ABSTRACT

Social scientists have recently shown that the American sports landscape is unique among the world's sporting cultures. This understanding is an expansion of a general idea, known as American exceptionalism, which has been documented in other areas (for example, economics, politics and public and foreign policy). It can be understood broadly as ‘the notion that the United States was created differently, developed differently, and thus has to be understood differently – essentially on its own terms and within its own context'. [1]  It is this general conception that the US was created differently, has developed differently and thus must be understood differently – especially from the rest of the industrialized world – that has been applied to the American sporting landscape. To illustrate the point: the United States is the only industrialized nation that has not embraced soccer [2]  as a dominant element of its sporting ethos. Instead, the sporting scene is dominated by American football, baseball and basketball, and has been for some time. Existing literature dealing with American exceptionalism in sport has made convincing arguments about this rather peculiar historical development. Markovits and Hellerman [3]  explain American exceptionalism in sport in terms of a path-dependence model, which makes claims that the current state of the American sporting landscape was set on its path in the late nineteenth century. Once on this path, change grew increasingly difficult, culminating in a quite stable state today. Over time, they claim, the space became ‘frozen', with change now nearly impossible.