#usmst

Lets get one thing straight before you start reading this article. When I say football, I am talking about soccer. When I say American football, I am talking about American football. Is that clear? Good. Because if the United States is going to continue to compete on the world stage of the biggest sport in the world, it must first start using the actually name of the sport. Football.

The reason that I say this is because it’s finally time that America catches up with the rest of the world. As the United States catches up with the rest of the world on the football pitch, it must also do so off of it, with sports of the world. Football is the world’s game and America has finally proven that it can compete with the rest of the world in a sport that is not their own. It is now time to take the leap. 

The problem with the state of American sport is just that; it is American. That is, the sports that are prominent within America are predominantly only played within America. Basketball, baseball, American football, Ice Hockey and so on and so on. To win a world championship in basketball is to win an NBA Championship; America’s game, America’s championship. The same goes for the other big three as well; to win a world championship in Ice Hockey, American football or baseball, is to win their respective national American leagues. This is because these sports are America’s; America does not often measure up with the rest of the world in sports that are not their own.

Does that not sound a little odd? To be world champion in something, surely you have to be playing teams from other countries around the world, right? How can the San Antonio Spurs be considered world champions when they have not played teams of other origins other than Canada?

One does not assume that the winner of the best franchise rugby competition in the world, the Super 15, the Southern Hemisphere competition, is the best team in the world. This is because they have not competed with the rest of the world. Whether they are the best team in the world or not is irrelevant, they cannot be world champions and are not labeled so. The same needs to go with every franchise sport in America. We need to stop labeling teams as world champions when they have not conquered the world or teams from all over the world.

The title of world champion is lost in translation in American sports because there is this idea that America is somehow the world. Well, I’m sorry to break it to you, but there is more to the world of sport than just that of American teams.

America has not done a successful job of embracing sports and competing against other countries in universal sports. Has that moment finally come? This World Cup performance by the US men’s team may have provided the answer to this question. They played valiantly in four games and matched the best in the world. There was no shortage of heart or skill in each and every single performance by the US national team.

Football has never been a sport of any importance in the United States of America. Despite this, the patriotic support and pride that each and every American displayed when the men’s team took off was extraordinary and a tribute to the country as a whole.