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Jacksonville, Florida – August, 2006 Some visuals in sports are forever etched in our memory banks. Generations will pass, yet no delete button can erase them. Jesse Owens breaking the tape in front of a disgruntled Hitler. Bobby Thomson's shot heard "round the world." Joe Montana to Dwight Clark. Hank Aaron circling the bases tailed by two young fans after home run No. 715. Tiger Woods' final putt to wrap up his first Masters victory. A jump shot leaving Michael Jordan's hand that won his last NBA title. These images remind us why we invest time to watch sports in the first place. Fans want to be entertained, riveted, allured, and moved. Preferably, all in one amazing sequence. For Americans, that package is most beautiful when wrapped in red, white and blue. You can question whether patriotism in this country is as strong as in your grandfather's time, but there's no denying that we still crave sports heroes who are made in the USA. Just consider what now holds our attention in sports' changing landscape. Football has long supplanted baseball as our national pastime, as least for television. The NFL is America's ratings monster, devouring all competition in its path from September through beyond the holidays.  Interest in hockey reached record highs in the U.S. following the "Miracle on Ice" Gold Medal victory at Lake Placid in 1980. Television viewership for the Super Bowl hovers around 90 million, which is now more than the total eyeballs watching five World Series games or, in some instances, an entire NBA Finals series in the post-Jordan era. Why is football the undisputed king? The game's violent nature, NFL marketing and John Madden's video games reeling in young audiences are notable factors. Here's another reason for its popularity that is seldom mentioned: Football is as American as John Wayne, apple pie and reality TV. Virtually every NFL player is American-born and raised in a college football system that has been heavily marketed to U.S. audiences on fall Saturdays. The Peyton Mannings and Reggie Bushes enter the pro ranks with more exposure than a Pam Anderson video. The only other major sport as USA-made as football is NASCAR, and look at the inroads that a once for-Southern-eyes-only entity has made with the American public. The popularity of Nextel Cup racing, especially as it pertains to television sets tuning in, has exploded in the last decade. It's no secret that Major League Baseball and the NBA are far more dependent on foreign players. Those sports are flourishing internationally in places like Latin America, Europe, Japan and China. But nothing makes Americans embrace sports more than our own Yankees, and not just Derek Jeter, soaring to the top. Are tennis' TV ratings spiking now? Certainly not as much as when sisters Venus and Serena Williams ruled the courts. With forceful personalities Jimbo or Johnny Mac gone, and Andre Agassi soon fading away, prospects aren't good for them to trend upwards. No matter how splendid the artistry of Switzerland's Roger Federer or Spain's Rafael Nadal, tennis will continue to spiral downward within our borders until Americans reclaim the throne. That's not going to happen when a Wimbledon passes by without one Yank in either the men's or women's quarterfinals. Any sport or event that's going to make it in the United States demands a magnetic personality with an American pedigree. Could Tiger Woods spike our television ratings by roughly 20-30 percent if he were a native of France? Wasn't boxing relevant in this country when Mike Tyson was at the top of his game instead of biting opponent's ears and generally flying over the cuckoo's nest? Think about America's most memorable soccer moment. Pele playing for the New York Cosmos? No, it's Brandi Chastain displaying her sports bra after the U.S. game-clinching penalty kick against China in the 1999 Women's World Cup. During that same year, America showed for the first time some genuine love for golf's Ryder Cup. That's because the U.S. team rallied from a 10-6 deficit on the last day to win by one point. The lightning-rod moment was Justin Leonard's long birdie putt that sent the American team and gallery into a frenzy. It's no wonder the Ryder Cup drew a 6.3 television rating that day, easily the highest in its history. We need red-white-and-blue story lines to get interested. Hockey has virtually disappeared from the American radar, but it wasn't that way at Lake Placid in 1980. The stars aligned perfectly for what is still considered the biggest fairy tale in U.S. sports history. At the Winter Olympics, an underdog American hockey team drew scant attention until they knocked off the overwhelmingly favored Soviet Union 4-3, en route to winning the Gold Medal. At the height of the Cold War, with America subdued by the Iran hostage crisis and a soaring inflation rate, a bunch of college kids rallied out of nowhere to create the "Miracle On Ice." To this day, we remember where we were – even though most of America saw the game on tape-delay – when on our TVs Mike Eruzione scored the game-winning goal. Who doesn't remember two days later when U.S. goaltender Jim Craig, draped in the American flag, skated around the ice after the Gold-Medal victory over Finland in search of his father? Nothing in sports is quite as chilling as listening to passionate chants of "USA! USA! USA!" We can't help it. In sports, as in music, what we really cherish is an American idol. Gene Frenette is a sports columnist at the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville.
He has won numerous writing awards and been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
You can contact him at
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