The worst team in American football are the Cincinnati Bengals. Last season they won two games and lost 14. If they were an English football team, we know what would happen. They would be slung out of the premiership in humiliation — it would be a disaster for the club and maybe (as in the case of Sunderland) for the whole city.
So what happens in the United States, the home of no-holds-barred capitalism, the country that disdains safety nets, worships success and lets losers rot? Everyone goes ”poor-diddums”, and the Bengals are deemed to have earned the right to have the number one selection in the college draft. Hence the best young player in the US, Southern California quarterback Carson Palmer, instead of choosing his team, is obliged to head off to Cincinnati. Of course, Palmer might break his leg next week, blow his first million-dollar pay cheque on a boatload of cocaine or just fail to develop from a great college player into a great professional. Then the Bengals would come bottom next year and have the first pick again.
But the effect of this long-standing policy, along with other equalising rules such as the salary cap, has been remarkable. In the past nine years eight different teams have won the Super Bowl. In the past five years no team have got to the Super Bowl even twice. Are you listening, Sir Alex Ferguson? The US National Football League is delighted and the pressure is on for similar measures elsewhere.
In baseball, the New York Yankees have already been forced to agree to have their wage bill taxed to help fund the league’s sluggards. In any other field of activity, Americans would call it socialism and have nothing to do with it. But in US sport, the word ”relegation” is unknown and promotion probably means it’s ”Free Bobblehead Doll Giveaway Night”. This strange squeamishness about failure extends to grassroots level. Many kids’ leagues have ”mercy rules”, providing for an early end to games if one side gets too far ahead.
My own son’s under-11 soccer team, who are not exactly Real Madrid, got a whispered instruction to stop scoring on the one occasion when they got a 4-0 lead. In some leagues, coaches get fined if their charges score too often.
Informal sport is heading the same way. Anti-competitive playground rules are generally thought to be the preserve of British Labour councils who have not got with the project.
But a Los Angeles primary school has just banned tag (”There is a victim or ‘it’, which creates a self-esteem issue”). And the old schoolyard tradition of dodgeball is being forced right out of fashion. Maybe it is necessary to see this alongside
another characteristic of US sport — the dictatorship of the manager or coach. Enthusiastic parents who run children’s teams all get dignified with the title of ”coach”. ”Coach Smiggins” is addressed with the same reverence as ”President Bush” or ”Secretary Rumsfeld”. And the coach decides everything. Ed Smith, the Kent batsman who had baseball tryouts with the New York Mets and has written a book comparing the two games (Playing Hard Ball, published by Little, Brown), was especially strong writing about this point.
American sportsmen have to do what they are told. A baseball batsman might be ordered not to swing at any pitch for tactical reasons. ”Even if his dream pitch is coming towards him, he must control his instinct to hit it. For those of us brought up on the romantic ideal of sporting spontaneity, that seems a little restrictive,” wrote Smith. And basketball and US football are even worse — play stops regularly for a detailed instruction session (as well as for TV commercials). By contrast Smith told the story of how, as Kent 12th man, he was asked to relay a message from the coach to the captain that mid-off was too deep and that it was time to change the bowling. The captain’s response comprised five words, of which the first three were ”Tell him to”.
America struts around, pridingitself on opposition to socialism and dictatorship. But its sports are both socialistic, even communistic, and dictatorial. Hell, this isn’t just a newspaper column. I think I’ve found my doctoral thesis. —