Offside

Soccer and American Exceptionalism

Andrei S. Markovits, Steven L. Hellerman

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780691074474, 9780691074467
• eBook ISBN: 9781400824182
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Soccer is the world's favorite pastime, a passion for billions around the globe. In the United States, however, the sport is a distant also-ran behind football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Why is America an exception? And why, despite America's leading role in popular culture, does most of the world ignore American sports in return? Offside is the first book to explain these peculiarities, taking us on a thoughtful and engaging tour of America's sports culture and connecting it with other fundamental American exceptionalisms. In so doing, it offers a comparative analysis of sports cultures in the industrial societies of North America and Europe.


The authors argue that when sports culture developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nativism and nationalism were shaping a distinctly American self-image that clashed with the non-American sport of soccer. Baseball and football crowded out the game. Then poor leadership, among other factors, prevented soccer from competing with basketball and hockey as they grew. By the 1920s, the United States was contentedly isolated from what was fast becoming an international obsession.


The book compares soccer's American history to that of the major sports that did catch on. It covers recent developments, including the hoopla surrounding the 1994 soccer World Cup in America, the creation of yet another professional soccer league, and American women's global preeminence in the sport. It concludes by considering the impact of soccer's growing popularity as a recreation, and what the future of sports culture in the country might say about U.S. exceptionalism in general.

Index

AAFA (American Amateur Football Association), 100

AAFC (All-America Football Conference), 136–37

Aaron, Henry, 21

ABA (American Basketball Association), 148–49

ABC televised coverage, 143, 147

ABL (American Basketball League), 87, 154

Abner Doubleday myth, 54, 306n.2

AC Milan, 22, 31, 118, 119

Adelman, Melvin, 58

AFA (American Football Association), 100

AFL (American Football League), 140–41

African Americans: baseball anecdotes on, 310n.49; baseball segregation of, 69; Big Three desegregation and, 128–29; entrance into basketball by, 87, 146–47, 149; failure of hockey to appeal to, 158–59; post-W.W. II baseball and, 131–32; pro-football desegregation and, 137. See also ethnic groups

Agoos, Jeff, 237

AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women), 153

Ajax Amsterdam teams, 22

Akers, Michelle, 178, 209

Alberto, Carlos, 167

Albright, Madeleine, 239, 250

All-America Football Conference, 136

Allegheny Athletic Association, 80

“All England Eleven,” 60

All-England Lawn Tennis Championships (Wimbledon), 216, 222, 223, 236, 254, 257

All-Time NASL Player Registry (1967–1979), 324n.11

ALPFC (American League of Professional Football Clubs), 105–8

Altig, Rudi, 35

Amateur Athletic Union, 87, 88

Amateur Hockey Association of Canada, 94

Ameche, Alan, 139

America Hockey League, 88

American Association, 62, 63, 64

American baseball vernacular language, 65–66

American Civil War, 59–61

American Cricket clubs, 55–56

American culture: commonalties/differences between European, 264–65; hegemonic sports culture of, 9–13; intrusion into Old World by, 309n.43. See also United States

American Cup Competition (soccer), 1...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• One: The Argument: Sports As Culture in Industrial Societies—American Conformities and Exceptions
• Two: The Formation of the American Sport Space: “Crowding Out” and Other Factors in the Relegation and Marginalization of Soccer
• Three: Soccer’s Trials and Tribulations: Beginnings, Chaos, “Almosts,” Obscurity, and Colleges
• Four: The Formation and Rearrangement of the American Sport Space in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
• Five: From the North American Soccer League to Major League Soccer
• Six: The World Cup in the United States
• Seven: The Coverage of World Cup ’98 by the American Media and the Tournament’s Reception by the American Public
• Conclusion
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index