dies down, and it's back to the baseball-football-basketball rotation that owns the American sports mindset.
Sure, the rest of the world may find the whole thing odd, but then, they aren't counting down the days until college football is back. Just what kind of sports fans do they think they are, anyway? (For the record, it's 34 days until Stillman-Tuskegee. An all-Alabama kickoff, just the way the football gods intended.)
Had this been the eighth straight championship for a German or an Italian or a Spaniard, people in those countries would engage in wild street celebrations, and the winner would be a national hero. Here in America, the milestone gets, at best, a couple of minutes on the nightly news, and the winner -- unless he breaks into the rarefied air that Armstrong inhabits -- will enjoy a few talk-show appearances and a handful of endorsements before fading from public consciousness around the time the NFL preseason begins.
Soccer fans sometimes claim average Americans would care more about the sport if the national team consistently performed better on the world stage, but the last decade of Tour de France races belies that assertion. For almost a decade, the United States has won every single year, but cycling -- particularly when it occurs outside the confines of the sport's marquee event -- arguably is no more widely followed in the United States now than it was before Armstrong's reign. Likewise, the Stanley Cup ends up in American hands most years, but NHL broadcasts continue to gasp for air.
So why don't more Americans care about cycling or soccer or numerous other sports beloved elsewhere in the world? The answer may well be parochialism: Americans want to watch our country's best athletes compete in sports native to our country. The United States' three most widely viewed sports -- baseball, basketball, and football -- have two key things in common: First, they all were invented in America, and second, the best professional leagues those sports have to offer are stateside. The pattern isn't limited to team sports, either: NASCAR drivers compete individually, but the popularity of the races started by Americans and ruled by Americans continues to grow by the year.
The country does, from time to time, take an interest in sports started elsewhere, but usually just for a short time, and almost never without a red, white, and blue hook: Armstrong's inspiring domination, an American athlete who wins several gold medals, a World Cup played on U.S. soil, etc. A few weeks later, the fervor dies down, and it's back to the baseball-football-basketball rotation that owns the American sports mindset.
Sure, the rest of the world may find the whole thing odd, but then, they aren't counting down the days until college football is back. Just what kind of sports fans do they think they are, anyway? (For the record, it's 34 days until Stillman-Tuskegee. An all-Alabama kickoff, just the way the football gods intended.)
posted by Alabamian at 11:55 PM
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