Comments on The Sports Academic: Sport as Socializing Agent

Cricket is another good example where classes clas...

2008-07-01T14:38:00.000-06:00

Cricket is another good example where classes clash on the field. In the British Empire it was historically a nobleman's game, even as the empire spread to India, Australia, South Africa, and the Indies. The National teams of today's industrialized nations are still mostly composed of the upper crust. The more impoverished nations - Pakistan, India, the West Indies are teams of men off of the street. This has even spread to the U.S. where most of the U.S. National team is taken from immigrants from these other countries. In England they play soccer on the streets and in the islands of the Caribbean it's cricket.

Corry,Here's a post that had me thinking of your b...

2008-06-26T08:35:00.000-06:00

Corry,

Here's a post that had me thinking of your blog:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=weinreb/080625&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab6pos1

In this case, the public shaping the behavior of the athlete.

Cheers,
Dana

No question, there are fans from all levels of soc...

2008-06-24T11:10:00.000-06:00

No question, there are fans from all levels of society, especially for international matches. But if you go to a stadium in France, particularly for a regular club match, you'll not see a lot of Lacoste... in fact, the name of the national team, "les bleus," is, beyond just the color of the jersey, a tribute to the French working class (blue is the color worn by French manual laborers). Look, too, at the origins of the sport: Rugby was played on elite British campuses, the embodiment of muscled Christianity; Soccer was played by the dock workers and in industrial towns. So I am speaking largely historically, here, but I think to a large extent the class distinction (in soccer) still generally holds true, even in France.

Seems like you need to make a clearer distinction ...

2008-06-23T16:21:00.000-06:00

Seems like you need to make a clearer distinction about whether you're considering the social class of the players or that of the viewers. In Europe, football (soccer) cuts across ALL social classes. It seems to be a universally watched sport from the top to the bottom. As for players, sure: they come from lower classes. If it's middle to upper class kids who play in the US, it's because it's an "import". Imports always appeal to a certain snob factor. The same holds true for American football in Europe.

It appears that soccer and beer have more in commo...

2008-06-23T11:57:00.000-06:00

It appears that soccer and beer have more in common that I would have supposed before reading this post. I read a case study in business school about InBev, the company that recently made and unsolicited offer to acquire Anheuser-Busch (ticker: BUD) for $46 billion. InBev produces Stella Artois beer, which is considered a working man's brew in Belgium (and the rest of Europe if I remember correctly). A la soccer, Stella Artois is marketed as a high end brand here in North America. Interestingly enough, Budweiser is marketed in the opposite manner -- a middle-income beer in the U.S. and a high-end import in Europe.