News & Trends
Afganis call it "the donkey's game" and laugh at it because the ball is shaped like a fruit called kharboozah. Nonetheless, the Super Bowl has become a worldwide event: 800 million people in 147 countries watched last year's game, 85 percent of them outside the U.S. Why so much global interest in what one New Zealander dismisses as "big padded men crashing into other big padded men"?
When PT posed this question overseas via the Internet, we found that foreign viewers cared more about the surrounding hoopla than about the sport itself. "All of American culture is summed up in three hours," wrote Londoner Allstair Jeffs. "People in developing countries are fascinated by the technology used in the telecast," added Jai Maharaj from India. As for the actual game, most respondents disliked what one Belgian dubbed its interruptions continues, preferring the non-stop action of soccer.
Why is the staccato pace of football more acceptable to Americans? Perhaps because it jibes with our sense of time, suggests Robert Levine, Ph.D., a psychologist at California State University, Fresno. "Soccer games [slowly] build to a crescendo and finally the goal comes," says Levine. "There is something primal about this rhythm; countries that appreciate soccer value it. In America, we need constant stimulation and change."
