Sports and National Identity

The Olympics are approaching this summer and nationalism will have a heavy presence in the sports atmosphere. But why does this happen? I think it is because we view our national teams as representing national identity. For example, in America, our national attitude and identity is that we’re the best in the world, we’re No. 1, so we expect our athletes to be the best too. We also love a certain style of play from our athletes, or an “American Dream” type story behind our athletes that brings out a sense of nationalism. For example, American sports fans and media tend to fall in love with the blue-collar, hard-working player. It’s why we love sports films such as Rudy, and it’s the kind of identity that the 1980 US Olympic hockey team took on that made the country fall in love with them.

Not only is this kind of nationalism seen in just our country, but in others as well. In the Sports and Media Handbook, Andrew Tudor notes in the 2002 World Cup, the Argentina-England matchup, the media analysis criticized the style of play through nationalistic beliefs. Tudor writes:

“In the wake of defeat there was an ‘attempted rearticulation of Englishness; in the British press, revolving around a villain/hero contrast established between two players (Beckham and Owen) in which the latter was represented as incarnating the proper values of the English style. Meanwhile the Argentinean media continued to sustain the central mythology of the Argentinean style in a discourse where ‘the dominant tone was a combination of overflowing chauvinism and exalted emotion framed by the national flag as a dominant symbol.’ Embedded in these typifications, of course, are the familiar and longstanding Latin and Northern European stereotypes—unpredictable and temperamental creativity versus commitment and hard work” (226).

This brings me to the question, do Americans view and expect their athletes to play a certain way (a stereotypical American athlete)? And do American fans expect to win and be the best because we have a national identity of being the best in the world? It’ll be interesting to see what the headlines will be during the Olympics. But I get the feeling it’ll consist of high expectations and falling in love with the gutty, gritty, blue-collar athlete.

Lack of coverage for All-Star Weekend

This past weekend (Jan. 27-29) featured two of the major four sports All-Star games: the NHL All Star game and the NFL Pro Bowl.

With the other main events of the weekend being the Winter X Games, Australian Open, and regular season NBA games, one would expect the All-Star games to be a significant part of the media coverage, especially considering the NBA and MLB all star games draw plenty of attention.

Nope.

With the Super Bowl still a week away, that remained the primary focus of ESPN, along with the story of what will happen to Peyton Manning. There appears to be much speculation lately of Manning with many conflicting reports, and anything rumor of him returning, leaving the Indianapolis Colts, or retiring have all been denied by Manning himself and the Colts.

Yet the media decided to debate over the future of a player who probably won't make any announcement until after the Super Bowl instead of breaking down the NHL All Star game or Pro Bowl.

Even the coverage prior to this weekend's events indicated that there was no interest of either game, as researched by Deadspin.

Now understandably, the Pro Bowl is not the most popular of all-star games, and ESPN does not have a television contract with the NHL, which probably plays a role. But even so, the day after both all-star games the top story on SportsCenter was the recap of the Miami Heat-Chicago Bulls game.

Yes it was a matchup of two of the best teams in the NBA, but could you imagine the day after the NBA All-Star game SportsCenter focuses its attention to the recap of a Boston Bruins-New York Rangers hockey game? That would essentially be the equivalent of what they did this weekend.

Maybe since the two All-Star games are not very popular it played a role in the coverage, but maybe if the media spent a little more time talking about the actual big sporting events of the weekend, those games would indeed be more popular.