I was having a drunken conversation with a friend last night, and he made a good point about team sports: we’ve invented them all. Basketball is the newest sport that’s played by organized professional teams, and it was invented over a hundred years ago. MMA is newer, but it’s not a team sport. Can anyone think of a counterexample?
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WaterGirl
Who is “we”?
John W.
Jai Alai?
Not that I know anything of it beyond what I saw on Mad Men, I just suspect no American would dare name anything Jai Alai.
Warren Terra
Don’t you remember Newt’s speech to the 1996 Republican National Convention pointing out that Beach Volleyball was a purely American invention with no bureaucrats involved in its creation?
Of course, the “teams” in Beach Volleyball are only two people, and the real Volleyball apparently dates to 1895.
Well, I guess there’s Ultimate Frisbee. And, of course, any number of video games with cooperative play.
ug
pyramid ball? though technically…
MAJeff
I was having a drunken conversation with a friend last night, and he made a good point about team sports: we’ve invented them all
umm…..Lacrosse, soccer, rugby, team handball, cricket.
sdfg
wha???
i imagine that this was posted while still drunk. to echo the first poster, “who is ‘we’?”
assuming that “we” means “Americans”, then, i’ve got one word for ya: soccer.
Neddie Jingo
DFHs and Ultimate Frisbee. Granted, not (AFAIK) played at the professional level, but it’s a recently minted brand-new team game.
I drove past Patrick Henry College the other day to see a gang of home-schooled future-White-House-intern Christers playing it on the lawn, and I had to fight the impulse to roll down the window and holler, “You can’t play that game! That’s OUR game!”
Phlip
What about that crazy hybrid between basketball & any sport that you try to put a puck/ball in a net/goal that was played in the last Olympics? Don’t recall what it was called.
polyorchnid octopunch
Americans didn’t invent soccer, hockey, or even football (it’s rejigged rugby)… and they didn’t even invent basketball; Naismith is a Canadian, though I will allow as he invented it while in the US. Americans did invent baseball… but that hardly constitutes an exhaustive list of all the good team sports.
Just how drunken was that conversation?
Bondo
Non-magical Quittich. It may be embarrassing, but it was invented.
P.S. To the people who are thinking the we meant Americans invented, I think by we he meant humanity…as in humanity has tapped out the creative extent of team sport.
ADM
@MAJeff: I don’t think Mr. Mix means we the U.S. literally invented all the sports known to the world; I think he means we the people of the world have invented all the sports there are to play.
Which is true enough, until someone invents something new.
Warren Terra
I think people are misinterpreting “we” here – seems to me, the meaning was that people had invented a bunch of team sports and had stopped inventing them a century ago, not that Americans had invented all these sports.
Tractarian
@MAJeff:
Pretty sure, in this context, “we” means “the human race.” That is, he’s saying “all team sports have been invented” not “Americans invented all team sports.”
I would disagree anyway. It’s not that all team sports have been invented, it’s that the market is saturated.
MattF
What about underwater rugby?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_rugby
Jeremy L.
Beach Volleyball. Read your Gingrich.
Svensker
@ADM:
I believe aliens invented cricket. It’s the only explanation.
mistermix
Yeah, by “we” I meant humanity, not Murkins.
Warren Terra
@Svensker:
It’s the only explanation if you suffer under the delusion that Cricket is a sport. If you instead realize that Cricket is a social function involving a mandated break for Tea, and ignore the silly costumes and whatever’s going on with the bats and balls, it makes a lot more sense.
Brandon
@polyorchnid octopunch: My thoughts exactly. Lacrosse was invented by a Canadian too.
I actually did not realize until your post that he was referring to ‘us’ Americans. AFAIK, ‘football’ was invented in either England or Scotland. And out of ‘football’ was derived a number of sports, including good ‘ole American gridiron football (thank Walter Camp at Yale for devising the rules), as well as soccer aka Association Football, Gaelic Football, Australian Rules Football and I believe Rugby League and Rugby Union as well.
We could go on and on, Cricket or Team Handball anyone?
I suspect what Mistermix is noticing that the United States dominates world culture and therefore, sports that are popular in the United States tend to be popular throughout the world because what is on the teevee here tends to be on the teevee a lot of other places too.
cmorenc
FOOTBALL. The kind the rest of the world thinks of as “football”, i.e. SOCCER. The Brits invented it, the Brazilians perfected it. Also, the Brits invented cricket, another team sport. The Indians/Pakistanis perfected it. RUGBY. Another team sport; again, the Brits.
ALSO: the version of “football” most Americans think of as such? Is NOT a truly original game, but is an offshoot of rugby, which itself is one branch of the same ancestral game of the late 1800s that spawned soccer. The ancestral game played by schools and clubs in Britain in the 1860s through 1880s split into rugy vs soccer because some schools wanted to permit carrying the ball with the hands, some wanted it prohibited and only feet and body allowed.
I have no bloody clue how the Brits came up with cricket, but somehow I’ll bet John Cleese’s ancestors were involved somehow, because it seems like a game made up for a Monty Python skit.
brent
Didn’t Mark Cuban or some other self absorbed millionaire invent some form of basketball with trampolines a few years back. I don’t know if that counts as new exactly but there are probably lots of recent examples of “new” sports which are basically derivations of already existing sports. But then football was itself derived from rugby.
Hawes
Yeah, I think the idea is that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to team sports.
Over the Line Softball is kind of a team sport.
Ultimate Frisbee qualifies.
I guess you can’t call wheelchair versions of ambulatory sports “new” sports, and Ultimate is really just soccer/rugby/football with a frisbee.
I might go with adventure racing. Teams of four or five traveling hundreds of miles by various means.
J.W. Hamner
@Bondo:
That’s what I was thinking… embarrassing but seemingly popular on college campuses.
Ultimate Frisbee is a good one too. Though neither of these have professional manifestations.
Denton
If I were drunkenly conversing, I would throw out synchronized swimming. However I just soberly found out that the recorded competition was in 1891 according to wikipedia. Who knew?
I guess Martin Short and Harry Shearer warped my impression of the sport.
aimai
Buz Kashi?
aimai
Patrick
I think the term, “invented”, is too strong. Most sports have been around forever and have evolved into their present forms. Some evolve slowly, like soccer or baseball, others more rapid, like American Football. For example, NFL football only barely resembles NFL football from 50 years ago, and is nothing like the football played 100 years ago (no forward pass), which itself was more like rugby practice than rugby played 50 years before that.
Any new thinking is simply applied to the games already in place. Always has been. Aren’t they all just descended from cattle raids in ancient times? ;-)
aimai
@Denton:
I remember that skit. It still cracks me up.
aimai
beltane
When we’re all reduced to living in shanty towns without electricity and running water, we may experience something of a renaissance in the creation of new team sports. Live music and dancing will also make a comeback.
Michael D.
@mistermix:
Ahhhmmm, you did? Because why would you have to point it out? I mean obviously, horses and gibbons didn’t invent team sports. And I guess you could have been so drunk as to think barnyard animals could have, and that you should point out that they didn’t.
But if I had to guess, you really meant Americans, and you’re backtracking.
Americans didn’t invent hockey.
Americans didn’t invent basketball.
In fact, almost all team sports were NOT invented by Americans.
Or llamas.
EDIT: Ok, now I get the point. There are no more Team Sports left to invent. Ahh, ok. I apologize for the above. I should have realized you wouldn’t be that arrogant and, if you were, you probably wouldn’t have written it here. :-)
Counterexample. Hmmm, I play kickball in the summer. Is softball too close to baseball to count? Don’t know when that was invented.
Michael D.
I also expect there are new team sports being invented all the time in places where they would never get on the TV.
t
Muggle Quidditch
Larv
@Michael D.:
No, actually it’s pretty clear he means “we’ve run out of ideas for new team sports” rather than “americans invented all team sports”. That’s why the next sentence references the length of time since a major new team sport came about, and the word “America” or “USA” doesn’t appear anywhere in the post.
Paul MacDonald
MMA? Mixed Martial Arts? Newer than what? There has been a version of Mixed Martial Arts in all cultures and eras since recorded history. Even if you mean this current iteration of UFC stuff, the basis for that is from Japan.
Michael D.
@Larv: Which is why I edited my post about 10-12 minutes before you posted your response. :-)
arguingwithsignposts
Geez people, I caught the fact that he wasn’t referring to Americans on the first reading. Sometimes our dysfunctional political system warps reading comprehension, I think.
Keith
Does MTV Rock ‘n Jock Basketball count as a new sport?
water balloon
Reading these comments is interesting. I too thought he meant Americans when he said “we” after reading the first sentence of the post. Then I read the rest of the post and realized he was talking humanity in general. Initial visceral reactions are weird.
Shibby
Paintball
Omnes Omnibus
Beer pong.
Ross Hershberger
Well, motorsports are only as old as the automobile although I’ll bet an equestrian equivalent could be found for every type of motorized event.
Competitive cheerleading is pretty new. I’ve been working at a high school the last few months and get to see what they’re getting the kids involved in these days.
I wonder which is the oldest ‘sport’: track and field or debate. I’m guessing foot races, as bipedal motion could easily predate language.
joe from Lowell
It looks like some people are so hostile to pro-American boosterism that they’re imaging it and denouncing it where it doesn’t even exist.
Interesting blind spot, that.
If someone imagined, invented completely out of thin air, an anti-American slur in a piece of writing that contained absolutely no such implication, the people jumping down mistermix’s throat would be all up in arms. They would be aghast at the bias and desire to demonize on the part of the reader who made that mistake, and attribute it to his agenda and biases.
Well, the mirror image of that error – an error involving hypersensitivity based on one’s own biases – is all over this thread.
I think there’s a lesson here.
fucen tarmal
ok, i would agree with the basic thesis, individual sports have been the cooler way to go, from tiger, to tennis’ heydey, x-games, snowboarding, lots of the ethic that i win and lose for me, vs the team…
that has been a trend that has emerged ever since the greatest generation failed miserably at raising children…
but to expand on ross’ mention of motor sports, and i realize its only an american thing, and a still regional one at that, but nascar has evolved into much more of a team sport….
it used to be, 50-60 years ago, the mechanics did the work during the week and the drivers drove.
nowadays every position on the pit crews is designated with specific skills, requirements, and responsibilities…there is literally a left rear tire person, who’s job, training, skills etc are unique to the right rear tire guy…
other than that, the emphasis on team sports vs individual sports has been less the last couple of generations, there have been team sports that have given it a go, murderball, roller derby(not just a wwe style freak show anymore), but none have emerged to challenge for attention like mme or x-games..i think its a pendulum that swings back, we will see.
Todd
@t: This
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quidditch
jon
The basketball invented by that Canadian guy barely resembles the basketball of today. Football (American) isn’t like rugby at all, even if it’s derived from that. And baseball is pretty damn U.S.A.-merican.
As for new team sports, there are a lot of minor sports that may or may not take off here. But looking at things like MMA tells me that the possibility is there for something to take off if given sponsors, a network in need of programming, and some compelling action. I’d watch something called Team Parkour, where players compete to get across obstacles in races or with different points for getting to different places on the course. Team handball could work: small teams, lots of scoring, not too much equipment, and it already has a following in Europe. There’s a lot of stuff out there that can become a sport.
In a country where people make fantasy football teams and look at every stat possible to find the right guys to fit some formula that gets the most points, there’s plenty of energy that can go to a new sport to watch. At least NASCAR has crashes now and then.
PaulW
I think the argument should focus on “what team sports have been invented recently?” Considering that nearly every team sport we know – baseball, football, soccer, hockey, rugby, and their variants – have all been invented more than a century ago.
The problems are:
1) there are few variations of any organized sport. There’s a ball or object of attention. Players have to play either offense or defense regarding that object. There is a means of placing that object somewhere in some fashion that would create a score. The most points win. That’s about it. Every team sport fits those parameters.
2) The overwhelming popularity of the existing team sports formats prevent newer possible sports with different and confusing rules to achieve shared public interest.
3) The only things that have changed have been the means in which fans can participate. Fantasy leagues. Online video games that allow coaching/playing decisions. These have been recent developments but all they do is perpetuate the fandom of existing sports.
Ross Hershberger
The popularity of any sport has more to do with whether TV can make money on it than anything else. Basketball is the ideal TV sport. Soccer has problems in this regard. Football is pretty good but still more difficult to cover than basketball. If it wasn’t for TV’s ability to make money off of them pro sports would look completely different and might not exist at all.
I think you could make small changes to the rules of any sport, altering the speed of play or number of breaks in the action, and drastically change its ‘popularity’ due to the suitability to telecasting.
Aaron S. Veenstra
Yogaball — made in the USA, enjoyed by a veritable small international conference of nationalities.
LT
@Brandon: Arg. Lacrosse was not invented by a Canadian, it was played by Indians from the
American Southeast to the Great Lakes region way before Europeans got here. It has changed, of course, but…
LT
Hmmmm, Interesting. “We’ve invented all the team sports possible. Don’t believe me? Go ahead, name one that hasn’t been!”
Um…
brent
The popularity of any sport has more to do with whether TV can make money on it than anything else. Basketball is the ideal TV sport. Soccer has problems in this regard. Football is pretty good but still more difficult to cover than basketball.
Not sure what you mean here. The television contracts for both Soccer and Football dwarf those of basketball leagues. If one measures popularity globally, soccer is far more popular than any other sort period but, in any case, multiple times more popular than basketball. If one measures by the U.S. standard, football is also significantly more popular than basketball by any measure and certainly at the professional level.
Basketball happens to be my favorite sport but I think you have it backwards.
Dave Ruddell
I’ll chime in for ultimate as well; only invented in the last 40 years or so, and played enough that most folks know one person who plays, or have at least heard of it. Contrast, with say, pesäpallo (which I realize itself is highly derivative).
LT
Everything’s derivative of that stick and balll game they played in Uruk 5,000 years ago.
Andy K
@LT:
Everything? Capture the Flag?
ChrisZ
I can’t believe that so many people not only failed to understand mix’s post, but also thought that he was so incredibly ignorant about the history of team sports that he honestly thought that Americans had invented all of them. I promise you, mistermix, that some of us do have a little respect for you.
I would like to see a team sport with more than one ball (or th equivalent) that didn’t suck (like quidditch). Imagine soccer with two differently colored balls, where one ball is worth two goal and the other just one. Also, why has capture the flag never developed into something? I loved that game as a kid.
Viva BrisVegas
Perhaps another way of looking at it is that enough team sports have been invented. We don’t need any more.
Except Rollerball of course.
Andy K
@ChrisZ:
Isn’t there a paintball variant?
ChrisZ
@ Andy K (wtb mobile friendly reply button)
There may be paintball CTF, but Is paintball a sport with any traction? I’m not saying that no one likes it, but I don’t think paintball is watchable as a sport.
LT
@Andy K: In capture the flag – the ball is implied. Like in lesbianism.
@ChrisZ: People probably wouldn’t have misinterpreted the post if the premise wasn’t as, uh, weird? “Name one bit of technology that won’t be invented until 2150! I dare ya!” I mean, wtf?
Germane Jackson
@LT:
Since you’ve made the same point twice, it’s patently obvious that he’s saying there hasn’t been a new major sport invented in forever, not that it’s impossible to invent a new one. Saying “We’ve invented them all” is a humorous (by way of overstatement) way of saying, “There haven’t been any new sports created in a long time.”
Whether that statement is actually correct is another story, but the level of hair-trigger obtuseness in this thread is really astonishing.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Patrick
Bingo for Patrick.
It’s not actually that they’ve all been invented and it’s over, more that each one of them developed into what they are over a long period of time.
I think “invented” is the word that throws this off, you’re looking at one stretch of time and saying that you can’t see anything new sort of popping suddenly into being, but then, in any given limited stretch of time you wouldn’t.
In other words, it’s pretty much the same answer as the one to everyone’s favorite witch: You can’t see them evolve in real time ;)
Well actually you can, but just like with biology, unless you’re a specialist, and looking really really closely, you won’t notice.
TruthOfAngels
Shut up, Commie. I invented ‘biting people’ just last week.
I admit the judge wasn’t very complimentary, but the food’s free in here. Win!
microtherion
Segway Polo, though I don’t think there are professional leagues.
Slamball (mentioned above), was played professionally for a short time.
I was also going to nominate Cycle ball, but it turns out that’s a 19th century invention as well.
Thunderlizard
Dodgeball
Laser tag
Paintball
And there are plenty more to invent that we just haven’t invented yet.
scav
We could bring back that Aztec / Mesoamerican ball game they played where they’d bounce rubber balls off their hips and supposedly slaughter the losers at the end. Late Breaking Development! Humans have invented everything there is to be invented up to this date! Motto equally valid at all times so buy the needlework pillow and display it proudly!
justawriter
Ranch rodeo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Ranch_Cowboys_Association
plus Bob Newhart explains why baseball will never catch on
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLW37s1IQPw
James E. Powell
I understood “we” to be “the people,” but I am not sure who else would invent games if it were not “the people,” or at least a few of them. So, I don’t get the point.
Calming Influence
Beach Thunderdome.
“Four men enter, two men leave!”
Svlad Jelly
BASEketball
Bill E Pilgrim
@James E. Powell:
“we’ve (already) invented them all” is how I read it. As a sort of lighthearted comment on innovation, or lack of it, as I took it.
“The End of History” for sports fans, as it were :)
Mistermix: I would guess that rarely before has a drunken conversation turned into a three-sentence post been so parsed and analyzed, but that’s the aluminum siding business for you ;)
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“I suspect what Mistermix is noticing that the United States dominates world culture and therefore, sports that are popular in the United States tend to be popular throughout the world because what is on the teevee here tends to be on the teevee a lot of other places”
Baseball and American football are not international sports like Cricket, Rugby or Soccer or even Ice Hockey.
FlipYrWhig
If sports evolution is real, how come we don’t see new sports still being invented, huh?
cdmarine
Roller Derby. Yes, it’s a real sport, and yes it’s awesome. A lot of people have this perception of it as something faked, like professional wrestling. Don’t let the crazy outfits and funny names fool you. It’s a real sport. There have been EMT’s standing by at every match I’ve ever seen. If you have a league nearby, I highly recommend checking it out. It’s a blast.
lightning
43-man squamish?
Fwiffo
Ultimate Frisbee is pretty new.
Fax Paladin
@LT: Actually, if you go back and look, there was a time limit specified: Since the creation of basketball a century ago.
kent
Starcraft.
Halo.
Etc.
oh, you wanted a “sport” in the sense of “requires exertion”? Well, exempt golf and bowling then. But … how about paintball?
kent
Prediction: there will be more games like paintball/laser tag and they will become more popular over time.
JR
FLIPPYCUP.
Q.E.D.
Tristan Heydt
Rollerderby is newer than basketball, and has play that isn’t derivative of rugby/football/soccer or baseball/kickball.
Gwiwer
I’d hate to rain on the parade of all of the people who are claiming baseball is uniquely American, but it’s most certainly not. It’s descended directly from rounders which was a sport popular in Britain and Ireland in the 1800’s and early 1900’s. In fact, the rules for rounders as it’s played in Ireland today are so close to that of modern baseball that you could definitely claim that they still remain local variants of a single sport, and the modern Irish rules were formalized in 1884 so no one is going to be able to claim that modern baseball could have had any influence on the Irish variant.
Remember November
Yeah what do you mean by “we”?
If you mean Americans-
Cricket? no
Soccer? no
Rugby? no
Lacrosse? no – we ripped that from the Indians -adopted, yes invented , no..
Hockey? No them soshulists in Canada done that.
rea
Americans, however, invented Calvinball, and even to this day its foremost pratitioners are US Republcian politicians.
bad dad
@lightning: Name dropping 45 year old classic Mad Magazine articles? Yep, that’s our demographic here.
Sasha
Jugger.
john b
arena football?
volleyball is only slightly over 100 years old
dodgeball
capture the flag
kickball
softball
water polo
but i’d say the strongest example is auto racing of any sort.
Barney
Just to quash the “baseball is American” claim forever: the earliest reference to baseball is in a Jane Austen novel:
So, yes, it’s an English girls’ game.