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Old 11-19-2008, 11:11 AM   #1
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Exclamation Sports the U.S. would be dominant in if they really tried
In Beijing I watched the French defeat Iceland in the gold medal match of handball, and it is quite clear that the only reason France and Iceland were in the gold medal match is because there's not very many teams playing. If the U.S. could convert some of the athletes who play college basketball to handball players, there is no way that Iceland could match the pure athleticism of them.

Another sport you hear often is rugby, but I don't think it would be the same. The U.S. obviously has some huge guys who are extremely athletic, but I think rugby is still too technical, and it's not like the Samoans and some of those guys aren't already pretty big.

Still, it'd be interesting to see Bryant McKinnie, Jared Allen and Reggie Bush out there.

The other big sport out there is cricket, but I don't think baseball would have any correlation and that the U.S. would have ages to go technically before competing with India and Pakistan and Australia.

Just to appeal to the other side of the world, I'm guessing that if other parts of the world put all of their resources and had good technical training (ie American coaches) that the U.S. would quickly lose its edge in baseball. You see how dominant Latin America has become in the past couple decades, I'm sure the same thing could happen in Europe or Africa or South America or Asia if they really put an effort into it.

All in all, this post just confirms that soccer/football is still and always likely will be the world's game. There is no other sport where you can put teams from Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, North America and Australia in a tournament and they all have a chance. Sure, there is an elite (Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Argentina), but in a given World Cup, Korea, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Australia or Mexico all have a chance. I'm excited to see South Africa in 2010, because the World Cups outside of Europe tend to be more unpredictable.

Dont Mess With Kids
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Old 11-20-2008, 04:05 AM   #2
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I think if any sport were to be the USA's national sport, they'd be the best at it. The way players are developed and their college system is like no other. Just imagine if rugby was what American football is to America now. That would be scary.
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Old 11-20-2008, 04:07 AM   #3
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I'm excited to see South Africa in 2010, because the World Cups outside of Europe tend to be more unpredictable.
You saying that France 07 wasn't unpredictable?
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Old 11-20-2008, 10:57 AM   #4
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Soccer/Football World Cup*

Which should have been obvious!
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Old 11-20-2008, 11:17 AM   #5
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Dunno, to find out we'd need to look at an example where the US went from not giving a fuck, to giving a fuck about a sport which is truly global in its appeal.

I don't think there is such an example
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Old 11-20-2008, 11:36 AM   #6
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Soccer is the example you are looking for. The sport basically ceased to exist in this country for more than three decades until we qualified for World Cup 1990. All of our resources aren't in the sport and there are definite flaws in our overall development, but I don't think soccer is the kind of sport that any country can just become amazing in.

The U.S. has a huge talent pool, the closest on the world stage is probably only Brazil and Argentina (since China, India etc., aren't really relevant), but as we've seen the talent pool isn't as important as the training methods. Holland, for example, is tiny but amazing.

The reason I singled out handball is because it hardly seems like a well thought out sport, like any athletic person could be a great player if that's what he decided to do.
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Old 11-20-2008, 11:37 AM   #7
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To be fair the same could probably be said about China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, or any other nation with a huge population.
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Old 11-20-2008, 11:40 AM   #8
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Beyond this song being amazing, the sport just doesn't seem to require much real talent.
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Old 11-20-2008, 11:42 AM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BCWWF View Post
Soccer is the example you are looking for. The sport basically ceased to exist in this country for more than three decades until we qualified for World Cup 1990. All of our resources aren't in the sport and there are definite flaws in our overall development, but I don't think soccer is the kind of sport that any country can just become amazing in.

The U.S. has a huge talent pool, the closest on the world stage is probably only Brazil and Argentina (since China, India etc., aren't really relevant), but as we've seen the talent pool isn't as important as the training methods. Holland, for example, is tiny but amazing.

No doubt, I mean there's still a ridiculous talent pool in England, hell in most European countries, but only a handful manage to compete at a consistent level on the international stage in any meaningful way.
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Old 11-20-2008, 11:43 AM   #10
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Also I think we're forgetting slamball here
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Old 11-20-2008, 11:49 AM   #11
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To be fair the same could probably be said about China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, or any other nation with a huge population.
You could, and I wasn't trying to deny that, but I was just using the U.S. as the example for obvious reasons.

All that said, the U.S. still has the most athletic pool of people to draw from, considering the diversity of people here and the money we have to spend on training.

China has the largest population and probably the most resources (government forced) for training, but their population doesn't necessarily fit the same athletic mold as the Western world. Example: China dominated the Olympics this year, but many of the sports are predominantly Asian: gymnastics, table tennis, etc. They were OK at basketball, but are still terrible at every other major western sport, like soccer.

While India is huge, it is really only good at cricket and field hockey; I think they had less than five participants in the Olympics.

Brazil and Argentina and Mexico can churn out athletes, but for the most part that is in soccer, and for Brazil and Argentina they really only stay alive by selling players abroad. If they had the same money and resources that the U.S. did I think either could be the force that we are in sports, but the U.S. is the only relevant one to use for this example because if we wanted to actually develop handball, we probably could set up the infrastructure to start.
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Old 12-04-2008, 01:07 PM   #12
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No doubt, I mean there's still a ridiculous talent pool in England, hell in most European countries, but only a handful manage to compete at a consistent level on the international stage in any meaningful way.
True that. England (minus soccer ), France, Germany, Italy and like that's it. Russia rocks the Olympics but they aren't that impressive in the World Cup.
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Old 12-06-2008, 02:19 PM   #13
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Old 12-06-2008, 02:28 PM   #14
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Yeah sonnnn
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Old 12-06-2008, 02:41 PM   #15
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I wanted to play slamball soooooooo bad.
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Old 12-06-2008, 02:43 PM   #16
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Imagine the injuries if you fucked up on the trampoline
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Old 12-07-2008, 02:43 AM   #17
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Slamball is perhaps the greatest sport known to man. Totally wanting to build a court in my backyard right now.
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Old 12-15-2008, 11:07 AM   #18
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Slamball was badass. Full contact basketball with trampolines. Is there anything thats missing?
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Old 12-15-2008, 11:08 AM   #19
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Perhaps if we gave everything a nightstick or billy club for one hand that would make it better.
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Old 12-15-2008, 11:27 AM   #20
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Slamball is/was great because it basically allowed guys to live out their NBA Jam dreams, like you could do those insane above the rim dunks that somehow set the backboard on fire that regular NBA joes could never hope to do IRL.
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Old 02-09-2009, 07:20 AM   #21
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Originally Posted by ct2k View Post
Dunno, to find out we'd need to look at an example where the US went from not giving a fuck, to giving a fuck about a sport which is truly global in its appeal.

I don't think there is such an example

What about Hockey?
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