Note: I wrote this essay as one of the final papers for a college history course. Thought it was a good read, got a good grade on it too, so I thought might as well share it with the world.
The imperial system, playoffs, month before date. One might wonder what all of these have in common, the answer, they are all products of American exceptionalism. The United States of America operates on its own terms as the world has seen over the years. The idea of this exceptionalism perhaps arose from the uniqueness of the history of the United States. This ideology shaped the American sporting culture and hence, led to American sporting exceptionalism. Moreover, this sporting exceptionalism in turn caused soccer, the most popular game in the world, to not flourish as others thought it would.
As noticed by Eric Hobsbawm, association football or soccer was the game the world made its own, a simple game unhampered by complex rules or a lot of equipment, made its way around the world on its own merits (198). Soccer was being adopted unanimously by the citizens of every country the British empire set foot on, but for the USA. A lot has been speculated as to why, and the answers vary but they share a common theme, the concept of American sporting exceptionalism. The inception of such an ideology was influenced by the American sporting culture and vice versa. American sporting culture developed as any other country’s, in an industrial society during the premodern era. Whichever sport announced itself first in the country, especially in the period between 1870 and 1930, still continues to possess an advantage to this day (Markovits and Hellerman 15). It does not mean that the sport that arrived first survived longer than the competition, it simply means that that sport would have an edge against the competition. For the USA, this sport turned out to be Baseball. The National league began in 1876 and never looked back. It became the first culturally hegemonic sport in America, and it was even considered America’s favourite pastime. This cemented baseball’s position at the forefront of other sports vying for competition. Other sports such as Basketball, which was developed by Dr.James Naismith in 1891, and American football, the first documented game was played in 1869 between Rutgers and Princeton, were laying out the groundwork for the future. The difference in the sporting cultures in the US and the rest of the world can be contrasted by comparing the concept of team loyalty. Now, as the aforementioned sports continued to grow and develop, sporting franchises were formed similar to the social clubs in England. The biggest difference between them was that the sports franchises in the US were run as businesses while the British clubs were run more like social clubs of local communities. “Marriages fail, relationships end, jobs disappear, anything can happen; only one red thread remains reliably through life: team loyalty” (Markovits and Hellerman 18). It sums up how Americans felt about their local teams, who shifted town if business wasn’t booming. We see, America’s sports exceptionalism is deeply rooted in other exceptionalisms that constitute essential features of American life (Markovits and Hellerman 9). American exceptionalism definitely influenced and led to formation of American sporting exceptionalism.
American exceptionalism is an ideology that is deeply rooted in the foundations of the country. It is this concept that the USA is a unique country with its own history. While it is true to some extent, it does seem a bit abstract and inconsistent with certain parts of American life. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his book Democracy in America is the first to notice the uniqueness of the country and called it exceptional (Lipset 17). Tocqueville was perplexed as to why establishing a democracy in his native France had failed while in the US, a stable democracy was working in full flow. American history was a bit different. Firstly, European immigrants came and took the lands from the natives and settled down, so there was an absence of feudalism and thus, the industrial movement was the first socio-economic movement in the States. Secondly, “American exceptionalism is defined by the absence of a significant socialist movement” (Lipset 23). The lack of a socialist movement led America to become capitalist utopia it is today. Not only this but the American Creed was described by Seymour Martin Lipset in the five terms of liberty, egalitarianism, populism and laissez-faire (19). All these multitude of factors can help us understand how American exceptionalism came to be. These ideals were followed by the general American population and entered their everyday lives. Hence, they shaped a lot of other spheres of American life, including sports. They also shaped a very strong sense of national identity, so foreign concepts and products seemed more foreign.
Soccer landed in the United States of America, as a British sport played by immigrants. There was widespread European immigration to the US from the 1880s till the early 20th century. These immigrants brought soccer with them, but the American people still saw that as a British game. “The references to ‘English dissipation’ and ‘British Mercantile agents’ played on America’s durable Anglophobia, here expressed in paradoxical stereotypes of Englishmen as effete and rapacious, effeminate and tyrannical” (Gorn and Goldstein 50). This sums up the Americans’ hatred for the British and everything they held dear, including soccer. Not only that but a lot of the immigrants felt that instead of trying to enforce their culture on the Americans, they should try and assimilate some of their culture. American exceptionalism plays a strong part in this, as the concept of laissez-faire, which subconsciously every American had adopted, would support the consistency of American sports. Thus, the Europeans stated playing American sports such as Baseball and gave up on soccer. This is in stark contrast to what happened in Latin America, where there was widespread European immigration around the same time too. But, unlike in the US, the natives enjoyed the sport of soccer and adopted that as the sport of their choice.
At the end of the day, American exceptionalism did not allow soccer to grow as much as it did in other countries of the world. Beginning at the differences in sport culture, due to American sporting exceptionalism, how America treats sports and sporting clubs and also the fact that Baseball had taken its place at the helm of the modern sporting revolution, then moving on to American exceptionalism and how it influenced American sporting exceptionalism. The failure of soccer as an immigrant sport due to American sporting exceptionalism, and how it succeeded in the rest of the world also helped support our claim as to how American exceptionalism did not allow soccer to become a big-time sport in the US.
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Works Cited
- Hobsbawm, Eric. “The Arts 1914–45.” The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991. London: Abacus, 2011. 198. Print.
- Markovits, Andrei, and Steven Hellerman. “The Argument: Sports as Culture in Industrial Societies.” Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism. N.p.: Princeton UP, 2001. N. pag. Print.
- Lipset, Seymour Martin. American Exceptionalism: A Double-edged Sword. New York: Norton (W.W.), 1997. Print.
- Gorn, Elliott J., and Warren Goldstein. A Brief History of American Sports. Urbana: U of Illinois, 2013. Print.
