Giants 13, Dolphins 10. Wow. The British were treated to a feast this past Sunday in the first regular season NFL game ever played in Europe. Good thing there aren’t that many fans across the pond, or we may have lost them with that debacle. Aside from that particular game, though, the NFL is a great league and American football is an extremely exciting sport. We love it here in the USA! To Americans it’s numero uno, even though it’s…well, it’s barely on the charts anywhere else…which apparently is a fact that needs to be dealt with. Therefore, like missionaries, we are dealing with it by taking the message of American football to the world. The question, though, is why? Is that really what others countries need or want, and are we (the core supporters) getting sold out in the process? Personally, I kinda like having things that are distinctly American; it makes things seem more special. However, the powers that be appear to be convinced that we need to internationalize everything…and I mean everything from basketball, to football, to Superman (who used to stand for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but now stands for Truth, Justice, and all that other stuff), and from what I understand, to even G.I. Joe. (There is a movie in the works for G.I. Joe who won’t be dubbed the True American Hero, but rather the True International Hero, as he is part of an International Task Force based in Brussels. AN INTERNATIONAL TASK FORCE BASED IN BRUSSELS! Why don’t they just publicly castrate him! They could save themselves the time and energy of shooting the film while getting across the same message. Ridiculous.) Here’s the point: everything that is or was once sacredly American is now being globalized, watered down, and marketed to the world. Now, hedging off of that point, there are three additional points I want to make.

#1. Why this is happening.
#2. One quick subplot/nuance as to why it’s happening.
#3. The seemingly disregarded potentially negative backlash of the globalization of everything American…particularly sports.

Here we go:

#1. Why is there a push to internationalize or globalize (however you want to phrase it) everything that used to simply be an American thing? Ummm, Money? Could that be it? Yeah, I think so. It makes the world go round doesn’t it? The fact is that the world is a much smaller place than it used to be, and those in charge see the rest of the globe as a huge untapped market with dollar signs everywhere. Period.

#2. There is an underlining reason for some of the watering down of that which is uniquely American too. This, however, doesn’t apply to everything. In fact, it doesn’t really apply to sports at all, but I thought it warranted mentioning since I have briefly brought up some non-sports related examples earlier. The reason some things (like Superman and G.I. Joe) are watered down is because those watering them down simply don’t like that which is American. Hollywood liberals for example, as much as they would like you to believe otherwise, are anti-American. They root against our troops, slander our heritage, and pander to the anti-American crowd overseas (all while enjoying the lifestyle that can only be offered by America…but I digress). That being said…

#3. Here’s the extremely large potential downside of internationalizing all things American, specifically sports. Alienating the base. What do I mean? What I mean, simply, is that when you pander to those other than who got you to where you are, you risk losing them in exchange for people who aren’t even convinced that they like your product yet. Ever heard of dancing with the one who brought ya? Or kissing the one you’re with? Here are a few examples of what happens when you don’t do those things and bite the hand that feeds ya. (Three cheesy quotes in three sentences…do I get something for that? A cookie maybe?)

a. Many Republican politicians, for fear of hurting the feelings of Hispanics (roughly 7% of the electorate in 2006), continued to support an illegal immigration stance that was vehemently opposed by upwards of 70-80% of the rest of Republican voters. The result was that they infuriated their base, and therefore, they got thrown out of office.

b. The NHL, in an attempt to reach out to a broader audience, rapidly expanded the league in the 90′s. They added many expansion teams, many in the South, and in turn destroyed their core Northern audience by both moving teams away from them and dumbing down the level of play by adding too many expansion teams.

In many ways, shapes, or forms this kind of thing happens all the time. America has to hear only Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas in many stores during Christmas time even though about 95% of Americans celebrate Christmas. Kids can’t pray in school, even though well over 90% of Americans believe in God. California schools now can’t used the terms “mom” and “dad” so as not to offend the small, small group of gays and lesbians that don’t like it. All this to say, when you pander to a small minority of people and ignore those whose support you already have, often times what happens is while you may gain some new, additional support of people in a different demographic, you lose the massive amounts of support from the core group of people that make up your largest audience. By not saying “Merry Christmas” two years ago, Target faced thousands and thousands of complaints and boycotts and eventually had to change their marketing campaign, and by continuing to enact legislation that criminalizes prayer in schools and anti-family legislation like the one afore mentioned in California, public schools have lost many of their brightest, most well-behaved students to Christian schools and home schooling.

So now we have the NFL, (and the NBA too for that matter) who is taking very proactive measures to internationalize the game. They are talking about playing more games overseas, potentially adding teams over there, and even playing the Super Bowl in Europe. Look, more fans is better than less fans…I get it, but if you ask me, if you get to the point where you actually play the Super Bowl in Europe, you might as well just move the whole league there because your core supporters, the American people, very well may not be paying attention anymore.