After winning the 55th edition of the National Football League's annual Superbowl, Tampa Bay Buccaneers' Devin White took to Twitter in suggesting his team were now 'World Champions!!' in American Football, despite not playing a game outside of the United States. Why? White is a product of American-centrism within sports, and he's not alone.
A CBS news outlet suggests the Buccs being 'world champs' is 'facts only'. Well, that can be disputed.
There's no better way to illustrate this theme than by the recent resurfacing of sports analyst Colin Cowherd's 'Top 10 Famous Athletes' rankings. And I know he's probably doing the typical American analyst tactic of being outlandish just to gain views, but I'm gonna bite. I can't help it. The 'top 10' is as follows:
Colin Cowherd made a 'Top 10 Athletes' rankins during an episode of his show 'The Herd', posted to Twitter on 25 May 2018.
Now, seven of the ten athletes featured in these rankings are American. And if you didn't realise, thats a problem. Now, I'm going to say right off the bat that I can see why there are two NBA players in this list. Basketball's reach in East Asia, especially China, is unrivalled. Stars like LeBron James have almost become a brand unto themselves. Yet, Colin Cowherd's rankings show a level of ignorance to the world's most popular sport: football, or 'soccer'. Simply because it is not amongst the most reconised sports in the United States, Cowherd only includes Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo in his top 10; two unavoidables. But by looking at Instagram followers as a visual approximation of fame, his rankings are uncovered as flawed.
Cowherd's most famous athlete is Tom Brady: seven Super Bowl wins, five Super Bowl MVPs and the most recognisable NFL star ever. Brady's instagram following? 9.1 million. Damn that's a lot...isn't it? Well, if you consider football stars' Neymar Jr. (146M), James Rodriguez (47M) and Mohammed Salah (42M) and their following, then no, not really. If we were making our list accurately, there's no way that only two footballers make the cut, especially with the popularity and worldwide following that football garners. Just because football is not in your country's top 3 sports, doesn't mean it is not famous Mr Cowherd.
PSG and Brazil star Neymar Jr. has the 14th most followed account on Instagram. Screenshot taken 11 February 2021.
"But Serena Williams only has 12.8 million followers on Instagram! Why's she on this list??" I hear you cry. Well, clearly I'm aware that checking the follower count of sports stars may not be the most accurate way of deciding fame, but rather a signpost. Actually, I have no problem with Serena being on this list. For starters, Serena is perhaps the most famous female figure in sport over the last 20 years, and provides a role model for women entering the sporting realm across the world; not least due to her having a child through her sporting dominance. But more importantly, she plays tennis.
Tennis is about as diverse as it gets. Not only is it worldwide with tournaments across the globe, but its personnel are also not confined to one continent, let alone a country. Yes, I'm looking at you NFL. Of the top 10 ranked players in the women's and men's game, only two countries are represented more than once across the 20 stars (with Russia and the Czech Republic having two each). With players from Canada to Spain, and Ukraine to Japan, thats diversity if I've ever heard of it. So yeah, Serena deserves a place; but because she plays across the world, not because she's American. Serena has been world champion on the international stage...we'll get onto that later.
Now, perhaps the biggest problem I have with these rankings is the complete exclusion of cricket, the world's second most played sport. It's absence in Cowherd's list can only be put down to his lack of interest in including sports that aren't popular in the United States, or indeed that he likes. Cricket is by far the most played sport in South Asia, a part of the world that is called 'home' by almost 2 billion people; nearly 1.3 billion of them live in India alone. It's cricket stars, Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni, are idealised by a part of the world that hold cricket as a religion, not just a game.
Majendra Singh (MS) Dhoni (L) and Virat Kohli (R) share an on-pitch laugh during a World Cup match in 2019. Kohli's birthday wish to Dhoni during this year was the most retweeted sports tweet in 2019. Photo from an ndtv.com article, originally tweeted by Cricket World Cup.
Another reason for cricket's increased outreach is its more orthodox structure. It has domestic competitions, like the Indian Premier League and the Australian Big Bash League, whilst also holding more important international test matches alongside the T20 and ODI World Cups. This global outreach means the sport, and thus its stars, can be seen live around the world when playing for their international sides. So the likes of Virat Kholi, who incidentally has close to 100 million Instagram followers, have a chance to increase their fame in front of a global audience.
This can't be said for the NFL or NBA, which is the only place to watch elite American Football and basketball stars, other than perhaps the Olympics in the case of the latter. In fact, the NFL has around 3% (from 2017) of its players born outside of the US, with even fewer claiming foreign citizenship. The absence of foreign athletes in the NFL, and professional American Football across the globe, means that sports fans are unlikely to follow a game that their own country seldom play.
A screenshot of the most recent impartial ESPN World Fame 100 (2019), which plots the most recognised sports stars. There are 8 Indian cricketers in the top 100, with 4 of those in the top 22. Incidentally, Tom Brady falls to 31 on this list, with no other American Football player in the top 50. To read this list, go to http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/26113613/espn-world-fame-100-2019
Cricket's worldwide following allows its stars to garner much more fame than those in the NFL. Kohli is known in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Bangladesh, India and so many more countries because he has applied his trade in front of those audiences, Brady has not. The Super Bowl, the biggest NFL game of the year, drew an audience of 96.4million across the world. And just the opening game of the 2020 domestic IPL season between the Chennai Super Kings and the Mumbai Indians? 200 million. Talk to me again about 'fame'. If he had done his homework, Cowherd would have at least one cricket star in his rankings instead of lazily plucking names that he knew. But because of his American-centric view on sports, he hasn't bothered.
Football, cricket and tennis stars have the ability to become genuine 'world champions', not just self-titled ones. Yes I am referring to the title of this article, and a Tampa Bay Buccanneers player's assertion that he became a 'world champion' upon winning the Super Bowl last Sunday. Now, I know Devin White is not alone in this, and nor is his sport: the NBA also falls victim to this example of American bias. But, seeing as this article as become a slight rant surrounding the NFL, then we might as well stay on that track.
Devin White claims to be a 'World Champion' via his twitter account after the Buccaneers win, 8 February 2021.
Put simply, you cannot be genuine 'world champions' without facing a single team out of your country. Seems competent, right? Every other sport in the world can do it. The Football, Cricket and Rugby World Cup's all require a round of qualifying, followed by a group stage, and then knockout rounds to determine the true 'world champion'. Even in football's largest continental competition, the Champions League, the winner is deemed the 'champions of Europe' rather than the world. To hold the title of 'world champions', Liverpool had to beat the winners of each continent's domestic competition in the Club World Cup, thus directly or indirectly facing the world's best.
But American sports? This rulebook is thrown well out of the window. Alongside the player's own assertions, the Tampa Bay Times brandished the Buccaneers 'world champions' in its headline, and CBS Sports opened its match review article with a Rocky-like comeback story ending with, 'now they are world champions'. Super Bowl champions, yes. But to be brandished as 'world champions', having only played teams in the American NFL, is yet another sign of America's bias, and indeed ignorance, around its own sports. Yes, the Buccs would have probably beaten the London Blitz, but we won't know until they do! Interestingly, the one outlet I could find that did not call them by this absurd title? BBC Sport's Ben Collins, as he simply calls it the 'biggest game in US Sport'. Thus, 'US Sport' not a worldwide competition.
Buccaneers Devin White holds up an iPad with the word's 'world champs' displayed. 8 February 2021.
And I think that's what this comes down to. Just because the NFL is the biggest sport in the United States, does not mean it is the biggest in the world. There are more popular sports and sportstars around the world, and American analysts and fans need to realise it.
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