Reply #17: Boycott American football; it's a cult sport that glorifies violence [View All]

[BeyondGeography]

Set your sights higher, lad. Ever notice that the rest of the world, which has readily adopted our basketball and baseball, doesn't see the point of American football? I say, bless their sensibilities. Our growing cultural isolation from the rest of the planet is perfectly compatible with the rise of American football, a sport that only a nation with a $500 billion defense budget could love. Too bad, on many levels; think of all the great athletes whose talents are channeled to this absurd sport. What sort of a World Cup team could we field if not for football? How many great baseball players will we never see because of football?

Football dominates at the high school, college and professional levels in this country, while the rest of the world is playing soccer and growing to love basketball and (outside of Europe and Africa) baseball. When you take the global view, it really is a marginal sport whose primary value is to illustrate how at odds our sporting culture is with the rest of the world. The rest of the world has a message for us: American football sucks.