【外交政策 20130201】美国人的游戏
【中文标题】美国人的游戏
【原文标题】America’s Game
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】JOSHUA E. KEATING
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/02/01/america_s_game
为什么其它国家不喜欢橄榄球？
美国人喜欢把比赛中获胜的队伍称为“世界冠军”，尽管它们的对手也只是美国本土的球队，这是美国人骄傲自大性格的典型表现。但是近年来，在一些运动项目中，越来越多的国际人才让这个称号也不那么怪异了。世界冠军旧金山巨人队在去年秋天获得了职业棒球联赛冠军，美国职棒大联盟中共有243名国际球员，来自15个国家，创纪录地占据了28.4％的职棒球员比例。世界冠军迈阿密热队所在的联盟中有84名国际球员，总共30支队伍中，有29支至少有一名外国球员，其中包括诺维斯基、帕克、加索尔等震耳欲聋的名字。冰球这项起源于欧洲、发展于加拿大、被俄罗斯视为国球的运动，从一开始走的就是国际化道路。
但是橄榄球依然是个例外。据NFL提供的数据，在32支队伍的1600名注册球员中，只有74人出生在美国以外的国家。这其中的绝大多数都在孩提时代来到美国，在高中和大学里被培养成职业球员。橄榄球的观众也主要是美国人。星期天，巴尔的摩乌鸦队与旧金山49人队在超级碗的对决，将在180个国家实况转播。尽管目前还无法预测准确的收视率，但我们可以放心大胆地说，在美国以外——或者至少北美地区以外——熬夜观看比赛的大多都是美国侨民。获胜一方当然也有足够的理由索取“世界冠军”的称号，但是要知道，世界上的其它国家都对这项比赛不怎么感兴趣。
那么，究竟是什么让橄榄球成为美国例外论最难攻陷的堡垒？为什么这个国家最受欢迎的运动项目——或许也是最受欢迎的娱乐方式——在包括其发源地在内的其它国家中，无法激起任何兴趣呢？
原因或许并不是这项运动所包含的天生的“美国性”。再没有哪项运动比棒球更能表现出典型的美国特点，但是这项全民喜爱的运动在拉丁美洲和日本都受到足够的欢迎。与美国紧张的政治关系并没有阻碍委内瑞拉培养出职棒联盟中的明星球员，也未能阻止成千上万中国人追随姚明的NBA成功之路。从圣母大学传奇挪威教练Knute Rockne，到杰克逊维尔美洲虎队巴基斯坦籍老板Shahid Khan，一代又一代的移民来到美国，纷纷爱上了这项运动。
还有人会提到这是一项野蛮的运动——我们刚知道它其实比我们想象得更野蛮，但是其它那些高度身体接触的运动，包括英式橄榄、拳击和终极格斗，也被各个国家广泛接纳。还有复杂的比赛规则，首次观看比赛的观众可能会一头雾水，但是欧洲、非洲、澳洲和南亚等地区无数的观众都会准时收看规则同样无比复杂的板球比赛。
外国人对橄榄球不感兴趣的一个原因，或许是他们没有机会接触这项运动，至少周围没有人观看比赛。负责在全球推广橄榄球运动的NFL国际部副总裁Chris Parsons说：“其它国家的体育教学计划中都没有包括这项运动。其它运动，比如足球和篮球，多少都占有一席之地，人们因此有更多的机会参与这些运动。”在美国，高中和大学球队是NFL明星的孵化器，国外没有这些设施和机制，这是为什么没有在美国接受教育的人很少有机会跻身职业行列的重要原因之一。
那么，为什么国外没有组建橄榄球队的大学和俱乐部呢？这或许更多是经济上的原因，而不是文化层面的问题。英国美式橄榄球联盟（BAFA）主席Gary Marshall说：“这主要取决于一套装备的价格。如果是篮球，你只需要在车库边的墙上挂一个铁圈，找几个人来就可以玩了。如果是棒球，你只需要一根棍子和一个球。至于橄榄球，你必须要有完整的一套装备才能打11人对11人的比赛。”
Marshall说，英国人有时也会与朋友玩对抗性的橄榄球，看NFL的卫星转播，但是“把娱乐变成职业联赛恐怕没那么容易”。
美式橄榄球的全球管理机构国际橄榄球协会（IFAF）主席、瑞典人Tommy Wiking也认为，“合理的装备价格”是推广这项运动最大的障碍。他的组织试图让全世界年轻的运动爱好者都有机会获得这些装备，但是他说，在大部分国家里，运动者都是在电视转播中接触到这项运动的成年人，而不是有机会成长为职业球员的儿童。
NFL试图把本土成功的经验推广到全球，主要是通过欧洲NFL的方式。这是一个有10支球队的联盟，来自德国、荷兰、西班牙和英国，从1991年到2007年的历届比赛都没能吸引到足够的观众。Wiking说：“这项赛事注定要失败，因为它试图把两个不同的目标整合在一起。一个目标是培养优秀球员，使他们有资格进入NFL。这个目标还算实际。另一个目标是在欧洲经营一个赢利的联赛，下一个赛季没有好的球员，就不可能达成这个目标。欧洲人不是这样欣赏比赛的。”
过去5年来，联盟一项比较成功的举措是每年在英国进行一场常规赛。这个赛季的10月28日，爱国者与公羊队的比赛让温布利体育场座无虚席。明年还将举办两场比赛。就像1992年的梦之队让世界观众得以欣赏到NBA的篮球水平，伦敦的橄榄球比赛让全世界看到最高级别的正式赛事。Marshall说这些比赛“才是让英国人喜欢它的真正原因”。他的组织BAFA经营的内容无所不包，从橄榄球到精英人士的运动项目，并且成功地把橄榄球引入大学校园。
他说：“以前如果提到美式橄榄球，没人知道你在说什么。现在它已经成为了一项人所共知的运动。以前如果举办超级碗聚会，人们会觉得奇怪，但是这个周末，整个国家都在欢聚。”
除英国之外，Parsons把加拿大、中国、日本和墨西哥作为NFL海外市场拓展的重点国家。加拿大自从1958年以来就有自己的联赛，它为NFL贡献了最多的海外球员，也是最多前NFL球员退役的赛场。在过去5年里，布法罗比尔队每年都会在附近城市多伦多进行一场比赛。
橄榄球在墨西哥和美籍墨西哥人中越来越收欢迎。2005年，49人队在墨西哥城的阿兹特克体育场举办了一场重要的比赛，吸引了10万名球迷，创下了各类比赛的观众数量纪录。二战之后，日本人开始玩橄榄球，目前有学校和社团联赛（每年高校联赛冠军与社团联赛冠军都会进行一场比赛，名字叫“大米碗”）。NFL赛事和一些本地橄榄球比赛也得到了越来越多中国人的关注，当然，如果想让Tom Brady和Adrian Peterson在北京得到与科比•布莱恩特同样的待遇，恐怕还要等一段时间。
Wiking的IFAF有64个成员国，遍布每一个大洲，它每隔4年举办一次国家队之间的世界杯锦标赛。（美国也会参加，并且获得了上两次冠军，但上场的都是业余球员。）2015年锦标赛将在瑞典举办。但是Wiking目前着眼于一些新兴的市场，他说：“在欧洲，波兰是橄榄球明星国家，它在过去5年时间里迅猛发展。”他还提到了拉丁美洲的巴西（译者注：原文如此）：“在6年时间里，他们从一无所有，我指的是0，发展到160支俱乐部。”
尽管很多外籍球员都成为了NFL的明星，比如英籍尼日利亚后卫Osi Umenyiora和韩裔美国人外接手Hines Ward，但美式橄榄球的国际化前景还缺少一个重要因素，Wiking称其为“姚明因素”。
“如果一个出生在外国的球员，在美国读高中和大学，基本上没人会关注，因为他就是美国人。但是如果一个球员在自己国家的俱乐部里成长，打本土职业联赛和国家队的比赛，而且闯出一些名声，这样人如果在NFL中成为明星，那才是大事件。”
目前与这种理想状态最接近的是几位进入NFL的前澳式橄榄球员，包括红皮队的Sav Rocca和鹰队的Mat McBriar。人们对澳大利亚尖峰Jesse Williams寄予厚望，他在澳大利亚开始职业生涯，参加过职业联赛和国家队比赛，去年进入阿拉巴马大学。还有柏林出生的防守端锋Bjorn Werner，在进入佛罗里达州立大学之前，他在德国俱乐部中打球。他有可能成为2013年的选秀状元。
尽管NFL还要花一些时间等待它的姚明，但Parsons提到，即使在那些从来不玩橄榄球的人群中——就像大部分美国球迷——它也是“一项非常有价值的媒体财产”。他讲到自己的经历，作为一名前橄榄球运动员，在英格兰曼彻斯特时就对这项运动着迷。他说：“我与这项运动唯一接触的机会，是收看每周的赛事精选。每次都需要费很大劲调出微弱的武装部电台信号。”今天的球迷是幸运的，因为他们有互联网和ESPN。
Marshall在致力于传播橄榄球场的福音之前，是一名小学教师，他参加过青年足球队和橄榄球队。大约25年前，他和妻子走进纽卡斯尔的一家电子商店，突然间就被电视里的一场橄榄球比赛所吸引。他说：“直到今天，我的妻子还在后悔没能把我从电视机前拉开。”
并非所有人都对这项运动一见钟情。身为橄榄球国际组织高层官员的Wiking参加过大学和俱乐部联赛。他第一次看到这项比赛，是高中时期沃尔沃在1988年赞助的一场季前赛，芝加哥熊队与明尼苏达维京人队的比赛。他说：“我的朋友很喜欢，但是我觉得那是最无聊的电视节目。”
这么看来，似乎每个人都有机会成为橄榄球迷呀。
原文：
Why don't other countries like football?
It's a classic example of American hubris that we routinely refer to our winning sports teams as "world champions" even when they only play against other American teams. But in recent years, at least for some sports, an influx of international talent has made the label seem a bit less bizarre. The World Champion San Francisco Giants won baseball's title series last fall against a league with 243 international players -- a record 28.4 percent of the league on opening day -- hailing from 15 countries. The World Champion Miami Heat play in a league with 84 international players -- there's at least one on 29 on the 30 teams -- including marquee names like Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, and Pau Gasol. Hockey, the British-invented, Canadian-developed national sport of Russia, has had an international flavor from the start.
Football remains the exception. According to the NFL, only 74 players out of more than 1,600 roster spots across 32 teams were born outside the United States. The overwhelming majority of those came to the country as children and were developed as players in U.S. high schools and colleges. And football's audience is mostly American as well. Sunday's showdown between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers will be broadcast in 180 countries but, while exact viewership stats are hard to come by, it's a safe bet that outside the United States -- or at least North America -- the vast majority of those staying up late to watch will be American expats. The winner of the game will also have a plausible claim to the title of "world champion," but mostly because the rest of the world isn't particularly interested.
So what makes football such a bastion of American exceptionalism? Why does the country's most popular sport -- perhaps its most popular form of entertainment of any kind -- excite so little attention outside the land where it was invented?
It's probably not the innate Americanness of the sport. Few activities are more quintessentially American than baseball, but the national pastime has found a wide following throughout Latin America and Japan. And geopolitical tensions with the United States haven't stopped Venezuela from producing Major League stars or millions of Chinese from following Yao Ming's NBA career. Plus, successive generations of immigrants to the United States from Notre Dame's legendary Norwegian coach Knute Rockne to the Jacksonville Jaguars' Pakistani-born owner Shahid Khan have fallen in love with the gridiron game.
Some might point to the roughness of the sport -- which we're now learning may be far more dangerous than we previously realized -- but high-contact sports from rugby to boxing to ultimate fighting have found international success. There's also the complexity of the rules, which can be off-putting to first-time viewers, but tens of millions of people in Europe, Africa, Australia, and South Asia regularly tune in for similarly byzantine cricket.
More likely, non-Americans aren't all that interested in watching football because they don't grow up playing it, or at least watching it at a local level. "Our sport is not played in many curriculums in schools around the world," says Chris Parsons, vice president of NFL International, which promotes the league abroad. "Other sports have the benefit of that, such as soccer and to some degree basketball, so they have greater opportunities to engage." In the United States, high school and college teams serve are the incubators of NFL talent, and the lack of such infrastructure abroad is one major reason why so few non-U.S.-educated players have made it to the pros.
But why so few university or private club football teams abroad? The answers may have more to do with economics than culture. "It's the kit, and how expensive it can be," says Gary Marshall, Chairman of the British American Football Association (BAFA). "Basketball, you just need a hoop on the side of a garage and a couple of guys and you can play. Baseball you just need a bat and a ball and that's it. Football, it's the cost of the equipment to play the full 11-on-11 game."
Marshall emphasizes that it's not uncommon for Britons to play touch football with friends or catch the occasional NFL game on satellite, but "making the transition from recreational to a viable league has been the hard bit."
Tommy Wiking of Sweden, president of the International Federation of American Football (IFAF), the sport's global governing body, agrees that the "accessibility of reasonably priced equipment" is a major obstacle to the sport's growth. His organization has attempted to help by shipping equipment to youth leagues around the world, but he says that in most countries, the sport is taken up by adults who encounter it first on television, rather than young people who could grow into potential professional players.
The NFL has attempted to give global football a boost by exporting its own talent, notably through NFL Europe, a league of 10 teams in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Britain that operated from 1991 until 2007, but never really caught on with fans. "The league was bound to be a failure because it was trying to combine two different objectives," Wiking explains. "One was to develop players who were on the brink of being good enough to be in the NFL. That goal worked. The other goal was to develop a profitable league in Europe, and you just can't do that if whenever you get attached to a good player, they're not there the next season. That's not the way Europeans are used to seeing sport."
A more successful strategy over the last five years has been the league's new tradition of holding one regular-season game per year in Britain. This season's Oct. 28 matchup between the Patriots and Rams sold out Wembley Stadium, and two games may be held next year. Just as the 1992 Dream Team allowed world audiences to see NBA-quality basketball on the world stage, the London games give international exposure to football played at its highest level in meaningful games. Marshall says the games are "a massive reason why football is gaining in popularity" in Britain. His organization, BAFA, runs everything from touch football to elite-level fully padded games and has had success at getting football introduced into universities.
"It's grown from a time when you said you played American football and people didn't know what you were on about to being quite an established sport," he says. "It used to be very strange to have a Super Bowl party, but his weekend there will be parties all over the country."
In addition to Britain, Parsons identifies Canada, China, Japan, and Mexico as the countries where the NFL is devoting most of its marketing efforts. Canada has had its own popular league since 1958 and is the leading foreign contributor of NFL players -- as well as a common stopping point for former NFL players. The Buffalo Bills have also played one game per year in nearby Toronto for the last five years.
Football is increasingly popular in Mexico as well as with Americans of Mexican descent. A 2005 49ers-Cardinals game held in Mexico City's Azteca Stadium attracted more than 100,000 fans -- an all-time league record. Japan has played football since the end of World War II, in both academic and corporate leagues (a yearly championship game between the country's corporate and college champions is known as the Rice Bowl). NFL games, as well as local leagues, are increasingly popular in China, though it will likely be quite some time before Tom Brady or Adrian Peterson can get the same kind of reception in Beijing that Kobe Bryant enjoys.
Wiking's IFAF has member leagues in 64 countries on every continent and runs a World Cup style tournament between national teams every four years. (The United States participates -- and has won the last two -- but only with amateur players.) The 2015 tournament will be held in Sweden. But Wiking has his eye on some new markets. "In Europe, Poland has been the real star in terms of development," he says. "They've grown tremendously in the last five years." In Latin America, he pointed to Brazil. "In six years they've gone from nothing, and I mean nothing, to about 160 clubs."
While a number of foreign-born players such as British-Nigerian defensive end Osi Umenyiora and Soeul-born Korean-American wide receiver Hines Ward have been NFL stars, one thing international American football is still waiting for is what Wiking calls "the Yao Ming story."
"A foreign-born player who goes to high school and college in the states, basically no one will care with him because he's basically American," he says. "But if the player has been brought up in a club in his home country, played in domestic league, played on its own country's national team, and was a known star, and then makes it to the NFL, that's huge."
The closest so far have been a number of Australian Rules Football players who have been converted to NFL punters, including Sav Rocca of the Redskins and Mat McBriar of the Eagles. There are high hopes riding on Jesse Williams, an Australian nose tackle of indigenous descent who started last year for the University of Alabama after having played on club and national teams in his home country. There's also Bjorn Werner, a Berlin-bred defensive end who played on German club teams before starting at Florida State and could be a top prospect for the 2013 draft.
But even if the NFL may have to wait a while for its Yao, the NFL's Parsons is quick to note that football can be "a very engaging media property" even among people who -- like the vast majority of its American audience -- never played the game on any organized level. A former rugby player, he points to his own experience growing up as an American football fan in Manchester, England. "Literally my only engagement with it was watching a weekly highlights show on TV and trying very hard to tune in to a very weak Armed Forces Radio signal," he says. Things have gotten a bit easier for fans since then thanks to the Internet and ESPN International.
Marshall, a schoolteacher when he's not spreading the gridiron gospel, discovered the game later in life. A former junior rugby and soccer player, he walked into an electronics store with his wife in his hometown of Newcastle 25 years ago and was transfixed by the American game being shown on one of the display models. "To this day, my wife regrets not pulling me away from the TV sooner," he says.
It's not always love at first sight. Wiking, now football's top international official and a former player at both the university and club level, first saw the sport as a high-school student in 1988 when Volvo sponsored a televised preseason game between the Chicago Bears and Minnesota Vikings. "My friends loved it, but I thought it was the most boring thing I had ever seen," he remembers.
Guess there's hope for anyone.
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