When it comes to organizing professional sports, the United States really is a shining city on a hill.
My friend Jay Nordlinger has written a very fun column about what he would do if he owned a sports team. Like many of you, I imagine, I find the temptations of his hypothetical too alluring to resist penning a reply. I’d like to take a slightly different approach to the question, however.
As one of our resident Atlanticists here at NR, I have the benefit of looking at America at something of a distance, against the contrasting background of the rest of the world. If there’s any advantage to this foreign perspective, it’s that of an increased sensitivity to America’s exceptional traits and eccentricities. This is as true of sports as it is of politics, but the former is rarely examined through the same Tocquevillian lens as the latter by foreign observers. With that in mind, I present for your consideration this small treatise on American Exceptionalism as it manifests itself in the context of sports.
The first thing that strikes the foreign observer of the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL is the radical egalitarianism of these leagues. Policies such as wage caps and the draft lottery guarantee a level playing field the likes of which is rarely seen abroad. The notion that failing teams would get first dibs on the superstars of the next generation strikes most fans of European soccer, for instance, as utterly bizarre. But it means that fans of failing teams in small markets (such as my colleague Charles C. W. Cooke’s rather hopeless Jacksonville Jaguars) are presented with the possibility of long-term success and the opportunity to see the greatest of the game’s next generation up close and personal. This allows fans to dream big and allows the talent of general managers and head coaches to shine through.
Contrast this situation with my colleague Andrew Stuttaford’s beloved Norwich City soccer club in England. Andrew once described the experience of being a Norwich fan to me as something akin to “the Battle of the Somme, but without the hope.” This sentiment is to be explained by the fact that European soccer has become something of a Randian nightmare. There are virtually no financial rules in place that European soccer teams have to follow, which means that the richest teams nearly always win. Moreover, the most successful teams have become the playthings of exotic billionaires who have no ties to the local community where the team is based.
Manchester City Football (read “Soccer”) Club, for example, was, for most of its history, a mediocre, nondescript team consistently outshone by its legendary neighbor, Manchester United. But in the mid 2000s, the team was bought by Sheikh Mansour, a billionaire member of the Emirati royal family. Since he purchased the team, he has flooded it with cash, buying the best players, the best coaches, and the best facilities. What this basically amounts to is purchasing the English championship for an exorbitant fee, ruining the game all the while.
Even worse than this is the phenomenon of “sportswashing” that this kind of set up allows. Men such as Mansour use their sports enterprises to whitewash and sanitize the human-rights abuses of their native countries. Nowhere is this more egregious than in the case of Paris Saint-Germain, the most successful team in France. PSG is owned by the Qatari government, which spends an offensive and anti-competitive amount of money on the team and uses its bought-and-paid-for success as a way of papering over its unconscionable political behavior.
Given the amount of money involved, it’s unsurprising that the two favorites to win the European Champions league this year are Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.
When it comes to organizing professional sports, the United States really is a shining city on a hill. Given the power, I’d make every sports league in the world run along the same egalitarian lines as the four big American leagues.