Introduction 1

Introduction 3

Introduction 3

A SPORTS-LOVING NATION 4

MEDIA COVERAGE 5

PRIVATE AND INSTITUTIONALIZED ACTIVITIES 5

AMERICAN SPORTS 6

VIOLENCE AND SPORTS 7

COMMERCIAL ASPECTS 7

PROFESSIONAL SPORTS 9

COLLEGE SPORTS 9

STUDENT ATHLETES AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE 10

WINNING 11

Sports: Colleges and Universities 11

Kinds of sports: 13

BASEBALL 13

BASKETBALL 16

Sources 20

Introduction

Americans pay much attention to physical fitness. Many sports and sporting activities are popular in the USA. People participate in swimming, skating, squash and badminton, tennis, marathons, track-and-field, bowing, archery, skiing, skating etc. But the five major American sports are hockey, volleyball, baseball, football and basketball. Basketball and volleyball have been invented in America.

There is a large choice of sports in America. This can be explained by the size and variety of the country. Another reason of the popularity of sports is the people’s love of competition of any kind. One more reason is that
Americans use sports activities for teaching socials values, such as teamwork and sportsmanship. All this explains why Americans have traditionally done well in many kinds of sports.

Every high school offers its students many sports, such as wrestling, rowing, tennis and golf. There are no separate “universities” for sports in the USA. Students of any higher educational establishment are trained in different kinds of sports. Many colleges and universities are famous for their sports clubs. There are sports facilities at every school.

Some americans like active games, and others like quite games. I think that quite games, as golf and crocket, intend for rich elite people. Most popular games in the USA is hockey, american football, baseball, basketball. Popular among americans are NHL games. In NHL games play our compatriots: Feudorov, Yashin, Bure brothers. They are ones of the best players in NHL.
American football is like a rugby with kicks. Every player can beat another one. I think american football is one of the rudest games in the world.
Baseball is played with wooden bat and hard ball. It's called "typical" american game.
Basketball is one of the most spectators game in the USA. It's my favourite game too.
Some unusual kinds of sports originated in America. They are windsurfing, skate-boarding and tradition. Triathlon includes swimming, bicycling racing and long-distances-running. Now these are becoming more and more popular in
Europe.
Sports is a part of life of an average American.

A SPORTS-LOVING NATION

Whether they are fans or players, the millions of Americans who participate in sports are usually passionate about their games. There is more to being a baseball fan than buying season tickets to the home team's games. A real fan not only can recite each player's batting average, but also competes with other fans to prove who knows the answers to the most obscure and trivial questions about the sport. That's dedication. Dedication short of madness is also what inspired hundreds of thousands of football fans to fill Denver's stadium in dangerously freezing temperatures, not to watch an exciting game but just to demonstrate team support in a pre-Superbowl pep rally, days before the actual contest. And it is with passion that
Americans pursue the latest fitness fad, convinced that staying fit requires much more than regular exercise and balanced meals. For anyone who claims a real desire to stay healthy, fitness has become a science of quantification, involving weighing, measuring, moni-toring, graph charting, and computer printouts". These are the tools for knowing all about pulse and heart rates, calorie intake, fat cell per muscle cell ratios, and almost anything else that shows the results of a" workout.

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