Sport of the Future
No, Lloyd Dobler, not kickboxing.
I have this theory about sports. They are built, and ultimately popularized, by the dominant media of their age. Baseball was built for the radio. Somebody can describe to you, in real time, everything important that’s happening in a baseball game. Even the some of the things most associated with baseball are auditory - “the crack of the bat,” “the roar of the crowd,” even that old 7th inning stretch classic, “take Me Out To The Ballgame.”
Football, on the other hand, is really a creature of television. Sweet heavens, the sport even has built in commercial breaks! But as we get sick of commercials, and our media outlets move online and on demand, I suspect non-stop games like hockey, basketball, and soccer (aka “football”) will gain dominance.
The inevitable death of television as we know it will, I think, finally usher Soccer in America into the dominant place it already holds worldwide. Until, of course, Rollerball.
And because I love Lloyd Dobler…
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2 Responses:
February 1st, 2008 at 10:13 pm
I like that theory, which I think works great for baseball and football, but I think your conclusions are wrong. If soccer gains dominance, it will only be because for the first time in America has a generation grown up on soccer (I’m talking about suburbia here). Soccer is popular all over the world because it was ingrained in them since childhood.
It seems like the logical conclusion here, was that the youtube era would usher in some new popular sport where the games last 5-10 minutes. If I was a serial entrepreneur, I might start a sports league where all the 5-10 minute games are played only between the hours of 7-8am, and streamed live to mobile, perfect for the sports fan’s daily commute.