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Angeles, July 10, 1998 Vol. 10, No.3 Dear Reader: The World Cup soccer tournament has renewed the debate over whether the World Cup or the Olympic Games is the world's most popular sporting event. FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football, calls its World Cup "the greatest sporting festival." A number of news sources have repeated this claim. The International Olympic Committee disagrees. According to the Olympic Broadcast Analysis Report published in 1997 "the Olympic Games is the premier world event in terms of viewer interest." The report claims that the 1996 Atlanta Games had 19.6 billion cumulative television viewers, with a daily average of more than 1.2 billion. The 1994 World Cup, according to the IOC, averaged 618 million viewers per day and produced a cumulative audience of about 19.2 billion. The report also states that the Games reached more countries (214) than did the '94 World Cup (188). Add to that the fact that 198 nations participated in the 16-day Games versus 24 nations in the 23 game-days of the '94 World Cup. And as for actual attendance, the 1996 Atlanta Games sold 8.6 million tickets compared to an estimated 2.5 million for the '98 World Cup. Ah, were it only so simple. FIFA and others claim that the 1998 World Cup will attract a far larger cumulative television audience of more than 37 billion, a total the IOC disputes. Still, it seems fair to say that no 90 minutes of sports programming is more popular than the final game of the World Cup. In Japan, host country to the 1998 Olympic Winter Games, the recent World Cup match between Japan and Croatia garnered the highest television ratings in Tokyo for a sports event in more than 30 years. On June 15, the World Cup Web site set a record for the most hits per single hour (59 million) beating the record set by the official Web site of the Nagano Olympic Winter Games. So, go figure. In this battle of apples and oranges, the score is simple: won-won. Add World Cup . . . While the rest of the world cheered on its favorite teams, SportsLetter was more interested in all the cool names than who wins. So, here's our World Cup all-name team. We left out Brazil because, frankly, when it comes to mellifluous monikers, they're in a league of their own. World Cup Non-Brasilian All-Name Team
Add names . . . This year's World Cup seems to have plenty of players competing for nations in which they were not born, leading to some odd combinations of nation and name. Our favorite is Japanese forward Wagner Lopes.
Don’t ask a question if you don’t know the answer . . . By now you're probably familiar with Miller Beer's series of retro-cool commercials touting macrobrew for the masses. One of those sell-spots features a group enthusiastically enjoying boxing. Near the end of the spot, the screen reads, "It's time to toast whoever invented televised sports." Miller's ad aces, Wieden and Kennedy, sure spilled the suds on this one. The first sports event broadcast live on television was the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. A television signal transmitted 138 hours of programming to 25 viewing rooms throughout Berlin. Given the Nazi's control of those Games, that pretty much makes Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, the "whoever" that first brought us televised sports. Raise your glass to that one, Miller.
She got game! . . . The NCAA recently released attendance figures for the 1997-98 college basketball season. To no great surprise, the men's national champions from the University of Kentucky led home attendance with 23,946 per game. While total attendance at NCAA Division I men's games rose 1% to 28,031,879, average attendance actually declined by 22 people per game. The real news is that attendance at women's games rose to 7.4 million, an increase of nearly 10%. The Lady Vols of the University of Tennessee drew an average of 14,969 fans to their home games. Although venue sizes aren't equal, that average would have put the Lady Vols in 11th spot on the men's list outdrawing such notable men's teams as Arizona, Purdue, Utah, Duke, Oklahoma and UCLA. Add women's game . . . Of particular note are the Division I women's basketball programs that outdrew their schools' men's programs. The women of Texas Tech, for example, attracted an average of 7,946 compared to the men's 7,427. Likewise at Southwest Missouri State where the women Bears drew 7,751 at home compared to Steve Alford's men who pulled 7,161 through the turnstiles. Speaking of attendance . . . Usually large home crowds are the result of a winning tradition. But in one case, it just took having a team. The men's hockey team at the University of Nebraska-Omaha managed, in its very first year as a Division I varsity sport, to draw an average of 8,314 people to 18 homes games. That put them second in NCAA hockey attendance behind the University of Minnesota.
What's in a name? . . . This year's NCAA men's high jump champion is the eponymously surnamed Nathan Leeper from Kansas State.
Not so sharp . . . The Los Angeles Kings hockey team produced signs festooning Los Angeles city buses with this macho query: "In what other sport do they sharpen the equipment?" Our answer: ice dancing.
Steeee-rike! . . . The June 6, 1998, issue of The Economist magazine included a 16-page overview of the state of sport in contemporary life. While informative, the report gets a few things wrong, most notably stating that "women were not allowed into the Olympic Games until 1928." (Women did not compete in track and field until 1928, but competed in other sports starting with the 1900 Paris Games.) Better yet, those folks across the pond were less than perspicacious with this putdown: "Baseball, for example, last year attracted crowds of over 63m - which means that the Chicago Cubs could afford to waste over $9m on an underperforming Dominican outfielder called Sammy Sosa." A swing and a miss, gents. Sosa only just set the major league record for home runs in one month by knocking 20 out of the park in June. Stick to cricket.
Must be a math major . . . The June 1998 issue of Swimming World features Stanford's sophomore swimmer Catherine Fox sounding less than lucid. "If I thought like huge things about my American record, like 'Wow, that's amazing!' - is that like saying that I'm amazing . . . like maybe that's all I've got?" Must be the chlorine and clean air.
And now for some crow . . . In the last issue of SportsLetter the Kentucky Derby was mistakenly referred to as "the famous five-furlong race," proving definitely that we are not math majors. The correct length is ten furlongs or a mile and a quarter. Oh well. Let's just say that accuracy was the victim of our addled affection for alliteration. Always alert, several readers pointed out the errant editorial content. Wayne Peake, of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games, tendered this bit of comic correction: "And to think that we in Australia always thought your racehorses were better than ours! Hell, even a burnt-out old hay bandit racing at Alice Springs can run 5 furlongs in 59 seconds - a whole minute faster than your greatest ever horse. No wonder our best horse Phar Lap gave it to your guys in 1932!" Touché.
Non-starter? . . . A recent missive sent this way announced the formation of the International Non-Olympic Committee (INOC). In its own words "the INOC has been formed with the Sole-Aim of Developments, Upliftment, Recognition and popularising the Non-Olympic Games & Country's Origin Games in all over the World as it into Olympic Games which has been struggling to get its due popularity amongst the peoples and its due recognition from 'IOC'." What all that means is no clearer to us than to you, but apparently a group has formed to create an international authority for non-Olympic sports. No word yet on plans to celebrate the first Non-Olympiad.
I want to be like Mike . . . If you haven't already seen The Big One, slip on your sneakers and jog over to see muckraker Michael Moore's new "mockumentary." Moore tilts at the corporate windmills of Nike in his new feature critical of the shoe giant's labor practices. If the flick has fled the neighborhood, check out Moore's Web site at www.dogeatdogfilms.com for a grin or two. By the way, on May 12 Nike CEO Philip Knight announced a change in Nike labor policy which raises the minimum age of workers in the Indonesian factories making Nike shoes to 18.
Go fish . . . Just in time for those long days on the lake, the good folks at In-Fisherman just sent along its alluring catalog of educational fishing products. Reel in the fun as you view such titles as For Big Fish Only, Way of the Walleye, Prime Time Muskies, Extreme Catfish and the ever popular Crappie Wisdom.
Enjoying his status as the world's most popular mascot (at least this month) is FOOTIX, the cockerel mascot of the 1998 World Cup. Footix apparently was the runaway name choice over such other appellations as Zimbo, Houpi, Raffy and Gallik. According to the official World Cup Web site, "The French are very pleased with their Mascot and see themselves in him." Of course, they laugh at the comedy of Jerry Lewis, too.
SportsLetter
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