In response to Slate Magazine's thoughts, or, Intellectual, my fat hairy ass

[Dan Loney]

Courtesy of DF in Deutschland (http://usaworldcup06.blogspot.com/), I was guided to what will soon become an infamous Slate article, Among the Brainiacs. (http://www.slate.com/id/2143321/nav/tap1/)

I've been very, very good about not swearing in this blog, despite understandable provocation. But Bryan Curtis has driven me to the urge of complete vocabulary meltdown.

Let's get something straight here. I happen to be an intellectual. I'm very, very smart. I can finish any Sudoku puzzle you throw at me. I know when to use "that" and when to use "which." I wear glasses. I read Will and Ariel Durant for fun.

And because I'm an intellectual, I am able to explain why soccer is becoming more popular in America, and among whom. I also know when to use "who" and "whom," but that's not the point right now.

Actually, I won't be explaining anything that the vast, vast majority of people on this board already know. If you're in America, and you're a soccer fan, it's not because you're an intellectual. It's because you're an individual.

For all of our lives, soccer has stood outside the American mainstream. We've heard hundreds of times each how the game is somehow subversive, unpatriotic, all that garbage.

For most of our lives, it was also a real pain in the ass to try to follow the game. You needed a satellite, a friendly bar or pub, maybe a few years abroad. Even today, I'm convinced that any American fan without an internet connection is at a significant disadvantage when it comes to enjoying the sport.

So soccer fans in America are a self-selecting sample of those who (a) don't let other people's opinions affect their sense of self, and (b) are willing to put a good deal of time into expressing that individuality.

There are millions of people like that in America, of course, and many of them are indeed intellectuals. I submit, gentle reader, that if it is simply the wish of an intellectual to express anti-American sentiments, there are other ways to do it besides following an organized sport. Let alone one as bound up in nationalism as international soccer.

Think of the people you see games with, that you stand with in supporters sections, that you converse with about the game. If your fan group and soccer circle is anything like mine, you'll realize they have almost nothing in common. Race, language, education, background, politics, age - right now, American soccer is the quickest way to diversify your social circle around. The only thing we have in common is our affection for this charming game, and our willingness to support it no matter what the opinion of "normies."

You probably have chants and songs in your section. How many of them will be studied in graduate school American literature? I'm guessing not more than a few. Sure, Shakespeare's groundlings weren't intellectuals, either, but that's more or less the point. This isn't something we're studying. This is something we're doing, that other people will one day study. (And hopefully do a better job of than Bryan Curtis, thankyouverymuchforasking.)

Furthermore, American fans stand out from soccer fans of other nations, precisely because our soccer culture takes so much effort to discover and appreciate. We have decades of history, the vast majority of which is totally unknown to the general sports fan, let alone the general population. In other nations, the young soccer fan can plug into an existing network almost without effort. Here is your team, here is your history, here are your colors, here are your rivals, here is your identity. Completely different situation here. Our national team's history must be discovered anew by every fan. And our clubs are being built as we speak.

And speaking as an intellectual - soccer is probably the dumbest thing I do. It costs me thousands of dollars a year. A good chunk of my friends, co-workers and acquaintances have no idea what I'm talking about, especially this month. As far as impressing potential mates, I might as well be talking about The Three Stooges.

I'm a little old to be writing a punk rock "You don't understand" defense of our little pastime, especially as one as freaking easy to understand as soccer. Kick ball into net, cheer. You'd think we were all watching cricket or something, to hear people talk.

And Nick Hornby's "Fever Pitch" isn't intellectual, that's precisely why it's such a wonderful book. "Fever Pitch" and "Soccer in Sun and Shadow," the other book I would hand to a new soccer fan to give them an instant introduction to the soul of the game, are anything but statistical, passionless, thin-blooded gruel.

And Franklin Foer's book ticked me off.

And don't get me started on The New Republic's soccer blog.

[JBohland]

I think both you and the article actually hit on some good points. As a professor of cultural studies and an intellectual, I guess I fall somewhat neatly into the Slate article's meta-narrative (there I go again using those words). That said, Dan is right when he says the American soccer fan can be better understood as a sub-culture-like punk rock. It is something the normies don't understand but that instantly binds you to folks in a pub watching the match or in a crappy bar watching some indie rock band. We've had to scratch and claw to get any respect and coverage in this country and American soccer fans get attacked from within (by both soccer bashers and Eurosnobs) and outside (foreign press that ridicules our prowess and knowledge of the game).

I do buy the Slate argument that a lot of us in our late twenties and thirties grew up around the game and this is why some writers of my same age might wax poetic about it instead of baseball, which few kids in my town cared about even in the late 80's. I played in high school and college and now coach at a high level. My generation "X" (written with appropriate levels of angst) has lots of folks in it that understand the game and have not left it. From what I have seen of the next generation, they will take it to another level. The boys on my team watch more footie than I do and all know every player in MLS and the EPL. This bodes well for the future.

Anyway, my two cents. I found some good points in the Slate piece, but can understand the ranting, Dan. As soccer fans, we don't want to over intellectualize what is really a simple and working class game. I actually don't mind Foer's book and use it in a cultural studies course as a way of starting conversations about sport and culture. It is by no means a perfect book (last chapter is not too great) but the stuff on Serbia and Barca is quite good.

[SankaCofie]

"If you're an intellectual, the kitsch that shrouds, say, football is almost intolerable," says Franklin Foer. "If you look at a European soccer crowd, all the shouting is coming organically from the crowd itself—that's so much more appealing."

Our cheering is ORGANIC. Its not only good, its good for you. No factory-farmed de-fense here.

[djwalker]

TNR's blog features a guy who uses the word "Thatcherite" in one of his posts. Dan, friend, if I ever do something like that, I leave to you the reponsibility of hunting me down and killing me. Thanks, buddy, I knew I could count on you.

[JuanSmart1]

Ok...I am English and we need to get a few things straight, I live here in the States, and I am disgusted that none of the major radio stations in ATLANTA are broadcasting live from Germany, America V Italy.
What kind of message does that send out to people ..'we dont care'...??
I will be on the road today and I won't be able to even listen to the FOOTBALL/WORLD CUP???

FOOTBALL is a game that is generally played all over the world and The World Cup is on once every 4 years...and the guys here ...yes I am ref. to the Americans have worked darn hard to get to Germany, and we cannot be bothered to transmit this all important match to keep America alive.

It is called FOOTBALL....NOT... SOCCER!!!!! please lets get the 'wording' correct. Football is played with the feet hence the term FOOT..ball
Show me anywhere were it says, Liverpool SOCCER Club or Manchester United SOCCER Club..... right it does not...It Is LIVERPOOL FC...guess what the FC stands for...yeah you got it FOOTBALL CLUB.

Something I would really like to know and that is this....how can you have a World Series, when only the Americans are involved ...no other country participates as far as I know.
At least the World Cup lives up to it's name and has many other countries involved.

[delo_pata]

Ok...I am English and we need to get a few things straight, I live here in the States, and I am disgusted that none of the major radio stations in ATLANTA are broadcasting live from Germany, America V Italy.
What kind of message does that send out to people ..'we dont care'...??
I will be on the road today and I won't be able to even listen to the FOOTBALL/WORLD CUP???

FOOTBALL is a game that is generally played all over the world and The World Cup is on once every 4 years...and the guys here ...yes I am ref. to the Americans have worked darn hard to get to Germany, and we cannot be bothered to transmit this all important match to keep America alive.

It is called FOOTBALL....NOT... SOCCER!!!!! please lets get the 'wording' correct. Football is played with the feet hence the term FOOT..ball
Show me anywhere were it says, Liverpool SOCCER Club or Manchester United SOCCER Club..... right it does not...It Is LIVERPOOL FC...guess what the FC stands for...yeah you got it FOOTBALL CLUB.

Something I would really like to know and that is this....how can you have a World Series, when only the Americans are involved ...no other country participates as far as I know.
At least the World Cup lives up to it's name and has many other countries involved.


Congratulations, you are 1 millionth Englishman to make those points!! Please collect your prize on the way out!

[Roush]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Wreford-Brown

Hush up your sanctimonious anti-soccer chatter... :)

[tallguy]

Good post, but I think that you and the Slate article are talking past each other to a degree. Be that as it may, I think that If the author had substituted the word "individual" for the word "intellectual" and had writtten the article from the standpoint of examining a burgeoning American sports subculture, he would have had a tighter and more coherent piece.

Of course, I have to admit that my own circumstances somewhat mesh with the general theme of the Slate article. I not only served my time in the bowels of higher ed but grew up next to a small Midwestern college where I mingled from an early age with the offspring of the overly educated class. (Perhaps for that reason, I tend to think that the Marx Bros. got in the ultimate comment on Old Ivy with "Horsefeathers," but I digress.) And, I went to my first professional futbol match (and got addicted) during a term studying abroad in London when a roommate talked me into going to a couple of Arsenal games. Wahoo!

Having said all that, I think that the American soccer subculture is ultimately much more mysterious, diverse and interesting than the Slate article even begins to suggest. Certainly, the rise of an entirely new and different professional sport -- and sports culture -- largely through the internet and cable T.V. is an entirely new phenomenum.

Oh, and I think that our English friend who posted above ought to have figured out by this point that we Americans and you Brits only kinda sorta speak the same language. Um, although you may be right about our misuse of your word "football," we also don't use many of your words such as "lorry" and "lift" around here either . . .

[Saeyddthe]

Well... I guess Bryan Curtis doesn't have a Big Soccer account... :rolleyes:

[YNWAYNWA]

you have to admit that American "football" is a misnomer

where the ball is not played with the foot, except by the two soccer players on each team ;)

e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Bahr

[Dan Loney]

where the ball is not played with the footBut it is played ON foot, as opposed to on horseback, whence the origin of the name. Paul Gardner told us that recently. Er, I mean, back in 1976.

If I had edit powers on these threads, a couple of these posts would look very, very different, trust me. (I never understood on other blogs why critical comments weren't simply edited into unstinting, sycophantic praise.)

[$crooge]

Here's an article you might want to read: USA Fans Flood Germany (http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,422072,00.html)

Looks like there are quite a lot individuals in the US. :D

But I'd like to agree to one point made in the Slate article: Soccer fans generally dislike all the "show" and "event" kind of things that seem to be an integral part of American sports. I mean, if I ever see cheerleaders in a Bundesliga match, I'll stop watching soccer for the rest of my life. ;)

Oh, and though I'd love to agree to our English friend here, I fear he is indeed wrong: It's called Soccer! (http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,420024,00.html)

[MattR]

The slate article was interesting, but it still addresses a singular issue many Europeans have with America -- thinking that we're just like they are.

While the image abroad of America soccer fans as middle-class suburban intellectuals who like to bond with their European counterparts who are, as a rule, more intellectual than we are is tired and old, the real interesting parts of American soccerdom is the melting pot.

Thats right, Azzuri -- we have Italian Americans, and Polish-Americans, and Argentinian-Americans, and Mexican-Americans. In fact, I can't think of a single team represented in this year's world cup that doesn't have a representative in the boring Reston, VA suburb I live in. Seriously, I will run into people from all of these countries at least once during my daily routine.

The combination of fans and history in the MLS, with people from all over the world slowly coming around to MLS as 'our league' will be great once we have those second-generation fans coming around to support the USMNT. Granted, we won't be as intellectual, or as snobby about our strikers, but it is an interesting group, no?

[Schu419]

Actually, I think Bryan Curtis is dead-on correct.. And I think that you're going into "vocabulary meltdown" for no reason, because in the end, you agree with him.

I was going to challenge your defining yourself as intellectual in the way that Curtis might define his own term, but that would just get me no where...And, honestly, nit-picking over word choice doesn't even matter that much, since Curtis is not claiming that EVERYONE loves soccer for that reason. Soccer is decidedly a lower-class sport (well, anywhere else in the world, that is) and Curtis isn't trying to argue otherwise. The Slate editor never wonders why intellectuals are the only soccer fans, why soccer is an intellectual sport, just why intellectuals do seem to be so prominently in the avant-garde of supporting the world's beatiful game. In fact, you fall into the trap Curtis avoids. You seem to have the ability to talk for any and all soccer fans here in the good 'ole US of A. And, to make it very clear, you absolutely do not speak for me, nor Foer, I would guess, from reading his book, and loving it. (I am, whether you like or not, very well categorized as a Foer-type football fan)

The problem with your diatribe is that in the end, you actually AGREE with Curtis. He is absolutely, undoubtedly NOT trying to argue soccer thrives among intellectuals (those of his definition, not yours) because they love to over-analyze the game. Just the opposite. Read his conclusion, found in the last paragraph



"Perhaps the appeal of soccer is that, for the moment, it exists in the happy realm between intelligent vivisection and pure fandom, between grand sociopolitical theories and boyhood dreams—that, for lack of a better term, it allows our young intellectual to pull on a jersey and be a kid again."

Why are you arguing so vehemently against the guy, to the point where I can feel the bile spewing forth across many, many a mile of ethernet cable. Didn't your mini-essay in fact support Curtis's thesis, not deny it?


And speaking as an intellectual - soccer is probably the dumbest thing I do. It costs me thousands of dollars a year. A good chunk of my friends, co-workers and acquaintances have no idea what I'm talking about, especially this month. As far as impressing potential mates, I might as well be talking about The Three Stooges.

Soccer/football is, for me, for you, and to Curtis's journalistic eye, all about letting go, being "stupid" and "being a kid again." So let's all stop with the long-winded bullshitting and get back to yelling at the television.

[jerseydan]

Ok...I am English and we need to get a few things straight, I live here in the States, and I am disgusted that none of the major radio stations in ATLANTA are broadcasting live from Germany, America V Italy.
What kind of message does that send out to people ..'we dont care'...??
I will be on the road today and I won't be able to even listen to the FOOTBALL/WORLD CUP???

FOOTBALL is a game that is generally played all over the world and The World Cup is on once every 4 years...and the guys here ...yes I am ref. to the Americans have worked darn hard to get to Germany, and we cannot be bothered to transmit this all important match to keep America alive.

It is called FOOTBALL....NOT... SOCCER!!!!! please lets get the 'wording' correct. Football is played with the feet hence the term FOOT..ball
Show me anywhere were it says, Liverpool SOCCER Club or Manchester United SOCCER Club..... right it does not...It Is LIVERPOOL FC...guess what the FC stands for...yeah you got it FOOTBALL CLUB.

Something I would really like to know and that is this....how can you have a World Series, when only the Americans are involved ...no other country participates as far as I know.
At least the World Cup lives up to it's name and has many other countries involved.


Surprised no one else mentioned this, but the World Series was named after its original sponsor, The World, a newspaper of the day....could just as well have wound up being called the Sun Series or the Puck Series, or any other such periodical of the day. By the way, I'm a half-assed intellectual myself, but my degrees are in social work and education, so I'm really not that smart...Also you can probably hear the games on the radio if you know Spanish...

[spike]

Wait, I thought baseball was the sport for intellectuals and soccer was for hooligans. Now I'm really confused.:confused:

I like the point in the article someone posted about how 350 million English-speaking former colonies call it "soccer." In that case, soccer it is!

No one has mentioned that the Italians refer to the game as "calcio," not futbol.

More to the point: who the hell cares? Shouldn't we be more concerned with the exact defnition of the word "torture" than this sort of thing?

[ThreeApples]

Surprised no one else mentioned this, but the World Series was named after its original sponsor, The World, a newspaper of the day....could just as well have wound up being called the Sun Series or the Puck Series, or any other such periodical of the day.Nope.

http://www.snopes.com/business/names/worldseries.asp
http://roadsidephotos.com/baseball/name.htm

[JoseP]

Ok...I am English and we need to get a few things straight, I live here in the States, and I am disgusted that none of the major radio stations in ATLANTA are broadcasting live from Germany, America V Italy.

I've listened to several games on the radio in English. Do a little research before you complain.

[crookeddy]

As for the complaint that Americans call their champions World Champions, well it irritates the hell out of me too. Especially in the NBA. Isn't the term NBA champions strong enough??? Super Bowl champions as well. World series to a lesser degree because the name comes from a different era.

[Rowdies4ever]

But it is played ON foot, as opposed to on horseback, whence the origin of the name. Paul Gardner told us that recently. Er, I mean, back in 1976.Just because Mr. Gardner wrote it, does not make it so. It's pure speculation; where is the evidence that "ball game played on foot" was the actual origin of the word football? Plenty of other medieval English ball games were played on foot, none of them were called football. None of the ball games played in medieval England were played on horseback (polo was a 19th century import, many centuries after the word football was first used).

Since there was no medieval English "horseball", it sounds like nothing more than an ex post facto rationalization (sans any supporting evidence) to argue that "football" was a word coined to distinguish the ball game played on foot from a non-existant ball game played on horseback. The "sport" that was "played" on horseback in medieval England was hunting; thus the "game" meant killing game animals. It mystifies me why anyone would think it necessary to make a distinction between hunting animals on horseback, and playing a ball game on foot. The two activities have nothing in common and thus no need to resort to special names to distinguish themselves from each other.

Since football in fact was played with the feet, it is perfectly logical to assume that is the true origin of the word football - a ball game played with the feet. Sure, it is also a ball game played on foot, but then all the other ball games in England back then were played on foot, too, so that proves nothing. And this doesn't mean that some versions of football could not also have allowed some use of the hands, either, just that the primary focus of the game was use of the feet to kick the ball.

For the "on foot" theory to work, you have to argue that for some reason there was something unique and distinctive about playing a ball game on foot in medieval England. Clearly, this was not the case.