D
Deleted member 3073
giga mogger
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I've been reading sports statistics lately as I always do, and found myself spiraling down the player physical averages.
Eventually I found out that height is a key aspect in almost if not all American sports (with the exceptions of golf, auto-racing and boxing, which aren't American inventions anyways—and the late one has weight classes).
The average heights for your MLB (baseball), NHL (ice-hockey), NFL (American football) and NBA (basketball) players are 6'2", 6'1 1/2", 6'2" and 6'7" respectively (this means the average American sportsman is around 4 1/2 inches taller than the average American male, with the average NBA player being 9 inches taller). WWE wrestlers are 6'3" on average too, but acted wrestling is not a real sporting competition.
Height in all this sports is also considered an advantage, being most of their greatest referents and icons somewhat taller than the average citizen.
Now, taking this into consideration; why do Americans (specially American women) seem to care so much about this attribute?
My theory is that height has subconsciously been ingrained into their society because average or below average men would never truly succeed (unless displaying an exaggerated amount of skill and talent) in most College sports, thus not being eligible for their teams and being contrary/not fitting into the stereotype of the "jock" (since most jocks in popular culture are tall for the obvious necessary reason of sole sports performance).
Also the creation of big pop-culture celebrities such as Kobe, Tom Brady, Gretzky, etc. that made it daily into the mainstream media led to a very rampant adulation towards their attributes.
This is also why in countries such as mine (Argentina, South America) height isn't praised nearly as much. Not only the average is slightly lower (5'9" instead of 5'10"), but sports in my culture were never height-focused. Specially football (soccer for Americans), in which most players (mainly attacking ones, which tend to be the stars of the teams since they score the most) are on the short side. This doesn't happen in the U.S. considering the MLS is barely relevant now, and was absolutely unexistent to the mainstream public 10 years ago.
Really this makes me want to have been born in the good ol' northern country. It's like if you're tall there you already won. Here where I live it's more like a circus freak kind of thing.
Eventually I found out that height is a key aspect in almost if not all American sports (with the exceptions of golf, auto-racing and boxing, which aren't American inventions anyways—and the late one has weight classes).
The average heights for your MLB (baseball), NHL (ice-hockey), NFL (American football) and NBA (basketball) players are 6'2", 6'1 1/2", 6'2" and 6'7" respectively (this means the average American sportsman is around 4 1/2 inches taller than the average American male, with the average NBA player being 9 inches taller). WWE wrestlers are 6'3" on average too, but acted wrestling is not a real sporting competition.
Height in all this sports is also considered an advantage, being most of their greatest referents and icons somewhat taller than the average citizen.
Now, taking this into consideration; why do Americans (specially American women) seem to care so much about this attribute?
My theory is that height has subconsciously been ingrained into their society because average or below average men would never truly succeed (unless displaying an exaggerated amount of skill and talent) in most College sports, thus not being eligible for their teams and being contrary/not fitting into the stereotype of the "jock" (since most jocks in popular culture are tall for the obvious necessary reason of sole sports performance).
Also the creation of big pop-culture celebrities such as Kobe, Tom Brady, Gretzky, etc. that made it daily into the mainstream media led to a very rampant adulation towards their attributes.
This is also why in countries such as mine (Argentina, South America) height isn't praised nearly as much. Not only the average is slightly lower (5'9" instead of 5'10"), but sports in my culture were never height-focused. Specially football (soccer for Americans), in which most players (mainly attacking ones, which tend to be the stars of the teams since they score the most) are on the short side. This doesn't happen in the U.S. considering the MLS is barely relevant now, and was absolutely unexistent to the mainstream public 10 years ago.
Really this makes me want to have been born in the good ol' northern country. It's like if you're tall there you already won. Here where I live it's more like a circus freak kind of thing.
