Why is football only really popular in the United States?

為什麼美式足球只在美國非常流行？

In the rest of the world, football is, of course, soccer.

在世界其他地方，football當然指的是足球。

And our football is at most an afterthought. 

而美式足球在大多數情況下最多只是一個想法的餘地。

And please don't argue with me by bringing up NFL games in London. I am convinced those stands are packed with study-abroad students on their way to Amsterdam.

請不要爭論，不要向我提到在倫敦的NFL比賽。我相信那些看台上坐滿了前往阿姆斯特丹的留學生。

So why is this the case?

這是為什麼呢？

Why do other countries reject our football as a point of pride, especially when our other cultural products like music and movies or other sports like basketball tend to spread around the globe like wildfire? 

為什麼其他國家拒絕將我們的足球視為驕傲，尤其是當我們的其他文化產品（例如音樂和電影）或其他運動（例如籃球）往往像野火一樣在全球傳播時？

Now, I've heard some explain this by saying, "Well, the USA is a violent country, so people love a violent game," and that's true. 

我聽說有人解釋說：「嗯，美國是一個暴力的國家，所以人們喜歡暴力的遊戲」，這是真的。

But while that sounds smart, as Jules Winfield said in Pulp Fiction, "That shit ain't the truth." 

然而，儘管聽起來很聰明，正如《黑色追緝令》中的Jules Winfield所說：「那種屁話一點都不是真的。」

There's violence across the world and yet that doesn't make people football fans.

全球各地都存在暴力，但這並不會使人們成為美式足球迷。

So what is it about this country that makes football our addiction of choice?

所以，是什麼讓美式足球成為美國人成癮的選擇呢？

Why are TV ratings even in our fractured culture always on the rise when it comes to football? 

在我們破碎的文化中，為什麼足球的電視收視率總是在上升呢？

To understand why, you have to look at everyone's favorite subject in high school: history.  

要想了解原因，就得看看大家在高中最喜歡的科目——歷史。

So let's take a trip in the way back machine and explain how football got baked into the cake of this country's psyche.

讓我們坐上時光機，解釋一下美式足球是如何成為這個國家心靈深處的一部分的。

Football began to flourish here at the turn of the 20th century, not as a fun diversion for kids, but to aid a U.S. foreign policy obsessed with dreams of a global empire.

美式足球在 20 世紀初開始在美國蓬勃發展，不是為了給孩子們消遣，而是為了幫助痴迷於「美國夢」的美國外交政策。

Those dreams existed side-by-side with the fear that the children of the wealthy, the ones supposed to lead this conquest, were too soft, too weak, too "unmanly" for the task of running the world.

這些夢想與一種擔憂並存，擔心富人的子女，那些應該領導這場征服的人，對於統治世界的任務來說太過軟弱、太脆弱、太「不像男子漢」。

Now, this is hard for us to envision today because football draws most of its players from poor and working-class backgrounds, and the majority of NFL players are Black.

現在，這對我們今天來說很難想像，因為美式足球主要吸引來自貧窮和工人階級背景的球員，而NFL球員的大多數是黑人。

But football started as a sport for privileged white elites on Ivy League campuses as a way to toughen up this new generation to lead what was called the American century.  

但足球起初是一項供來自常春藤聯盟大學校園的優越白人精英參與的運動，旨在鍛煉這一新一代，以領導所謂的美國世紀。

That's why this new game of football was embraced not only as a sport but as a training ground for war openly.

這就是為什麼這種新型的足球比賽不僅被視為一項運動，而且被公開視為戰爭的訓練場。

And not surprisingly, the ultimate imperial War Hawk, President Theodore Roosevelt was one of the earliest and most prominent promoters of the sport.

毫不奇怪，終極帝國戰鷹，總統狄奧多·羅斯福是這項運動的最早和最突出的推動者之一。

In an 1893 piece called The Value of Athletic Training, Roosevelt defended football writing, "All of the masterful nations in history encouraged rugged sports."

在1893年的一篇名為《體育訓練的價值》的文章中，羅斯福為橄欖球辯護寫道：「歷史上所有強大的國家都鼓勵強壯的體育運動。」

He believed that athletic training in football could build a new Anglo-Saxon super race ready to stand to stride the world.

他相信在橄欖球中的體育訓練可以培養一支新的盎格魯-撒克遜超級種族，準備好主宰世界。

So football was born intertwined alongside ideas about white nationalism and imperial expansion.

因此，橄欖球的誕生與白人民族主義和帝國擴張的觀念緊密相連。

And these early games were so violent that dozens of young men died on the field of play.

這些早期的比賽非常暴力，以至於有數十名年輕男子在賽場上死亡。

And when newspapers started to report the shocking number of casualties and the grim reality that football had essentially become a death harvest, many prominent thinkers called for its elimination and even its abolition.  

當報紙開始報導令人震驚的傷亡數字和事實上足球已經變成一個死亡的收割場時，許多知名思想家呼籲取消它，甚至廢除它。

The NCAA was actually formed initially to find a way to lower the body counts in the face of a torrent of criticism.

The NCAA 其實最初成立是為了尋找一種在面對嚴厲批評時降低傷亡人數的方法。

In other words, my little rant here is not just hindsight, but people back then recoiled not just from the violence, but the ethos of the sport as well. 

換句話說，我的抱怨不僅僅是事後諸葛亮，那個時候的人們不僅對暴力感到反感，對這項運動的道德觀念也感到厭惡。

Charles Elliot, the president of Harvard, pushed for an abolition of football altogether,

哈佛大學校長查爾斯·艾略特（Charles Elliot）主張完全取消美式足球。

writing in 1915 that it was, quote, "A fight whose strategy and ethics are those of war where the weaker man is considered the legitimate prey of the stronger, all of which sets up the wrong kind of hero." 

他在1915年寫道，這是一場「其戰略和道德與戰爭相同的戰鬥，在其中較弱的人被視為較強者的合法獵物，這一切都塑造出錯誤的英雄。」

But Teddy Roosevelt and other defenders of the sport were not having any of this Ivy League, powderpuff, moralism.

但是泰迪·羅斯福和其他捍衛這項運動的人並不接受這種常春藤聯盟、短小、道德主義的論調。

The one-time rough rider blasted Elliot and Harvard for wanting to "emasculate football."

這位曾經的草原騎手抨擊埃利奧特和哈佛想要「使美式足球失去男子氣概」。

Roosevelt's belief that football was a necessary antidote to male effeminacy was so intense that he once wrote that he would disinherit his own sons if they didn't play and would "rather see one of them die than have them grow up as weaklings."  

羅斯福堅信足球是消除男性女性氣質的必要解藥，他曾寫道，如果自己的兒子不參加比賽，他將剝奪他們的繼承權，並且「寧願看到他們中的一個死去，也不願讓他們作為弱者成長」。

So why is football so baked into the cake of the United States? Here's the answer. 

那麼，為什麼足球如此融入美國呢？ 答案如下。

It's imperial ambitions and a ruling class fear of losing a masculine edge in a society where rich kids tend to grow up as soft as a duck feather pillow.  

這是帝國的野心和統治階級對在一個富人孩子往往像鴨毛枕頭一樣柔軟的社會中失去男性優勢的恐懼。

Now, fast-forward to 2023, and it's amazing how little has changed.

現在快進到 2023 年，令人驚訝的是變化如此之小。

The GOP in particular has become the party of white male panic.

尤其是共和黨，已經成為白人男性恐慌的政黨。

Their platform is fear-based, fear of decline-ism, fear of the other and fear that we won't be able to keep what has already been conquered.  

他們的綱領是基於恐懼的，對衰落主義的恐懼，對他人的恐懼，以及對我們無法保住已經被征服的事物的恐懼。

This is not to say that only right-wingers are football fans, far from it.

這並不是說只有右翼分子才是球迷，事實遠非如此。

But only in a country such as this one, only in the United States of anxiety do people clutch this sport so firmly,  and maybe we clutch it because we feel it all just slipping away.

但只有在像這個國家這樣的國家，只有在焦慮的美國，人們才會如此牢牢地抓住這項運動，也許我們抓住它是因為我們感覺這一切都在溜走。