I love American sports. As a Canadian who lives five minutes from the border, I am used to the loud, rambunctious (sometimes obnoxious, but in an amusing way. Like watching a child stick a fork in the wall socket) world of American sports entertainment. There is, quite simply, nothing like it in the entire world.

But it's the little things in American sporthood that get on my nerves. The most obvious being the annoying tendency to transform American sports into Nuremberg rallies. This has always been the case, but the events of Sept. 11 have amplified them to cartoonish extremes. Now every Superbowl, NASCAR rally and 7th Inning Stretch is a patriotic rabble-rousing epic tribute to nationalism not seen since the triumph of Leni Riefenstahl, complete with fireworks, John Philip Sousa marching music and Blue Angel jets cascading jubilantly overhead. Its effect on the American public is about the same, too.

Media hype carries this sentiment way too far sometimes. For them, it's not enough for American sports to be just about winning and losing. There's got to be controversy. There's got to be scandal. There's got to be more than just the event itself at stake. Professional wrestling is a perfect example. Only something that vapid and tasteless could be born and bred in the heart of the American ethos, something that's not sport, but the promise of sport. Not competition, but the threat of competition, of pitting titanic arch-types against each other and selling the hyperbole. Professional wrestling is soap opera sports, a scripted drama exuding over-saturated Americana. Where the medium is the message, and talking about the spectacle is higher priority than the actual spectacle itself. In many cases it is not even important that the spectacle happens, and if market incentives had their say it would be best that it didn't. All that would come of the event to behold is endless buildup, but no payoff. To keep the fans consuming.

But none of the real sports can exist without that frame of mind either. Americans are not interested in the outcome; they are interested in the contest. Almost as if to admit that the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, as the cliché goes, are not enough, the most memorable sporting moments in American history all revolve around their scandalous nature, not any definitive outcome. The Black Sox throwing the World Series. The Olympic basketball team losing to bureaucratic meddling. Nancy Kerrigan getting her knee smashed. Pete Rose denied Hall-of-Fame status. Jackie Robinson breaking the colour barrier. Billie-Jean King beating Bobby Riggs. Muhammed Ali being….well, Muhammed Ali. There is very little, if any, resolution in the world of American sports. Every victory merely means postponement for another day/game/season.

"Man, I tell ya: that practice was tough. I had to run to the other end of the field and back, and then do squats for 15 whole minutes!"

Because of this extreme specialization, American team sports have more active benches than the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, populated with players who only serve a few seconds-if that-a game, when conditions demand it. The ironic thing about this necessity to fill the sidelines with redundant talent is that no sport explicitly requires them. Every game is under complete and direct control of one or two key positions: quarterback, pitcher, point guard. All other positions are secondary cursory roles, important when called upon but largely superfluous most of the time (okay, it's a bit of a stretch for basketball, but the others pave true). A team could conceivably lose 2/3 of its roster and still function without missing a step, but if that key position gets seriously hurt, the season becomes a write-off.

Added to this is the fact that American sports don't flow, and Americans don't like it when it does. The action is turn-based; compartmentalized bite-sized sport chunks that occur a few seconds at a time. These frequent stoppages allow Americans to talk about what just happened and what they think will happen next, building non-existent tension and anticipation towards ordinary accomplishments in the game. With so much empty time between turns (plays), Americans like to fill the gaps with tons of meaningless statistics. Americans love statistics. This is also a uniquely American thing-to classify, categorize, scrutinize, measure, count, track and record every habit, every behavior, every play, every movement and every role of every athlete who's ever set foot on the playing field. No statistic is too miniscule. A player that has a batting average of .348 with runners in scoring position against left-handed pictures in outdoor stadiums against teams with better than .500 winning percentage where the count is 3-2 is just as valid a stat as how many homeruns he's hit. This is to justify his specific role to the team, especially in contract negotiations. Statistics are useful in gauging performance. If a statistic does not exist to warrant a player's exemplary contribution, general managers might begin to wonder what his function is, if he has one at all.

Of course, your typical American athlete disregards his apparent uselessness as trivial and beyond his concern. With so much time to himself, sitting on the bench game after game, having nothing to do in between stoppages in play, not having to train very hard (or even very much) due to his hyper-specialized position that requires little effort or practice, and given an inflated salary that far exceeds his actual worth, the American athlete has a tendency to brood on himself. A sort of self-affirmation of his position and stature, boosting his self-value and over-inflating his ego. And when his time comes to perform (maybe once or twice a game, tops), he revels in it. Like it was some Herculean feat that only he was capable of. And then to cement this sentiment, the game automatically comes to a complete standstill for him. So he can admire his few seconds of work. He dances, points, teases his opponents. The boisterous, American attitude emerges, and the demeanor of professional wrestling takes over. Glory for the victor. Deprivation for the vanquished. To taunt, to goad, to proclaim superiority over everything, because in his mind, with such little playing time as it is, he may never get such a chance again.

Above: the non-American sport of Rugby. Americans don't play it because there's no padding, there's non-stop running, there's no breaks in the action, and every player is required to run, kick, tackle and pass the ball really well, while running. So obviously it's inferior to what Americans play.

This is echoed even in the non-traditional, individual sports. Tennis and golf are congenial sports only by tradition, though the recent modernization of the tennis "badboy rebel who plays by his own rules", with a marketable GQ face and hotshot model/actress girlfriend, ballcap worn backwards and crazy-coloured jams sprouting his surly rock n roll tennis sponsor, taunting his opponents, threatening the judges with cries of "you can not be serious!", throwing tantrums at disapproving calls and high-fiving fans in the front row after important points, is unadulterated, shameless Americanism. Golf is slower-paced and hence not conducive to such bravado, but the fist-pumping, hat-tipping swagger of American machismo, the athlete insisting that he is bigger than the game that made him, is arriving slowly but surely.

Perhaps if American sports were faster paced and less hegemonic, they might appeal around the world. Or maybe it's not the American sports that are the problem, but the American athletes who play them. It bears mentioning that the most courteous, respectful American sportsmen are the ones who perform in global competitions, from the Olympics to World Cups and international tournaments of all flavours. It's just the distinctive character of the All-American, reared on a diet of America, who lacks the standard of comparison that could conceivably keep him grounded if he excelled in other cultures.

So I can't help but wonder, had the Declaration of Independence never happened, what would the culture of American sports have turned out like? Well..…It would probably be a lot like Canada.

And is that such a bad thing, really?