Confederate States at the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup

If the CSA survived, what would they look like in global sports?

Would they have sent a team to compete in the first Olympic Games in 1896?

Assuming the CSA survives to the present day, where would they be in the Olympic medal count?

And would they be able to qualify for the FIFA World Cup? With Mexico, the USA and Costa Rica dominating CONCACAF, and other countries providing decent teams once in a while, it probably wouldn't be easy for them.
 
This belongs to the Before 1900 section and I would advise messaging an admin or moderator to move this thread.
 

yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
I think the CSA would be kicked out about the same time South Africa was kicked out over Apartheid. But we're talking butterflies so maybe racism is fine in this TL (I can unfortunately see it happen quite easily) or maybe Olympics and World Cup are butterflied away.
 
I think the CSA would be kicked out about the same time South Africa was kicked out over Apartheid. But we're talking butterflies so maybe racism is fine in this TL (I can unfortunately see it happen quite easily) or maybe Olympics and World Cup are butterflied away.

I agree they would receive similar treatment as SA got by the international community if they had kept their racial laws going into the second half of the 20th century.

But I'm not sure if a CSA victory could butterfly away the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup. These events were created primarily by the French, so the outcome of the American Civil War probably would not have much of an impact on their existence.
 
I'm trying to think how popular sports would be in the CSA. I can't think of a single sport invented in the CSA (football as we know it started in New Jersey, baseball in New York, basketball in New England and hockey in Canada) and there was a bill before the governor of Georgia to outlaw football. He vetoed it based on an impassioned plea from the mother of a young man killed while playing the sport; if it's seen as a Yanker sport from outside Confederate lands, that governor may not view the game so nicely and sign the bill. And if he does, other states will probably follow suit. As such, football will be niche at best in the CSA, and sports may not catch on the way they did OTL (other than football, there isn't a whole lot of market for sports outside big cities, and professional leagues will probably hesitate to enter the CSA; we can certainly butterfly away basketball's popularity in North Carolina since there are other hotbeds such as Indiana and Kentucky that would remain firmly Union.)

Furthermore, the biggest catalyst to sports taking off in America was the reduction of the work week. With slavery still legal in the CSA, cutting the work week back, even to 60 hours, OTL's magic number, will be many years off. So while the USA has manufacturing advantages and is an industrial center for steel and cars, the CSA is scraping tooth-and-nail for whatever it can find and is still likely focusing on industrializing agriculture. So with so few jobs, so many people wanting them, and slaves to fill in gaps, the CSA won't have the time or ability to conduct leisure activities.

And assuming the World Wars happen similarly to OTL and the CSA joins the Allies (they may believe in slavery and/or segregation but they'll see themselves as above the Nazis) then with times improving back home, people in the CSA may take a liking to some sports. It's hard to see what sports they would prefer, but plenty of things such as racial politics and a lack of tradition would hinder CSA sports programs. They would lag far behind the USA in most Olympic and professional sports, and if a CSA league got started up, it would be seen as inferior. Why would someone want to play football in Atlanta when Philadelphia pays better? And the USA would get a lot of CSA black defectors - sure, it will cause tension, but overall it will be good for the quality of the product. And with no legal protections in the CSA for black athletes, many of them will not want to stay; bear in mind it was a post-Civil War Amendment - one that won't exist in the CSA - that ended segregation. And passing legal protections for black athletes in the CSA will be nigh impossible. So expect a lot of blacks to migrate north and west, with many border areas being heavily black.

In short, CSA sports will be very white, have no tradition, and constantly be second-best. And the interest will be spotty. And that's if they're allowed to compete at all.
 

Czar Kaizer

Banned
Hmm, the CSA would probably be heavily influenced by whatever sports are popular in the US, so I would imagine that there might be a similar situation to what in Canada being influenced by American sports.
On the other hand I don't see proffesional sports leagues developing in a poorer country like the CSA, so British Amateur sports might actually end up being replacement for American sports. Rugby Union and Cricket could easily take off in the CSA, given those sports historical elitism with the whole, "sport should be played by gentleman". In fact their may be racial and class divides in sport as we saw in England, so maybe Confederate Gentleman play Cricket, while Rugby is huge amongst upper and middle class Universities. Poor whites play sports where they have greater opputurtuties to make money so Baseball and maybe basketball might be bigger their with poor whites boys dreaming ofscouted and making it into the MLB.
In this scenario it would interesting to see what happens to blacks. You may see segregated leagues developing or blacks may be excluded from sports all together. If the CSA is only moderately racist where they are okay treating blacks like shit but cheer for them when they dominate sports I could see blacks being allowed to compete in some level. For example with Cricket in the West Indies it was historically a game played by white Gentleman planters who saw themselves as batsman and amateurs. However the more "strenous" parts of the game such as bowling were given to their black workers or slaves who may or may not be given a wage to play and practise cricket. This mirrors the situation we see in England where cricket is dominated by middle class gentleman batsman who are "amateurs" and have higher status who would play in the same team as "players" who were working class players who usually received a small wage and tended to be bowlers, gentleman used separate changing rooms and were referred to by their initials and were also the only players who were allowed to captain teams.
So perhaps cricket becomes the main sport of Blacks, who aget less recognition then their white team mates.
 
There's a lot of variables involved in answering this question. Some sports like American Football and Basketball hadn't been invented at the time of the civil war, let alone the Olympic Games or the World Cup. You might see some sports develop completely separately.

Even if we handwave all that, a lot would depend on how the Confederacy develops. Football was introduced to South America in large part because of the British influence over that part of the world. If the CSA falls into a European sphere, it could become the national sport, if the USA has more influence, then American sports could predominate. Cricket and Rugby tend to do best when introduced by a large incoming British settler population, rather than in places with large numbers of people descendents from colonists like the Confederacy, so I wouldn't expect them to get too far.

The relative wealth of the Confederacy would also be a factor. As a general rule, poverty in a country leads to simpler sports with minimal equipment being preferred. That would help in establishing football as a major sport there. As has been noted already, Boxing could be pretty big, as it is in countries like Ireland and Cuba, countries that were historically poor and relied on plantation labour, much as the CSA would. Track and field (particularly the former) is something countries with a history of large slave populations have been historically good at, so I'd expect them to do well at that, if they allowed African American athletes to compete.

Domestic leagues would probably be at a very low standard, even if there weren't politically motivated boycotts there wouldnt be much money in domestic sports, and top talent would go north.
 
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