French Open 2014: Do American fans care about foreign players?
By Phil Daniels
Consumers like to give ESPN flak about their seemingly unnecessary coverage of athletes like Tim Tebow, Johnny Manziel, and LeBron James. Article readers will often complain in the Comments sections about the sheer amount of stories centering on these specific athletes. And radio listeners will sometimes even call into shows to voice their displeasure about the types of stories being covered. The lowest common denominator? These individuals desire variety. But are they in the majority?
Contrary to what may or may not be a popular belief, mainstream media entities are generally composed of savvy business minds who know what their audiences want.
The History Channel devolved into a Reddit punchline for not actually airing history programming, but the unfortunate reality is that the History Channel audience base enjoyed fictionalized reality television more than retelling of past events.
Similarly, virtually every comedian working today has taken a pot shot at CNN for the network’s obsession with the missing plane—Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. While a 24-hour network purportedly tasked with telling the news choosing to devote a majority of programming to a non-story is archetypal joke fodder, it should go without saying that CNN viewers care about that aircraft.
To be fair, perhaps such a realization makes sense—the far right watches Fox News, the far left watches MSNBC, and people stuck in airports on layovers watch CNN.
Much like the History Channel with its reality TV and CNN with its aviation and avionics obsession, ESPN has figured out what its core consumers desire. Rather than formally codify the demonstrated interests of the American sports fan, I can tell you what US sports fans seemingly do not care about: tennis.
As of 10:54PM EST on Wednesday, June 4, the click bait headlines on ESPN Dot Com’s main page were the following:
- Sources: Kaepernick gets $110M
- Legendary baseball figure Zimmer dies at 83
- Kings prevail in OT in Cup opener
- Lawyer: D. Sterling green-lights Clips sale
- LeBron: Heat ‘slighted’ when title called lucky
- Mattingly blames Dodgers’ lack of cohesion
- Get the ‘L’ out: NFL goes with Super Bowl 50
- Klinsmann rips Kobe deal, catering to stars
- Source: Price fined for incident vs. Red Sox
- Newton on ‘Madden’ cover? Rivera votes no
- Law: MLB mock draft 3.0
Three stories about the NFL, four stories about MLB, one story about the NHL, two stories about the NBA, and a piece about USA Soccer head coach Jurgen Klinsmann attacking the concept of rewarding past performance—which is a bit odd seeing as how the only reason Klinsmann was hired to manage the USA mens soccer team in 2011 was because of his past performances as a manager of Bayern Munich all the way back in 2008-2009. But I digress.
The apparent hypocrisy of Jurgen Klinsmann is not important; what is important is that one of the four major tennis championships is entering its Semifinals and American fans do not seem to care about it. Why is that?
Here are the names and countries of origin of the female and male quarterfinalists of the 2014 French Open at Roland Garros:
Women
- Garbine Muguruza, French and Venezuelan
- Maria Sharapova, Russian
- Carla Suarez Navarro, Spanish
- Eugenie Bouchard, Canadian
- Svetlana Kuznetsova, Russian
- Simona Halep, Romanian
- Sara Errani, Italian
- Andrea Petkovic, German
Men
- Rafael Nadal, Spanish
- David Ferrer, Spanish
- Gael Monfils, French
- Andy Murray, Scottish
- Tomas Berdych, Czech
- Ernests Gulbis, Latvian
- Milos Raonic, Canadian
- Novak Djokovic, Serbian
An impressive list of accomplished professional athletes familiar to tennis wonks? Absolutely! But the proverbial elephant in the room? Not a single American man or woman in the quarters of Roland Garros. It shouldn’t take a world-renowned cultural anthropologist like the late Margaret Mead to tell us that this is why Americans do not care as much about tennis as they used to.
One thing needs to be made abundantly clear: Americans are not racist for largely refusing to embrace a sport now mostly dominated by men and women from foreign countries.
Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race—especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races. Such a belief is presumably not taking place with regard to American tennis viewing tendencies. Instead, ethnocentrism is likely to blame.
Ethnocentrism can be defined as the belief in the inherent superiority of one’s own ethnic group or culture. Despite certain exceptions, such a belief is prevalent and perhaps even permanently engrained in the very fabric of American sports culture.
Consider American NBA crowds at Toronto Raptors away games—fans who appear to gleefully take joy in chanting “USA” throughout the game. Or what about American distance runner Meb Keflezighi, who in 2014 became the first American man to win the Boston Marathon since 1983—Meb was accused of being “not a true American” due to his Eritrean birth by a myriad of commenters after his victory.
And how about American born athletes such as Becky Hammon, Chris Kaman, and Giuseppe Rossi—who each faced harsh criticism for choosing to compete internationally for the Russian national team, the German national team, and the Italian national team respectively.
American sports fans are a patriotic lot, so much so that the nationality of an athlete is oftentimes more important than the quality of an athlete. If LeBron James was Nigerian, would he still be championed as he is today? I think not. Consequently, if Rafa Nadal was a second generation American from Boca Raton, Florida, would more Americans be tuned in to the French Open this weekend? Undoubtedly yes.
Whether it is right or wrong, the easiest way for American fans to become interested in tennisis for American athletes to begin thriving again in the sport. Long past are the days of Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, and Jennifer Capriati. Moderately popular American players who were tasked with bridging the gap like Andy Roddick and James Blake are also either gone or on their way out.
The Williams sisters are aging, John Isner is arguably too one-dimensional to ever win a major, and Sloane Stephens may fall victim to playing in an era with just too much rival international talent. Will a new group of American tennis stars poised to carry the symbolic reins of professional tennis popularity please stand up?
Two of the best male tennis players of all time—a feisty Spanish heart-throb and a certain tall, dark, and handsome mercurial Serb—could very well put on a French Open final for the ages this weekend, while on the women’s side Eugenie Bouchard and Simona Halep—two incredibly exciting and undeniably gorgeous rising stars—could continue a rivalry that might easily span the next decade.
Too bad most American sports fans will be too busy engrossed in an NBA finals featuring American players like Dwyane, Chris, Ray, and LeBron.
Oh yeah, and a French guy with a name even Francophobes could love, Tony Parker!