Ah right. I heard the podcast, but didn’t quite catch the final step in that.
Weird that in the USA, with “major leagues” of sports franchises that can move to different cities (e.g. Chargers) a city can lose city status by losing a team.
Meanwhile, in the rest of the world, there aren’t static leagues in all sports, but a city could still lose city status if their team is relegated.
Thankfully Berlin will be safe even if Hertha BSC are relegated because we’ll still have the Eisbär (Ice Hockey), Alba (basketball), Füchse (Handball) and probably many other sports teams I don’t know.
America is really weird about sports. It’s such a huge industry that crosses so many lines, it arguably should be under the purview of our federal government.
It is strange when you think about it. How did sport as a whole become such a huge thing? Sports themselves are older than ancient Greece. But the modern industry of sports seems to be relatively new. Most of the current major modern sports really only began to take shape in the early 20th century. Yet now we are at a point where sports gets a dedicated section in almost any news publication or broadcast. There are numerous sports TV networks, many dedicated to just a single sport. Even if you do something completely unrelated to sports, like shopping for clothes, they find some way to rear their head.
A large percentage of the population clearly cares about sports, but it still seems as if it is far less than half. Yet, these large professional sports organizations wield enormous power and influence over our society. Yet all they are doing is playing games!
What are you doing with a comma in the middle of this sentence? Why is it there? This is a new thing with people writing English, and it’s bugging the hell out of me.