The modernization of professional football in England and the United States: A comparative analysis

This study is a cross-cultural analysis of the development of professional football in England (soccer) and the USA (American football). The following questions are examined: (1) How has professional football developed in England and the USA during the twentieth century? (2) What characteristics of modernization has each sport taken on, and are these universal or specific to each culture? (3) What are the residual components of sport that have survived despite emerging alternative forms? (4) Is football more modern in one culture than another.; This study employs a concept of modernization to establish the framework to analyze the nature of and means for the significant changes that occurred. Modernization as referred to in this study entails the movement from the premodern to the modern pattern. Utilizing scholarly work this study establishes modernization as an analytical framework for comprehending changes in the structures, attitudes toward, and functions of sport in the twentieth century. The framework is comprised of five characteristics of modernization: rationalization; organization; commercialization; media; and employee role.; Evidence suggests that pro football has developed faster and "travelled" further along the modernization continuum than pro soccer. Certain external forces are responsible for this; social change is facilitated more in one society (USA) than the other (England). These findings support the position that sport reflects society by the way it plays out particular aspects central to the larger culture. Internal pressures were also influential in this process of change and the differentiation of two sports. Internal forces can represent, but are not necessarily limited to larger social trends.; However, many similarities externally driven (indicating convergence between societies) and internally driven (supporting the universalism thesis) between the evolution of both sports were found.; This study depicted the value and need for cross-cultural analysis in sport sociology and sport history. An understanding of unique and similar dimensions of the social system of pro soccer and pro football emerged as each was mirrored by the other. In this way, contrasting cultural relativity of social mechanisms teased out similarities and differences of systems: a basic step toward meaning.