America lives for sports and like most countries has its favorites. As stated by Dr. Withycombe of the University of Colorado Boulder, the most popular sports in America are Football, Basketball, and Baseball. They all share the common characteristic of being team based games in which players use objects in the form of balls to try and score on offense and also defend on defense.
A typical game day consists of a spectacle where many people gather to watch teams compete. The atmosphere is usually loud with cheers from the crowd and music playing throughout the arena of where the sport is going to be played. In professional sports and some college level there is a tradition of having a person or group of people perform the national anthem for the United States of America before the game begins. The values of patriotism, competition, and team work are enforced during these events with players and even fans.
The common theme through American sports is to compete and win for a prize which defines success. In the adolescent years it is a trophy or a medal. The pattern continues throughout the progression to high school, college, and ultimately professional. We envision a successful athlete by how well they perform when there is something at stake like a championship title or achievement of an athletic record. The most important thing in sport in America is the concept of working hard and battling to defeat an opponent and the outcome being how Charlie Sheen a popular American icon would put it best... "Winning".
References
- Rosa, K. D., Shah, R., Lin, B., Gershman, A., & Frederking, R. (2011). Topical clustering of tweets. Proceedings of the ACM SIGIR: SWSM.
Excellent Blog - Prof Withycombe
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