Football and Basketball as American Rituals

How do football and basketball reflect American culture? I think it's fair to assume there's a connection. Otherwise, the highlight of the American sports year would be something like Super Shot-Put Sunday (SSS) or the Big Badminton Bowl (BBB). Instead, Americans gravitate toward football and basketball. Why?

(Note: I originally posted this mini-essay on AnthropologyWorks.com).

Football action. Photo credit: JSmith, Creative Commons, Flickr

Football vs. Basketball

Here are a few salient differences between football and basketball, highlighted to throw their essential qualities into relief.





In football, players dress in Superhero outfits.
In basketball, players dress in bathing suits.

In football, it’s so cold you see steam coming out of the players, as if they’re scaling Mt. Everest.
In basketball, it’s so hot you see sweat pouring off players, as if they’re mowing the lawn.

But the ultimate difference lies in spatial orientation.

Football is all about lines: Lining up on lines, measuring lines, crossing lines. The central objective of the game, in fact, is to cross a line: the goal line.

Basketball, on the other hand, is all about circles: putting a rubber circle inside a slightly larger, metal circle (the ball and the hoop). Instead of yard lines, the basketball court is divided up into circles: the center circle (which contains a circle within a circle), the 3-point line (which is a semi-circle), and the foul circle at the top of the key. Not to mention all the players running around in circles, trying to get open for a pass. Lines vs. circles—that’s the key difference.

Blazers Court. Photo credit: Tom Langston, Creative Commons, Flickr

Empty Redskins Field; Photo credit: squidpants, Creative Commons, Flickr

How, though, do these micro aspects of football and basketball reflect American culture? (Warning: I’d rather risk overstating the case than stating the obvious, and I would never say there’s only one reason we love these sports, nor that one is better than the other.)

Basically, football is about masterful strategies, specialized roles (punter, receiver, linebacker, etc.), and strict lines of authority (have you ever heard anyone call it “circles of authority”?). Coaches, quarterbacks, and coordinators control every play.

Basketball, on the other hand, comes out of a democratic model based on spontaneous teamwork. The basketball coach cannot even intervene in most plays. Basketball is about role flexibility (every player shoots, passes, plays defense) and fast-paced improvisation.

Football comes out of America’s hierarchical, industrial economy and military strategizing, whereas basketball emerges from the more recent knowledge economy. Lines vs. circles.

But the differences don't just reflect political economy. Basketball, with its sweaty players in bathing suits, matches the growing informality and bare-all impulses of contemporary culture: casual Fridays, confessional memoirs, reality TV, Facebook.

Other social changes also play a role. Circles are more associated than lines in American culture with equality and togetherness. Not coincidentally, basketball, the Circle Game, has skyrocketed in popularity at the same time that there’s been a push toward greater multiculturalism and gender equality.

At a more basic level, though, the sports aren't that different. The heart of football and basketball is the Thrill of the Chase: players frantically trying to get a few steps ahead of their pursuers. And that's exactly how homo sapiens and our hominid ancestors have spent most of our time on earth: chasing and being chased. As an ongoing legacy of that past, the most common dream reported cross-culturally is still the one in which the dreamer is being chased. So let the beer flow and The Great Chase continue.


Further Reading:

All my posts about baseball (moonlight, the slide, Jackie Robinson, etc., minus George Carlin).

My related post, "What would George Carlin say about Baseball vs. Basketball?"

Arens, W. “Professional Football: An American Symbol and Ritual.” In The American Dimension, Arens and Montague, eds., Alfred Publishing, 1976. A wonderful, early anthropological essay on football, with insight into things like football’s resonance with labor specialization in postwar America.

Carlin, George “Baseball vs. Football.” Carlin’s famous stand-up comedy routine is funny, insightful, and a major source of inspiration here.

Geertz, Clifford “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” In The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books, 1973. An extremely influential example of interpretive anthropology’s method, though, curiously, it never led to as many anthropological studies of sports as you might imagine.

Mandelbaum, Michael The Meaning of Sports: Why Americans Watch Baseball, Football, and Basketball and What They See When They Do, Public Affairs, 2005. Mandelbaum is a professor of foreign policy, and also the son of the late, great anthropologist David Mandelbaum, a fact that becomes apparent in the anthropologically-minded sections of the book where he relates sports to underlying economic structures.