Sports in the USA
Introduction 1
Introduction 3
Introduction 3
A SPORTS-LOVING NATION 4
MEDIA COVERAGE 5
PRIVATE AND INSTITUTIONALIZED ACTIVITIES 5
AMERICAN SPORTS 6
VIOLENCE AND SPORTS 7
COMMERCIAL ASPECTS 7
PROFESSIONAL SPORTS 9
COLLEGE SPORTS 9
STUDENT ATHLETES AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE 10
WINNING 11
Sports: Colleges and Universities 11
Kinds of sports: 13
BASEBALL 13
BASKETBALL 16
Sources 20
Introduction
Americans pay much attention to physical fitness. Many sports and
sporting activities are popular in the USA. People participate in swimming,
skating, squash and badminton, tennis, marathons, track-and-field, bowing,
archery, skiing, skating etc. But the five major American sports are
hockey, volleyball, baseball, football and basketball. Basketball and
volleyball have been invented in America.
There is a large choice of sports in America. This can be explained by the
size and variety of the country. Another reason of the popularity of sports
is the people’s love of competition of any kind. One more reason is that
Americans use sports activities for teaching socials values, such as
teamwork and sportsmanship. All this explains why Americans have
traditionally done well in many kinds of sports.
Every high school offers its students many sports, such as wrestling,
rowing, tennis and golf. There are no separate “universities” for sports in
the USA. Students of any higher educational establishment are trained in
different kinds of sports. Many colleges and universities are famous for
their sports clubs. There are sports facilities at every school.
Some americans like active games, and others like quite games. I think that
quite games, as golf and crocket, intend for rich elite people. Most
popular games in the USA is hockey, american football, baseball,
basketball. Popular among americans are NHL games. In NHL games play our
compatriots: Feudorov, Yashin, Bure brothers. They are ones of the best
players in NHL.
American football is like a rugby with kicks. Every player can beat another
one. I think american football is one of the rudest games in the world.
Baseball is played with wooden bat and hard ball. It's called "typical"
american game.
Basketball is one of the most spectators game in the USA. It's my favourite
game too.
Some unusual kinds of sports originated in America. They are windsurfing,
skate-boarding and tradition. Triathlon includes swimming, bicycling racing
and long-distances-running. Now these are becoming more and more popular in
Europe.
Sports is a part of life of an average American.
A SPORTS-LOVING NATION
Whether they are fans or players, the millions of Americans who participate
in sports are usually passionate about their games. There is more to being
a baseball fan than buying season tickets to the home team's games. A real
fan not only can recite each player's batting average, but also competes
with other fans to prove who knows the answers to the most obscure and
trivial questions about the sport. That's dedication. Dedication short of
madness is also what inspired hundreds of thousands of football fans to
fill Denver's stadium in dangerously freezing temperatures, not to watch an
exciting game but just to demonstrate team support in a pre-Superbowl pep
rally, days before the actual contest. And it is with passion that
Americans pursue the latest fitness fad, convinced that staying fit
requires much more than regular exercise and balanced meals. For anyone who
claims a real desire to stay healthy, fitness has become a science of
quantification, involving weighing, measuring, moni-toring, graph charting,
and computer printouts". These are the tools for knowing all about pulse
and heart rates, calorie intake, fat cell per muscle cell ratios, and
almost anything else that shows the results of a" workout.
MEDIA COVERAGE
The immense popularity, of sports in America is indicated by the number of
pages and headlines the average daily newspaper devotes to local and
national sports. The emphasis on sports is evident in local evening news
telecasts, too Every evening fox five to seven minutes of the half-hour
local newe show, the station's sports analyst, whose territory is
exclusively sports, reports on local, regional, and national sports events.
Television has made sports available to all. For those who cannot afford
tickets or travel to expensive play-offs like baseball's World Series or
football's final Superbowl, a flick of the television dial provides close-
up viewing that beats front row seats. Although estimates vary, the major
networks average about 500 hours each of sports programming a year.
Recently, the emergence of several cable channels that specialize in sports
gives viewers even more options. The foremost of these channels, ESPN, runs
sports shows at least 22 hours a day and is now received by 37 million
American homes, or nearly half of the 86 million homes with television
sets.
PRIVATE AND INSTITUTIONALIZED ACTIVITIES
Opportunities for keeping fit and playing sports are numerous. Jogging is
extremely popular, perhaps because it is the cheapest and most accessible
sport. Aerobic exercise and training with weight-lifting machines are two
activities which more and more men and women are pursuing. Books, videos,
and fitness-conscious movie stars that play up the glamour of fitness have
heightened enthusiasm for these exercises and have promoted the muscular,
healthy body as the American beauty ideal. Most communities have
recreational parks with tennis and basketball courts, a football or soccer
field, and outdoor grills for picnics. These parks generally charge no fees
for the use of these facilities. Some large corporations, hospitals, and
churches have indoor gymnasiums and organize informal team sports. For
those who can afford membership fees, there is the exclusive country club
and its more modern version, the health and fitness center. Members of
these clubs have access to all kinds of indoor and outdoor sports;
swimming, volleyball, golf, racquetball, handball, tennis, and basketball;
Most dubs also offer instruction in various, sports and exercise methods.
Schools and colleges have institutionalized team sports for young people.
Teams and competitions are highly organized and competitive and generally
receive substantial local publicity. High schools and colleges commonly
have a school team for each of these sports: football, basketball,
baseball, tennis, wrestling, gymnastics, and track, and sometimes for
soccer, swimming, hockey, volleyball, fencing, and golf. Practices and
games are generally held on the school premises after classes are over.
High schools and colleges recognize outstanding athletic achievement with
trophies, awards, and scholarships, and student athletes receive strong
community support.
AMERICAN SPORTS
Football, baseball, and basketball, the most popular sports in America,
originated in the United States and are largely unknown or only minor
pastimes outside North America. The football season starts in early autumn
and is followed by basketball, an indoor winter sport, and then baseball,
played in spring and slimmer. Besides these top three sports, ice hockey,
boxing, golf, car racing, horse racing, and tennis have been popular for
decades and attract large audiences.
VIOLENCE AND SPORTS
Although many spectator sports, particularly pro football, ice hockey, and
boxing, are aggressive and sometimes bloody, American spectators are
notably less violent than are sports crowds in other countries. Fighting,
bottle throwing, and rioting, common elsewhere, are not the rule among
American fans. Baseball and football games are family affairs, and
cheerleaders command the remarkably non-violent crowd to root in chorus for
their teams.
COMMERCIAL ASPECTS
For many people, sports are big business. The major television networks
contract with professional sports leagues for the rights to broadcast
their
games. The guaranteed mass viewing of major sports events means advertisers
will pay networks a lot of money to sponsor the program with
announcements
for their products. Advertisers for beer, cars, and men's products are glad
of
the opportunity to push their goods to the predominantly male audience of
the big professional sports. Commercial businesses enjoy the publicity
which
brings in sales. The networks are glad to fill up program hours and
attract
audiences who might perhaps become regular viewers of-other programs
produced by those networks, and the major sports leagues enjoy the
millions
of dollars the networks pay for the broad-casting rights contracts. Many
sports
get half of their revenues from the networks. National Football League
(NFL)
teams, for example, get about 65 percent of their revenues from
television. The
networks' 1986 contract with the NFL provided" each-of the 2g teams in the
league with an average of $14 million a year. -
"Just as in any business, investments are made and assets are exchanged.
Team owners usually sign up individual players for lucrative long-term
contracts. Star quarterback Joe Namalh was invited to play for the New York
Jets, one of the NFL teams, for $425,000 in 1965. Coveted baseball player
Kirk Gibson recently signed a three-year contract with the Detroit Tigers
for $4.1 million. More often in the past than now, team owners traded
players back and forth as items for barter.
Страницы: 1, 2
