To Listen: Get Adobe Flash Player, or download an mp3 at the bottom of the post.

Brandenberg Gate, Berlin [Russell Chant / Flickr]

What is this comprehensive “globalization” of sports stars, money, victory all about?

What is the story unfolding in this World Cup summer of empires falling and rising — empires of money and fashion as well as of national pride and prestige?

Is the buzz in the Arab world to be believed: that France’s Zinedine Zidane was taunted into that ugly head-butt by Marco Materazzi’s calling him a “terrorist”?

In another dimension, the World Cup finish looked like Rummy’s worst nightmare: Old Europe going at it in the World Cup Finals, after the strange confrontation of yesteryear’s “axis of evil,” Italy and Germany.

The US eclipse far beyond soccer is a story in itself. At Wimbledon US didn’t get into the quarterfinals among either men or women, an unheard-of rout. Meanwhile, an Italian basketball star was the No. 1 pick in the NBA lottery.

A Ghanaian blogger we love, Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah at Koranteng’s Toli adds, by email: “Nathan’s hot dog eating competition was won by Kobayashi again. A small Japanese guy out-ate red-blooded Americans. Hot dogs for God’s sake.”

This conversation was triggered by Selena Roberts’ jarring column in the NYTimes last week:

There are exceptions to the free fall — like snowboarders, dude — but just what has eroded the United States’ perch? Globalization. As the geographic sandbox widened and the world shrunk, as images spread across the Internet and political walls collapsed, technology exposed the American athletes’ modern weaknesses

Selena Roberts, Face It: U.S. No Longer Reigns Supreme, The New York Times, July 4, 2006

There are deeper implications here about, for example, what’s “cool” or manly in the world…. About how global money and television have redistributed identity and styles on the field: Koranteng suggests the range of angles:

You’d have to talk about the changing nature of the game and how everyone plays in Europe. The Brazilians have made almost one billion dollars selling their players to European teams. The Africans too and these days many of the African teams were were playing a very European
game with only flashes of their style.

You’d have to talk about America’s place in sports. Great Power? Things Fall Apart? Decline and Fall? I don’t know but small things add up. You need some joie de vivre and the sports headlines should be providing comfort.

It was not a good 4th of July… No McEnroe, no Connors, no Agassi, Sampras or Roddick, no Venus, no Serena, no Lindsay Davenport winning at Wimbledon. Instead a Swiss guy and a Spaniard are providing the excitement. And what about that tall Chinese woman who made the quarter finals and gave Clujsters the fits, Li Na? What about feet binding? The Chinese are coming…

Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah, Koranteng’s Toli, in an email to Open Source, July 9, 2006

Does it seem that the US has been isolated in the summer’s sports news as the fat old banker with the guns, but without the hungry players on the field?

Question: who should be at the table talking about the issue? Off the top of your head! Here’s the pass, take the shot!

Robert Lipsyte

Author of Heroes of Baseball and writer for The New York Times

Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah

Blogger, Koranteng’s Toli

Stacy-Marie Ishmael

Blogger, AOL sports World Cup Soccer Blog

Patrick Belton

Blogger, OxBlog

John Ralston Saul

Author, Voltaire’s Bastards and The Collapse of Globalism

Extra Credit Reading

David L. Smalley, Where have the athletes gone?, from his myspace profile, July 9, 2006

Doug Lieb, Outplayed. Harvard International Review, July 4, 2006

Crunk Raconteur, Well, I Haven’t Been-to-Prague Been to Prague, But I Know That Thing…, Cole Slaw Blog, June 12, 2006

Annaswamy Natarajan, Now that the 2006 FIFA World Cup is over…, NARAYANEEYAM DAY, July 11, 2006

Selena Roberts, Face It: U.S. No Longer Reigns Supreme, The New York Times, July 4, 2006

Anne Applebaum, Flag on the Field, Slate, June 18, 2002

Featured on the show: comments from plnelson, nother (here and here)
and a blog post from Doug Lieb on the Harvard International Review.

From Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah, author of Koranteng’s Toli:

So much to say about Miles and so many ways to look at him…

For some he’s just a good introduction to jazz. For most people, “Kind of Blue” is the first jazz album they’ll buy, much like Bob Marley’ “Legend” is the normal introduction to reggae.

Thus we have Miles as the gateway drug, the taste of Blue which will lead to “Someday My Prince Will Come” and then to Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal and Wynton Kelly. Maybe we need a Miles Czar or a War on Miles to prevent young people from getting hooked?

To Listen: Get Adobe Flash Player, or download an mp3 at the bottom of the post.

Chris’s Billboard

Africa is what they’re talking about this week: the rock stars, bankers, bleedings hearts and political chiefs of the big-8 lender nations, meeting on a golf course in Scotland. But listen carefully: they’re talking about several Africas: is it a continent or a crisis, and a cause? Is it victim of the West or of its own corrution? Will it ever be an opportunity, and a modern trading and investment partner? Is it another place, in short, or another planet? If it’s a basket case—a hospital ship adrift—aid is the urgent answer. But if your eye is on the human opportunity, and billions in old foreign-aid gone bad, the charity treatment could seem like more of the same wrong remedy. The banker nations are arguing about Tony Blair’s moral case for more aid. It’s Africans, oddly enough, who are making the case for trade, competence, and self-development. On Open Source: Africans of the rising generation are next, talking about Africa.

Koranteng Ofosu-Amaah

technologist and blogger, originally from Ghana
[in studio with Chris]

Professor Calestous Juma

From Kenya
recently wrote oped,We Need to Reinvent the African University
[in studio with Chris]

Joel Okao

Journalist, contributing to Panos’ AfricaVox, a group of African journalists writing from the G8 summit
[by phone from Edinburgh]