Water Polo Gaining Popularity?

The United States men's water polo team is going to compete in the 2012 Pan Am games on October 23-29th in Guadalajara, Mexico. The tournament will be used as the qualifying match for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. The North and South American countries will be competing in the tournament but aren't exactly seen as powerful competitors at the sport. In Europe the sport is much more popular and have powerhouse teams such as Hungary, Croatia, and Serbia. The Pan Am games should make it a little bit easier for the U.S. to qualify for the Olympics rather than competing against those European teams.
Before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing the U.S. team did not medal in water polo since 1988. Going into the 2008 Olympics the United States weren't expected to go far in water polo and were ranked pretty low, but the U.S. turned it around and pulled a major upset winning the silver medal in the final round against Hungary, one of the most dominant teams in the history of water polo.
Water polo has not been a very popular sport in the U.S. and isn't considered a mainstream sport, but with the U.S.'s success on the international level it will help. Kyle Rapoza says, "Water polo fans and players all want to see America accept water polo as a more mainstream sport but without television coverage it will be difficult for the sport to become increasingly popular." And I agree with Kyle. As we discussed in class sports can survive without the media, and water polo has. The game started in the late 1800’s and was known as aquatic football and it has definitely grown as a sport, and there are teams participating all over the world. Water polo is even the national sport in Hungary. But in America it wouldn’t gain the same popularity without the support of the media. Sports like football, basketball, baseball, and hockey are very popular with a lot of help from being televised, and headline coverage in newspapers and the internet. Even sports like mixed martial arts has become increasingly popular because of paperview fights and television shows about the next top fighter. Soccer has always been a huge sport and is the biggest sport around the world, but as it has been even more televised, its popularity has definitely increased. Water polo even has the qualities that Americans love to see, it is a very rough and aggressive contact sport and also carries that sense of masculinity as seen in today’s mainstream sports. Water polo could also gain great popularity through the media and its success internationally.

Joshua Beltran
KIN 332I T/TH 12:30-1:45