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Listed: 10 reasons why American sports fans have more fun

1. Cheerleaders
It’s a bad thing that Americans need to be told when to cheer, but hey… some cheerleaders > no cheerleaders.

2. Guns
They have guns across the pond! And their sports stars are always getting into entertaining scrapes with them. This week, for example, NY Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress (real name) shot himself in the leg in a Manhattan nightclub. Awesome.

3. Sports Illustrated
The best sports magazine on the planet. And they have a fricking swimsuit issue! Can you imagine the politically correct nonsense we’d have to put up with if a British sports mag ran a swimsuit issue?

4. Sunshine
They have much more of it in the States, which makes watching sport fun. Even indoors.

5. The U-S-A! chant
Annoys all Brits intensely, but only because we’re jealous that we don’t have a similarly catchy-yet-jingoistic chant.

6. The draft system
Ensures that no single team (or group of four, say) achieves a stifling, oligarchal dominance over the others. FA Premier League, take note.

7. Fighting
They have it in the NHL, and the officials make little to no effort to prevent it. Brilliant. Guinness Rugby Premiership, take note.

8. TV coverage
Blanket coverage of all the big US sports. Even better, you don’t have to put up with the brand of inane punditry (Alan Shearer and the whole of Sky Sports, take note) we’re subjected to over here. Yank sports pundits shit all over British pundits from a skyscraper-sized height, in as much as they know what they’re talking about and do so with admirable passion.

9. Head coaches
All appear to be intense, angry drill seargant types with gruff voices. Which works for us…

10. Nicknames
America is the land of the free. It is also the land of the genius nickname. In Britain, we have to make do with “Giggsy” (Ryan Giggs, duh) and “Wazza” (Wanye Rooney). Stateside, looky here: Magic Johnson, Shoeless Joe, The Fridge, The Golden Bear, Mr October, The Galloping Ghost, The Great One, etc etc.

To use American parlance, we got OWNED. Although baseball is still gay.

Anorak

Posted: 3rd, December 2008 | In: Sports Comments (5) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink

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Pamela says:
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:38 pm

1. Cheerleaders- The cheerleaders never know what’s going on, so the real cheering is up to the fans, but we do have short little attention spans, so the cheerleaders can be quite entertaining. Especially when they fall.
2. Guns- Can be quite helpful. Especially when cheerleaders refuse to fall.
3. Sports Illustrated- Please! You have naked women in the daily newspapers!
Of course, we have mastered the art of the spray tan, so, okay.
4. Sunshine- True.
5. The U-S-A! chant- May I suggest F-U-K! ?
6. The draft system- I’m not sure that always works exactly the way it’s supposed to, but a.) it’s better than nothing, and b.) we have more than one sport worth watching, so there’s an inherent balance of power.
7. Fighting- Yes, it IS so much more fun when it’s on the playing field instead of, say, amongst a drunken audience of the bitter unemployed.
8. TV coverage- Definitely. We have to watch your soccer broadcasts with the volume muted; those guys are morons. It actually works like this: the relentless post-game interview process each year yields one of two players who are actually coherent. We note their names, then one day (usually when the knees go) we give them a natty blazer and a mike.
9. Head coaches- Many of them have actually been dead for years. We just stuff them with sawdust and cart them out for games. It’s all about the branding really.
The drill sargent bit is done with animatronics. And they’re still better than most of yours.
10. Nicknames- True. Yours always sound like either criminals or houseboys.
Oh. Never mind.
11. No, baby, you “GOT served!” You “ARE owned.”
No self-respecting gay man would wear his gut over his belt OR chew tobacco, so let’s just call baseball dead boring, shall we? Now, a gay man could be talked into a sweater vest and goofy cap, so cricket might be a possibility.