- Welcome to the College of Letters and Science
Community Lecture Series.
Tonight's guest speaker is Tobias Barske.
After spending his childhood in Riedenburg,
and I've got to make sure I get these pronunciations right,
Lower Bavaria, he lived in Jakarta, Indonesia
for five years where he attended
Jakarta International School.
He graduated from high school
with an International Baccalaureate diploma
taking tests in three languages:
English, German and Spanish.
Before moving to the United States,
Professor Barske studied Geography and English,
my field, by the way,
at the Universitat Regensburg in Germany.
He earned his Master's degree
in Germanic Languages and Literatures
and his Ph.D. in German Applied Linguistics
from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
with an additional Certificate of Advanced Study
in Second Language Acquisition and Teacher Education,
which he works with a lot now with our
Department of World Languages and Literatures.
Currently he's serving as the Chair of the department.
He teaches German language,
language teaching methodology,
culture and linguistics courses,
and coordinates the foreign language
teacher education program.
Professor Barske's research includes:
conversation analysis, specifically, institutional talk,
grammar and interaction pragmatics,
and sociolinguistics.
You did this on purpose for the bio, I'm sure.
(audience laughing)
It's all about language, anyway, right?
Professor Barske is interested in second language
acquisition theory and pedagogy,
having co-authored three German textbooks
with Vista Higher Learning.
Most recently, he participated in a program
on campus called Tech Select,
where he explored innovative ways
to incorporate instructional technology into his teaching.
And he and I have been talking a lot
about the future of world languages and literatures
on our campus.
We think it's a bright time.
It's a changing time, but it's a good time as well.
In his spare time, Professor Barske enjoys cooking
and spending time with his wife, Valerie,
who's in the audience, and his highly-energetic
and of course bilingual, four-year-old daughter.
Only bi?
I'm sorry, it should be tri, quadra, whatever.
In the past few years,
he's pursued his love of soccer more actively
by moving from the couch
to playing pick-up games during the summer.
Despite his love for Bavaria,
he is a huge fan of the German club Borussia,
apparently that's close enough,
Dortmund, which currently is the biggest rival
of Bayern Munich, Munchen.
I should say Bayern Munchen, correct?
Anyway, Tobias and I have become good friends
over the last few years.
We're working on a lot of really interesting ideas together.
And so it's my pleasure to introduce Tobias Barske,
and he's gonna talk on
"Why the World Loves Soccer, But Americans Hate It."
And I tried to get my football lovers here.
Are there any NFL fans here?
Come on!
Let's, you know, we've got to fight this, okay?
Real football! Anyway, Tobias, it's all yours.
(applause)
- Thank you very much for the introduction.
The reason why I picked this topic,
and why I'm talking about it today,
is a couple years ago, we at UW-SP,
we created a new program called
The First Year Seminar.
At the time it was designed as a retention tool,
but also as a way
to familiarize students with the campus,
with what it means to study at a university,
vis-a-vis, you know, coming from high school,
looking at some study skills, and those kind of things.
And as part of that program,
instructors were told that they could teach a course about
a topic that they were really passionate about, you know?
And so most everyone goes back to his research.
But as my wife will be able to tell you,
I do like to spend my time surfing the internet, ESPN,
various German sports sites.
And so I decided I'm going to design this course,
and I can use reading on these websites
as research, you know?
So I don't even have to feel bad about it.
The way that I designed my course
was also with an emphasis on global awareness.
And so when courses that address
that specific learning outcome are supposed to identify
and explain various components of a culture
that is distinct from those found within the United States.
And as the title suggests,
it seems like there is a disparity between soccer
within the U.S. and soccer outside of the U.S.
And so that's where this, the topic today comes from.
We have a number of my FYS students
from this semester in the audience, as well.
So you have been supplying me with information,
and that is much appreciated,
the kind of discussions that we've had in this class,
and I hope to, that I address those
adequately in today's talk.
What I'm going to do,
and what I always do in this particular class,
is I use what my students are most familiar with.
Having grown up in the U.S., you know,
being exposed to football.
And then I talk about sort of the other side.
Like, what happens once you leave
the boundaries of the United States?
And I'm gonna use that as a way
of organizing my talk today, as well.
This particular title comes from a piece that was published
in 1993 by the author Tom Weir.
It was published in USA Today.
And what he wrote was, "The World Cup draw is Sunday.
"Admit it, you don't care.
"And no matter how much this event
"gets crammed down your throat next year,
"you still won't care.
"The rest of the world, we keep getting reminded,
"loves soccer.
"Surely we must be missing out on something.
"Uh, isn't that what the Russians
"told us about communism?
"But don't feel guilty.
"There's a good reason you don't care about soccer,
"even if it is the national passion of Cameroon,
"Uruguay, and Madagascar.
"It's because you are an American,
"and hating soccer is more American
"than mom's apple pie, driving a pickup,
"or spending Saturday afternoons
"channel-surfing with the remote control."
So I read this piece with my students
very early on in the course, and I ask them,
"Is this, does this accurately describe
"how a lot of Americans feel about this particular sport?"
And I remember, I think it was you who said
that that was pretty much on target.
So there seems to be something inherently about soccer
that Americans dislike.
It gets also picked up in things
like this particular cartoon:
"Did you get your date back to your place?"
"Yeah, but it was uneventful."
"We sat there staring at each other for,
"waiting for someone to make a move,
"but after three hours, absolutely nothing happened.
"I felt like I was watching a soccer game."
You know, and this was actually given to me
by one of my colleagues.
It seems like ever since I started teaching this course,
and I've officially outed myself as a soccer fan,
people start coming in
and providing me with teaching materials.
The third example that I'm gonna show you
is from a sports journalist called Jim Rome.
I'm assuming a lot of you have heard him.
He's pretty well-known.
He used to have a show in ESPN called Rome Burning.
But he's somewhat famous for his rants against soccer.
And he basically takes, you know,
the American opinion towards soccer to an extreme,
and that's why I wanted to share it with you.
(upbeat music)
- I have not burned on soccer in quite some time.
I mean there's only so many times
that I can run clips of scoreless ties,
guys faking injuries, fans rioting,
before it becomes gratuitous, but today,
Brazilian coach Pedro Santilli has forced my hand.
Check him out.
He walks right onto the field, lowers his shoulder, sort of,
and makes incidental contact with this guy
who goes down like he was shot.
He's barely even touched
by some old man in a bowling shirt
and is writhing on the ground
like he got taken out by sniper fire.
How very soccer of him.
And equally soccer of none of his teammates
to have his back, even if he was faking that injury.
Like, something like that could ever play here.
That would be like Ray Lewis throwing himself on the ground
and screaming in pain when Brad Childress
bumps him on the shoulder.
But wait, it gets better.
Santilli then rolls right over to the ref
and catches him with a short right hand.
Only in soccer can a coach walk right onto the field
and punch the referee right in the face.
Nice sport. At least he punched him.
I thought he was going to slap him.
At least the referee didn't go down.
Soccer is the only sport where the refs
are tougher than the players.
Another reason why the so-called world sport
will never work here.
Because no matter how badly Gregg Popovich
gets jawed by Joey Crawford,
he's not going to let his hands go.
Soccer is the best.
The entire sport is predicated on guys hitting the deck
and crying at the smallest hint of contact
and coaches punching referees in the face
and urine and blood bombs and riots.
Oh, and Alexi Lawless.
- So I wanted to share this example with you
because I think it pretty much encapsulates
a lot of stereotypes that Americans have
towards soccer in a somewhat, you know,
extreme, in-your-face kind of way.
What we see is that soccer is being portrayed
as a game where not enough scoring happens.
There's a lot of running around, but you know,
where are they running to kind of thing.
Soccer players are generally portrayed as wimps, you know?
They're not manly enough.
A football player that you saw, you know,
is like this hunk of a guy,
and you put a soccer player right next to him
and he looks like, you know, small wiry kind of,
and so there's, when we talk about soccer and football,
I think what we can safely assume
is that there's a different way
in which American's construct
this concept of masculinity.
There's a masculine body
that is represented by football players
and that soccer players just can't compete with.
And so essentially, what we have over time,
is a social construction of what it means to be a man.
What it means, you know, social construction
of what it means to have an American sport,
vis-a-vis you know,
what that same construction looks like elsewhere.
I'm gonna sort of take you briefly
through the historical development.
And as I mentioned earlier, I'm gonna start with football,
because I know that a lot of you
are somewhat familiar with how football developed.
And then I'm gonna talk about the soccer side of things.
American football can be traced to early versions
of rugby football and association football.
So there's elements of soccer, but also, you know,
mainly elements of rugby that sort of
where the sport development of American football started.
Both games have their origins in Great Britain
and in the mid-nineteenth century.
What happened in the U.S. is that, whereas most,
or a lot of countries in the world
decided to go the direction of, you know,
the development of soccer,
the Americans essentially took rugby
and developed it into the modern form
of football as we know it.
A name typically associated
with how football developed in the early stages
is Walter Kemp, who was a Yale University
and Hopkins School graduate
who was considered to be the father of American football.
And what we can also say
is that the sport started out on the East Coast
and then essentially was developed
in its earliest stages in the Midwest.
That became the area where
a lot of football development ended up happening.
Walter Kemp started rule changes or,
that included the introduction of the line of scrimmage,
the down and distance rules,
and the legalization of interference.
So there are certain elements
that we're familiar with these days already
that go back to these very early stages of the game.
Soon thereafter, the notion of a forward pass
was introduced as well.
And the area that really helped football
spread throughout the country was the fact
that colleges started adopting football as their main sport.
In the first half of the 20th century,
football, or college football was the driving force
behind spreading, popularizing the sport of football
across the nation.
And so if we look at some of the rivalries that have,
that started out very early,
we have here the oldest college rivalry
is that between Wisconsin and Minnesota.
It's been played out 125 years.
It goes back to the year 1890.
It is the longest-standing rivalry,
and as you can see here,
this axe, like most of these rivalries,
have a specific term by which they are referred to.
This rivalry goes under the name of Paul Bunyan's Axe.
There are other rivalries,
such as the Missouri/Kansas rivalry,
that's referred to as the Border War.
Purdue/Indiana is the Old Oaken Bucket.
And then finally, the Oregon/Oregon State rivalry
that goes back to 1894.
That's been played out 119 times,
and it's typically referred to as the Civil War rivalry.
So that's at the college level.
If we look at the professional sports,
then the first professional football player,
the first person who was paid to play football
was someone called William "Pudge" Heffelfinger,
who had a $500 contract to play in a game
between the Allegheny Athletic Association
against the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.
What we find when we talk about football
is that this area around Pittsburgh
is sort of a hotbed
for things that happened with that sport.
In 1892, the first professional team was formed.
And then most importantly, probably,
is in 1920 the NFL was established.
And I know initially it wasn't referred to as the NFL,
but it was the American Professional Football Association,
and they then changed their name
to the NFL two years later.
Primarily a sport, the sport of professional football
was sort of home in the Midwestern industrial towns
of the United States.
But it eventually became a national phenomenon.
What's happened over the years is that we have
the first NFL draft in 1936,
something that's happening on an annual basis these days.
1939, oh sorry, I skipped one slide here,
1939, the first televised game happened.
The Super Bowl, all Packer fans know
that the Packers ended up winning
the first and second Super Bowl that was introduced.
And today, the NFL features 32 teams
that are spread out across the entire
continental United States, with teams, you know,
all the way from, you know, the East Coast.
Like this area features a lot of teams.
We have teams down in Florida.
We have teams all along the Pacific Ocean,
so we can safely say that the NFL professional football,
the same way that collegiate football spreads,
the entire U.S. of A.
You will realize probably that I chose a map
that is very U.S. centered, and there is a reason for that.
I know that some of my students argue that,
"Well, but don't they play football in Canada?"
No they don't, you know, football is an American sport,
and it is virtually only played in the U.S.
And as such, it sort of captures the sentiment
of what it means to be American.
If we now turn our attention to the history of soccer...
you notice I have a different map.
You know that I have here, because I need to,
you know, address different parts of the world.
The starting point of soccer
or the birthplace of modern soccer, at least, is England.
There were various forms of men
running around and kicking the ball,
and you know, chasing it and trying to score.
In 1848, there were the first attempts
to standardize the soccer rules.
That attempt happened at Cambridge University.
In 1863, a group of London-based schools
then came through to draw up an agreed set of rules.
So this whole notion of standardizing the rules,
so that everyone was playing the same game
was starting to take place there.
And so essentially,
with the formation of the Football Association in England,
modern soccer started its, you know,
conquest of the rest of the world.
In terms of the timing,
so we have 1863, the formation of the F.A. in England.
And just as a reminder,
1869 was the first collegiate football game in the U.S.,
so timing wise, things start,
I mean there's a nice parallel there.
The games, the two games sort of started to develop
at roughly the same time going forward.
So this is sort of what we imagine
those first games to have looked like.
From England,
the game then started to spread fairly quickly.
In 1889, Denmark and Holland started to found
their own football associations; 1891 New Zealand,
so we're already leaving the continent;
1893 Argentina founded their own football association;
1895 Chili, Switzerland, and Belgium;
in 1898, Italy joined the fun.
In 1900, Germany and Uruguay
founded their own football association.
And so what you can see
and what I've tried to demonstrate
with all these nice little red blocks
is that the game of soccer started
to spread world-wide very, very quickly.
By 1930, the FIFA had 41 member nations.
And in 2007, the FIFA had 208 member nations.
So it is truly, you know, a testament to the fact
that we're talking about a global sport here.
It's not that coincidental that the first World Cup
took place in Uruguay in South America
just because soccer gained so much importance
on the South American continent.
The game of soccer was brought to South America
primarily through British who migrated
to South American countries for work reasons.
So large groups of immigrants from England
came over to work on the continent's mineral supply,
and the game followed.
So they brought with them, you know,
what they were familiar with.
So the first football game, or soccer game I should say,
just sort of to keep the two apart,
happened in 1867 in Buenos Aries
which is the capital of Argentina.
And it was mainly played
between British people who were working there.
Another hotbed for soccer
and the way that it developed in South America
was Sao Paulo, which is a city in Brazil.
And so it's not surprising that you have Argentina as a,
that you have Buenos Aries and Sao Paulo
be cities in two of the countries where soccer
is just a way of life almost.
Another sort of component to the development
of soccer in South America is the fact that
starting in the early 1900s sort of that switch
from British living in South America and playing soccer,
started to flip to people like Argentinians
and Brazilians starting to take ownership of that game
on their own continent.
And so a good example for that is that in 1905,
both the Argentinian Soccer Federation
and the Uruguayan Soccer Federation
decided to change their name, which was English,
to the Spanish name.
So that ownership was sort of encapsulated
in the way in which people talked about the sport.
To this day, South America is the only continent
other than Europe that has featured a world champion.
So Uruguay has won the World Cup.
Argentina has won it multiple times,
and Brazil has won it five times.
Every other World Cup played by men teams
has been won by a European team.
In 1994, the World Cup was awarded to the U.S.
And America is a very interesting continent
when we look at how soccer developed.
It was believed for a long time that,
that the modern game of soccer
sort of was introduced through Ellis Island in the 1860s,
which makes a lot of sense,
Ellis Island being a hub for immigrants.
There's another theory that it was actually New Orleans
that served as that entry point,
that English, Irish, Scottish and German immigrants
brought the game with them.
What we can say about the development of soccer
in the U.S. is that there were essentially three attempts
to establish soccer and professional soccer in the U.S.
The first attempt happened between World War I
up until the Great Depression.
And what happened, there was a league in play,
but with the Great Depression,
it essentially sort of fizzled away.
The second attempt happened
between 1967 and 1984
when the North American Soccer League was formed.
And the most well-known example of that time
were the New York Cosmos
who drew regularly 40,000 plus fans.
And when they won their championship in 1978,
Giants Stadium was sold out with over 73,000 people.
So it's not like there wasn't any enthusiasm
for the sport of soccer in the U.S.
The way that's, for the second attempt,
there was interest that was generated for soccer
was by recruiting people like Pele,
who's one of the all-time sort of attacking soccer players,
and Beckenbauer who was also one of the
all-time great defensive soccer players.
They were both sort of at the tail-end of their careers,
but they were brought over
in order to generate that interest.
And it worked for a while,
but that second attempt also didn't work.
And that league play was closed down.
The reason why I have this image
of the 1994 World Cup here,
is because the 1994 World Cup not only sort of
created more attention within the U.S. for this sport,
but when the U.S. was awarded with that World Cup,
there was also negotiations about starting
a third attempt of professional soccer play in the U.S.
And so the Major League Soccer league,
the MLS, was formed and started
two years after that particular World Cup.
It included 20 teams,
17 in the U.S. and three in Canada.
So there is some border crossing going on.
But what we can safely say about major league soccer
is that it's been much more successful
than the first two attempts.
There have been more soccer-specific stadiums
that have been built in order to, you know,
address the fact that there
are actually soccer games happening.
The average MLS attendance
exceeds that of the National Hockey League
and of the National Basketball Association.
So there is a steady flow of people who
go and watch soccer games.
The MLS has secured national TV contracts,
which is very helpful.
And overall, the league has been very profitable.
So in terms of money generation,
that's worked pretty well for them.
It's also interesting to say about soccer in the U.S.
that there seem to be certain pockets
where soccer's being played in this country,
places like Salt Lake City,
which you don't necessarily associate with, you know,
big, you know, sports place.
Or you know, Columbus, Ohio,
is also not something where I would expect, you know,
like a major sports team to be located.
And clearly what the MLS is drawing from in this country
is the fact that there is a large and ever-growing
influence of Hispanic people
who just bring that love for soccer with them.
The next World Cup and the next area
I'd like to talk about is that of Asia.
The British introduced soccer to that part of the world.
What's interesting about Asia
is the question of who invented soccer.
And if you look at the FIFA website,
they'll tell you that the game of soccer
was actually invented by the Chinese.
Now one could argue what hasn't been invented
by the Chinese, you know?
But the argument is that a game called cuju,
which literally translates as kick ball with foot,
serves as the basis of the sport of soccer.
It was played between two opposing teams
that were kicking the ball.
The ball was stuffed with feathers and hair.
It was kicked around a pitch.
Teams tried to keep possession.
Teams tried to attempt to score
before the other team could dispossess them.
All of that is very reminiscent of the game of soccer
as it's played today.
There were referees that officiated
strict no-hand-ball policy.
There are certain elements about that game
that wouldn't fly so well these days.
So for example, the losing team's captain
was traditionally flogged at the end of the game,
something that would probably be frowned upon these days.
The reason why using that particular game as the source,
or the beginning of soccer,
why that is somewhat controversial
is there was a time period between,
during the Ming Dynasty when
interest in that particular sport tended to wane.
And there's sort of like a disconnect.
Like, if this is the beginning of the game of soccer,
then it should have been there the whole time,
but you know, it sort of went away for a while
and had to be reinvented.
The World Cup in 2002 was the first time that
that particular tournament was hosted on Asian soil.
It's also the first time there was co-hosts,
so between South Korean and Japan.
Both teams did exceedingly well.
The Japanese made it to the quarter-finals,
and the South Koreans made it
all the way to the semi-final
where they lost against Germany, unfortunately.
So the sport of soccer is relatively well-developed in Asia,
but it definitely lacks behind the next continent
that we're gonna look at, which is Africa.
Besides Europe and South America,
Africa has really taken to soccer.
It was introduced there in 1862.
It was brought to the African continent
through the forces of Imperialism,
not just the British, but also the French.
There are multiple, you know,
countries that brought it with them.
It was typically introduced by soldiers,
traders and missionaries.
And as part of this imperial endeavor, you know
railroads were built to make it into the in-lands.
And those railroads then also transported the sport from,
you know, like the coastal areas to the,
you know, to the entirety of the continent.
In Algeria for example, the French introduced the game.
And soccer is really sort of the sport
that you can find across the whole continent.
It's also been very, what's interesting about Africa
is that it's been used very much
sort of as a political tool.
So during the Apartheid regime in South Africa
one way to put pressure on politicians
was to ban South Africans from being able
to participate in any sort of, you know,
competition outside of their own country.
The Africans have been fairly successful at World Cups.
They started with no fixed starters at World Cups.
They're now up to five.
So at every World Cup,
five African teams are allowed to participate.
When we look at the FIFA World Player of the Year,
George Weah of Liberia won that particular title in 1995.
And that award is given to arguably
the best player in a year.
So the fact that an African was not only nominated
but actually received that award is saying quite something.
The problem with Africa is that it essentially
sort of ties into, you know, issues of post-Colonialism,
is the fact that about 80% of Africa's World Cup players
play in soccer clubs based in Europe.
As a direct result of the Imperial endeavor in Africa,
money withdrawn, resources were drawn out of the continent
and ended up elsewhere.
And so you see that the league play in Africa
is really highly underdeveloped.
So even though there are some fantastic players
that come out of Africa,
most of them leave the continent and their country
in order to play elsewhere.
What's really interesting about Africa
and when we talk about soccer is also the fact that
the way that people watch and enjoy the game
is very different on the African continent.
So like when we talk about soccer as a global game,
yes everyone plays by the same rules,
but the way that people play there,
there's some very sort of,
their nuances to the game that are sort of particular
to South Americans playing the game
Africans playing the game,
Europeans the game,
but this also comes to show how people
watch and enjoy the game.
So let me just start this.
(acapella singing)
- [Voiceover] 2010 was the first time
the World Cup was hosted in Africa.
And we were excited to see what the cradle
of humankind had in store for us.
- Before the World Cup we were being told that,
listen, this is South Africa.
This is a soulful nation.
The singing, the great voices of the country,
the spirit of the people.
So we thought we were going to get
this great chorus of beautiful, song voices
coming from the stands.
All we got was-- (vuvuzela playing)
- [Voiceover] Yes, the vuvuzela.
- It just sounded this big swarm of bees.
I mean, just (buzzes). (vuvuzela playing)
- So anyone, anybody who watched the World Cup
on any game that was played
during the World Cup in South Africa,
you constantly got this, you know,
complaining about these vuvuzelas.
You know, like how can you,
they're so loud you can't talk to each other.
And for me, what I sort of took away
from those kind of comments is, you know,
a little bit sort of going back to Jim Rome,
in the sense that, well that's just the way
African's appreciate that game.
And who are we to say, to tell, you know, as non-Africans,
who are we to tell people
how they have to appreciate the game?
To me it's also fascinating,
because if I look at like these kind of nuances,
I don't think they exist when we look at football.
I mean, I think this is something that is a direct result
of the fact that soccer is such a globalized game
and just has developed in different ways.
So that's enough about sort of the historical components.
The next issue that we address in my class
is how sports is related to nationalism, you know?
Like, how are those two concepts tied,
and how do they go together?
And so I'm going to discuss this connection
between sports and nationalism
both on the level of two countries playing each other,
and then I'm going to look at it as
sort of like on a more regional level.
And the problem with looking at it at the country level
is that, as I mentioned earlier,
the Americans are the only ones
who are playing the sport of football.
And so I don't have an adequate example, you know?
So the example I'm going to use is the Miracle on Ice,
because it is one of those moments in time
in American history when an American team
played a sport against another team
and it really sort of galvanized and got people excited
and really sort of proud of being an American.
So I'm gonna play this clip for you
before I contextualize it a little bit.
- [Voiceover] It's over! (crowd roaring)
- [Voiceover] Do you believe in miracles?
Yes! - [Voiceover] Unbelievable!
(crowd roaring)
- So the Miracle on Ice happened in 1980
at the Winter Olympics that took place in Lake Placid.
And the significance of this particular game
is that the Russians had dominated
Olympic ice hockey tournaments for decades.
I mean, they were like all over the place.
And everyone thought there's no way
that the Americans can beat them.
Put on top of that that the team the Americans, you know,
put into play them were made up of college players
who arguably didn't really get along
all that well with each other.
And what's even more interesting about this particular game
is we're talking about a sports event,
but we also need to look at the historical
and the broader implications that this particular game had.
This game took place at the height of sort of like
the second wave of the Cold War.
The war in Afghanistan had started just two years before.
The Russians openly were supporting
the communist regime.
The Americans had started to provide the Mujahideen,
the resistance fighters,
with support to fight against that regime.
The military build-up, the military arsenal
that had been built up as a result of the Cold War was huge.
But what you were lacking, so you had these two,
you know, countries sort of going at it for years,
but they never had a venue of you know, duking it out.
There was all this pressure building up,
and where do we go with this, you know?
So along comes this particular game,
and all of a sudden,
you have a venue to finally establish
who's better than the other person, you know.
And you have the amateurs going up against,
you know, this heralded team.
And what happened was, the Americans miraculously,
as they say, the Miracle on Ice
miraculously pulled out the win.
What's also should be noted here,
this wasn't even the final.
So, they didn't even win the tournament with this game.
They just beat the other team in the semi-final.
I mean, the victory I'm sure was important,
but this carried much more weight.
The fact that they beat the Russians was huge.
Now what I compare that to with my students
is soccer tournaments, that happened in 1954.
It was a World Cup that was played in Switzerland.
And similar to the ice hockey example,
you had the Hungarians who were favored to win.
They were on more,
they'd been undefeated for over four years.
They were on a 32-game unbeaten streak,
And everyone thought, "Of course they're gonna win."
On top of that, so they met the Germans in the final,
and on top of that, they had beaten the Germans
by a score of eight to three previously.
So it seemed like, you know,
this is just gonna go down the way it is.
And it turns out that in the final,
the Hungarians took a two to nothing lead
after eight minutes.
So at that point, yeah, all bets are off, you know.
This is never gonna work out.
For the Germans going into that particular,
into that particular match,
or into that particular tournament,
this was the first time post-World War II
that the Germans were allowed to compete
in an international event again.
They'd been banned from the international competition
as a direct result of World War II.
The moral in Germany was, you know, pretty subdued.
Germany had been the,
the ones who initiated World War II.
They had been, you know, the big villain.
Their country had been destroyed.
Industry was, you know,
still in the infancy stages of being rebuilt.
So this particular moment for the Germans meant a lot.
It was the first time they were allowed to
participate in an international event again.
It was the first time that the Germans
were allowed to play their national anthem again.
You know, one of those big moments for,
you know, when we talk about nationalism.
And so there's a lot that was riding on that game.
And so here I have a clip
and it's in German, but you'll get the point of it.
(announcer speaking German language)
So the Germans in that particular game
were able to equalize with the Hungarians by half-time.
They went into the second half tied at two games apiece.
And this particular goal was scored
about six minutes before the end of the game.
And the enthusiasm that you hear
in the reporter's voice tells it all.
I mean, the sheer disbelief with
"We can actually defeat a team like the Hungarians."
The kind of boost that that gave
a whole country is unbelievable.
And German historian Arthur Heinrich
wrote about this particular victory that
"It signified the turning point in post-war German history."
After following this tournament
is when the German economy started to--
the miracle of the Germany economy started to kick in.
And this particular victory
was a huge deal for everyone German.
I have another example,
just sort of to put this in perspective.
So this is not just in this for the Germans
after World War II.
In 1996, the European World Cup took place in England.
And since we're talking about nationalism,
I thought this was a very appropriate example.
The Germans met the English team
on English soil in the semi-final.
And if you read this, I mean,
and I will try to pronounce it in the German way
in which it is meant to be read.
"Achtung!
"Surrender for you Fritz, Euro 96 Championship is over."
(laughing)
You see two English player Paul Gascoigne
and one of his teammates.
They're wearing military helmets,
and it is this expression of nationalism.
And in this case you know,
military might that stands for nationalism.
And since soccer oftentimes and regularly
is played in these international tournaments,
you will find more than one example of it.
I said I was gonna start at the national level
and I'm gonna go down more to a regional level.
In terms of rivalries on the football side,
the one that we talk about in my class,
and that makes a lot of sense,
is the Packers versus the Bears.
And my students can rattle off, you know,
their knowledge of where the games started.
So they all know like roughly
when those teams were founded.
They typically know that it's like
one of the longest rivalries there is.
It's actually the league's most played rivalry.
Currently the Bears still lead by a smidge
in terms of the direct competition there.
What makes the rivalry so special, in my opinion,
you see that, and you're like, it's football time, right?
Is the fact the teams are so;
the proximity between the two.
Driving from Green Bay to Chicago
takes very minimal effort.
The longstanding nature of the rivalry,
both the success that the two teams have enjoyed
between the two of them; 22 championships.
In terms of the player success,
27 hall-of-famers on the Bears side,
24 on the Packers side.
You know we have the Cheeseheads,
so fans identify with the Packers
with all sorts of crazy outfits.
There are like the bikini girls that have gone viral.
There's all sorts of things that people
associate with this rivalry.
You have their certain traditions
that happen during training camps.
The players pick up the bikes of young kids
and ride them to the training facility.
It's the Cheeseheads versus the Bears.
And I always ask my students,
"When did you become a football fan?"
And I think this sort of captures it.
I think people generally don't know.
You're born in Wisconsin,
and there's almost no option there.
You're gonna be a Packers fan.
You're socialized into being a Packers fan.
And there's always the strange anomaly in my class
of people who are rooting for Detroit.
And I'm like, really? (laughter)
But there's also nationalism very much tied
to that particular rivalry.
So this is a snapshot of Lambeau Field
from the last Thanksgiving match-up.
Now I understand the Bears ended up
winning at Lambeau Field, so that was a let-down.
But the reason why I chose this picture
is because I think it shows the way in which
nationalism is portrayed in football games.
You have this really great choreography
of how the fans make up the American flag.
I mean, flags are so important to expressing
our feeling of self, like who we are,
what group we belong to.
You have the fly-over.
So for Americans, what's really important
when it comes to nationalism
is the close connection to militarism.
The way that the flag is presented at the game
when the national anthem is sung, you know,
people generally have a visceral reaction to that.
And that's something that's very typical
and the way in which I would describe
how nationalism and football are very closely aligned.
Now moving to the other side.
When we talk about soccer,
probably the most anticipated rivalry,
when it comes to soccer,
is between Real Madrid and Barcelona.
It's typically referred to El Clasico.
It's ironically, or maybe not ironically,
it usually gets watched worldwide
by as many people as the Super Bowl does.
So we're talking about roughly like 141 million people
who are watching both games.
So it gets a lot of media attention.
The reason why this particular rivalry is so interesting
is because you're talking about
a different form of nationalism.
So we look at Real Madrid.
It's one of the founding members of the Premiere Division.
If you go through the list of players
that have played for Real Madrid,
it's like a Who's Who of soccer.
But they're generally considered to be the team
that stands for Spain as a country, you know?
And if you look at the emblem here,
in 1920 the word real and the royal crown in the emblem
were bestowed to the club by King Alfonso XIII.
So they are the royal club.
They're the ones who are associated
with Spanish king and queen.
And then you look at the other side, Barcelona,
which stands for like a regional nationalism, if you want.
And I know that people in Green Bay or in Wisconsin say
"We're Wisconsinites" vis-a-vis the Chicagoans,
and there's a great dislike for the other,
but not to the extent that you see in soccer.
So the Barcelona when it was founded,
their founding document was not actually
written in Spanish.
It was written in Catalan, which is a different language.
It's not a different dialect.
So you're not talking about the differences
between how you speak in Texas
and how you speak in,
let's say in the Midwest.
We're talking about a different language.
They're motto is mes-que un club.
So, we are more than a club.
And what that really encapsulates,
is the fact that people in Barcelona
don't just go to a soccer game.
But associating with that particular club also means
that I am not Spanish, I am Catalan.
And there's a very distinct difference there.
They wear the Catalan crest on their jersey.
And Catalonia is currently also going through the process
of potentially breaking away from Spain altogether.
and declaring independence,
which is a real possibility,
but something that would cause all sorts of problems.
And what happened during the time of the Franco regime
which took place between 1939 and 1975,
was that the symbols of regional nationalism
were entirely banned.
So the Club Barcelona had to change it's name
because it wasn't Spanish enough.
They weren't allowed to use the Catalan crest
on their jerseys anymore because people,
or Franco tried to eliminate those
elements of regional affiliations, essentially.
And I have a small clip for you
that I want to show you as well.
And I'm gonna actually comment on it as it plays.
(crowd roars)
So this is a game in Barcelona around the 17th minute.
And what happens around,
so like around 17 minutes 14 seconds...
is the following.
(crowd chanting)
So what you see here
is a big Catalan flag that's being raised.
People get up. They're chanting.
And what they're chanting is Independence!
(speaking in foreign language)
"We want our independence!"
And the reason why it always happens
around the 17th minute,
is the last time that Catalonia was independent
was actually in 1714.
So what happens in the soccer
at every single game that Barcelona plays,
is they are expressing their uniqueness,
their sense of national pride.
And I don't mean like national as Spanish nationalism,
but national as in like
the Catalan way of thinking and living your life.
And I think it's,
I hope that came across that
there are differences between how this regionalism
plays out differently in this particular soccer game,
vis-a-vis what happens
in the football example that I showed.
I have one more issue that I want to sort of bring up here.
So there seems to be this,
I started to talk by saying like Americans hate soccer,
and that's actually not true,
because that statement comes
from a very gendered perspective,
because when we talk about, you know,
how Americans and their opinion,
vis-a-vis women's soccer,
it's a totally different ball game.
And I think ultimately what it comes down to is well,
maybe there just as many women sport to cheer for.
But I think it just comes down to
the success component of it all.
I mean, American women have been super successful
when it comes to playing soccer there.
They've won the Olympic Games four times.
You know they just won the World Cup again
last year in Canada.
What we can see in 2004,
a match was played in Heinz Field
that drew 6,386 spectators.
At the same venue after the 2015 World Cup,
you have an attendance of 44,000, you know.
So I mean, there's definitely an interest for soccer.
It's just not for male soccer, it's just for female soccer.
We also see that the American women's team
was the first team to be awarded a parade
through the canyon of champions,
which is a route that goes through downtown New York,
that's typically reserved for, you know,
when the Giants win the Super Bowl,
the Yankees win the World Series.
So a women's team received the honor
of having a parade of that sort, you know.
And I think it goes to show that there is
an appreciation for the sport.
It just depends on who plays it.
The American or the women's team
was the 1999 Sportsperson of the Year,
voted by Sports Illustrated.
Just another example along the same lines.
And finally what we also have is like
when we talk about women's soccer,
that there is a much more global reach.
So whereas it seems like, you know,
world champions for the men up until this point
have either been European or South American.
When we talk about women's soccer,
Japan won the World Cup.
You know, you have Brazil
that's one of the strongest teams.
European countries winning,
I mean, in the women's sport almost more so
than on the men's side,
it truly sort of has this global appeal
that actually includes the American side as well.
I want to end my talk by talking about
the UW-SP's mission statement.
I said like the learning outcome
that I'm trying to address in my course
is that of a global awareness.
And in our mission statement, it reads that
"We also believe that global citizenship
"requires that individuals learn to see the world
"from perspectives other than their own.
"Some of these perspectives are cultural
"and develop from the study of other languages,
"ethnicities, and beliefs."
And then the next line that I highlighted,
"Ultimately, the more students are encouraged
"to step outside their familiar habits and beliefs,
"the more they gain the wisdom to see connections
"between themselves and the world around them."
And that's really what I'm trying to accomplish
with this particular course, you know?
I mean, my students are familiar
with what football is all about.
I don't want them to love the game of soccer the way I do.
I mean, when I became American a couple years ago
and as I moved to Wisconsin, you know I'm like,
"Oh, this is great!" Americans like football.
I'm a sports person, you know.
So I will try to understand that sport.
And I've grown to be a Packers fan,
and I've been to games and all that's worked for me.
I don't need my students to love the game of soccer,
but what I want them to take away
is an appreciation for the fact that,
yes, they play soccer elsewhere,
but there's a reason for that,
and there's a historical reason,
and there are cultural reasons.
And bashing them, like someone like Jim Rome does is,
I mean speaks to, he does it for a reason,
but it also sort of speaks to a certain ignorance.
And we don't want our students to be ignorant
once they walk away from the UW-SP.
Thank you.
(applause)