Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism by Andrei S. Markovits and Steven L. Hellerman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
I suspect I'm not alone in thinking that being a soccer fan in the United States is similar to following the indie music scene. Other times, I suspect it's closer to being a passionate devotee of innovative poetry in the Russian Formalist tradition. Based on the subtitle of Markovits and Hellerman's study, it's similar to being a socialist. In any case, following the world's most popular sport while living in the U. S. marks one as an outsider if not an alien. This in spite of the fact that the most passionate fans of soccer that I know vote in U.S. elections, listen to a wide range of music, read books, are fluent in the English language (and often one or two others), and watch traditional American sports as well. And some of course are mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging troglodytes whose very existence suggests an evolutionary diversion that best not be followed if the species is to survive. In other words, soccer fans are a reasonable cross section of the country. Yet the sport they prefer to watch is virtually invisible to the average American.
How did this state of affairs come about? How is it that soccer (have I mentioned that it's the most popular sport in the world?) barely registers on the U.S. radar? How come when it does register, the game is often met with sarcasm, mockery, denunciations, or bemused indifference? If you are an American, think about what you see on the news when soccer is mentioned: do you picture graceful, fluid play conducted at top speed by amazing athletes, or do you picture fans throwing things at each other and squaring off with riot police? Most likely, the latter. Yet most of the world would instantly understand why a legendary coach in England referred to soccer as "the working man's ballet."
Offside attempts to answer these questions, and overall, it does a fair job. Though the book is scholarly in its approach (as befits a tome published by Princeton University Press) and while its prose takes on a leaden pace at times, it's worth reading for anyone who occasionally muses about the contours of American popular culture and the way sports figures into those contours. Of course, the idea that sport is crucial to understanding culture is not an original line of thought. Historian Jacques Barzun said over half a century ago that whoever wants to understand America should know baseball (that proverb should be updated now to read "he who wants to know the American character should learn stock car racing and pro rasslin'").
Still, I would suggest a variation on this approach: whoever wants to understand America might want to know what American sports fans despise. Soccer would be one of those things, and the authors are right to make it the focus of their study, since other sports the Average American Sports Fan might despise are not even on that fan's radar (rugby, cricket, and until the recent Winter Olympics, curling). The two scholars authoring this study have, as I said, gone a long way toward making clear how this state of affairs has come about. One of the authors--Markovits--identifies himself as a fan, while the other remains indifferent to the sport. But whether you're a fan or not, there's much to be said for this book.
Next page: Just don't forget the passion
