To start off, I would like to invoke the time-honored tradition of making a broad generalization. In America there are two types of people: cool people who like sports and lame-o’s who do not. These two types of people do not mix much, with the cool kids cheering their teams to athletic glory and the lame-o’s sitting at home in crushing loneliness.
However, this great gulf is bridged semi-annually when the Olympics become the preeminent pop culture topic for two fleeting weeks. The Olympics are unique in terms of their ability to get all Americans talking about something as potentially polarizing as a sportgasm. It must be the combination of riveting human interest stories and competition in glorified bar games such as curling that gives the games something for people of all sports persuasions.
Every Olympics incarnation has its stories that captivate the nation. The story of the 2010 Olympics was Team USA’s upset over Canada and march to Sunday’s gold medal game in men’s hockey. People like rolling with winners, so the pop culture aspect of Team USA’s appeal makes sense, but at the same time it is still hockey: a sport that in the United States is suffering beneath the presence of the epic international juggernauts of baseball, basketball and football.
As reactions to the victory over Team Canada show, hockey has some inexplicable subconscious appeal to Americans that boils to the surface every blue moon. This begs the question, why does America generally treat hockey like the red-headed stepchild of sports, but then get insanely excited about it once approximately every 7.5 years?
Every cultural entity has its dedicated followers, even this column (thanks mom!). Anyone who has seen a Badger hockey game knows die-hard hockey fans are a breed apart of their own. They love hockey for its graceful speed and tactful violence, its reliance on teamwork and for the opportunity to repeatedly yell the word “suck” in a public setting. However, the loyalty of dedicated fans alone does not help a sport get national attention.
One way to explain hockey’s place in the American psyche is the movie test. Everyone has a movie test — you know, if a person does not like a particular movie, they are considered an epic failure. If the question “Name a sports flick from your childhood” was posed in a Family Feud “We asked 100 people…” fashion, I venture the totals would be about 70 for “The Mighty Ducks,” 15 for “The Sandlot” and 10 for the slew of “Air Bud” movies. Growing up, every kid was all about the Flying V, the Knucklepuck and the awesomeness of Emilio Estevez’s acting.
From a sports standpoint, the game of hockey also provides the most epic “chill moment” (thanks, Bill Simmons) in American sports history. In the 1980 Olympics, during the height of the Cold War, an unproven American hockey team pulled off a monumental upset over the professional Soviet Union juggernaut in what is known as “The Miracle on Ice.” Many folks still remember where they were as Al Michaels exclaimed, “Do you believe in Miracles? Yessssss!” as the U.S. defeated the Soviets in Lake Placid, and the story made for successful sports flick fodder nearly 30 years later.
I am totally convinced already, but hockey’s biggest appeal for Americans is that it provides an outlet for the nation’s bizarre inferiority complex. To get amped up for big games, athletes love invoking the “us against the world” schtick. Despite U.S. domination of the world for the past 60+ years, the American psyche is still fond of feeling like an underdog, especially during the Olympics medal rush. The only problem with this inferiority complex is that in sports, economics and geopolitical affairs, Americans are expected to win, so invoking the “us against the world” ruse is kind of an epic fraud.
Hockey, however, is possibly the one major sport in which the American team is an underdog every time it plays. There is soccer, but soccer is an annoying European sport that we never win at, whereas hockey is much more in tune with the American ideals of strength and ruggedness. Thus, Team USA hockey gives the nation the perfect opportunity to play the underdog and enjoy the sweet taste of victory over a heavily favored opponent. Think of it as an opiate for the insecure American masses.
Who knows if hockey will ever regain its old place in American culture, when women used to swoon over Wayne Gretzky’s flowing mane of blond hair and men lustfully wished for Mario Lemieux’s powerful slapshot. Either way, it is clear the game has a special subconscious appeal to American people,invoked during such momentous occasions as the cinematic release of “The Mighty Ducks” and the Badgers’ eminent Frozen Four run.
Zachary Schuster ([email protected]) is a graduate student studying Water Resources Engineering and Water Resource Management.
