Despite the site's name, we try not to get too much into ripping MSM articles apart, or breaking them down. Negativity is lame and requires no skill. There is no skill in picking apart the Tuesday Morning Douche Quarterback on ESPN; plus he's already been parodied perfectly by KSK. BTW, as a sidenote: Big Daddy Drew is a genius. Its just always worth noting.
Now, all that being said, I took umbrage with this particular line in TMQ's article today: "Some star basketball players barely speak to their teammates. In football, even the most renowned star must be a good teammate and must interact constructively with everyone in the locker room down to the lowliest player, or the game simply cannot be won."
Simply put: stupid. You really think Peyton Manning spends alot of time "interacting" with the punter? Or that fifth-string free safety who is really just a special team player? You think they interact more than a basketball player would interact with the 10th man on his team? Considering they practice against each other everyday, I think basketball players probably interact more than football players. I could write about this for hours, along with 80% of the other nonsense that he spits, but that would be wasteful....
As for this other line: "The popularity of American-style football is likely to grow internationally – gridiron is taking off in Mexico at the moment, for instance."
Yes and no. This is a good topic to discuss - the growth of American sports overseas. The game of baseball is the most international sport here; it dominates the Caribbean area, and chunks of Asia (Japan, Korea, not China, Taiwan, where 12-year old teenagers won most of the Little League WS in the early 90's). It doesn't have a foothold in countries where there is a clear alternative to baseball, namely cricket - the Indian sub-continent, plus the UK and Australia are all minimumly interested in baseball. I will note that there have been some Aussies in MLB, but it's not a popular game there. Also, despite dominating the Caribbean region - Mexico, Cuba, DR, PR, Panama, Venezuela, and partially Colombia - baseball has yet to make it to the rest of Latin America. Not popular in the rest of Central America (Guatamala; Belize, Honduras, et al); it is not popular in South America - Argentina and Brazil, the dominant sports countries of South America, have little interest in baseball.
In these countries, the American sport of choice is basketball. Note the countries missing from baseball's influence: China, Australia, South America. Basketball is popular in all those countries. It has become the dominate sport in Eastern Europe and the Mediterrean, period (despite playing soccer, those countries have had more recent success at b-ball than soccer). And basketball has made huge inroads in Western Europe, too (Germany, Spain), though soccer is still god there.
Football has several strikes against it international: As mentioned, there are already American sports making inroads international in alot of countries. The cost of equipment and space - open space isn't exactly as available in Western Europe and Japan as it is in America... this is why football isn't a big sport in NYC (meaning: we don't produce football players in NYC, we produce basketball, even baseball players, but not football... we aren't Florida, that's for sure). And a third strike against American football is that, much as baseball has to compete against cricket international, football has to compete against rugby. So good luck getting the UK and commonwealth countries to convert to American football. It would be like trying to get Americans to watch a bastardized version of basketball, like European handball or something. Not an easy sell.
Does football have a future internationally? Sure, because of globalization - Americans abroad will create interest in it. Football is our number one sport here. And the NFL will continue to pursue avenues to spread it's business; a game in London here, a game in Mexico there. But I don't see football in the immediate future (i.e. the next 50 years) being able to make very much progress, especially compared to basketball and baseball, which both have international players/stars, and international marketing. It'll be a long time before football will have an international tournament, like the baseball Classic this past spring training (every three years), or the basketball World Games/Olympics (every two years).
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