The United States was once a rugby superpower. Only two countries, the United States and France, entered teams at the 1920 Games. Sure, three countries (the U.S.A., France,and Romania) were admitted to them in 1924. The 20s saw the Americans play Olympic rugby. They were a force to be reckoned with internationally. We ate the French like a croissant and scored 253 points in both the 1920- and 24-gold medal matches.Rugby was then no longer an Olympic sport. In 1924, when the Games were held in Paris, the Americans decimated the French team. This sparked a furious French invasion. Many spectators were injured in the stampede that harmed rugby's reputation at the International Olympic Committee. Pierre de Coubertin (the IOC president who championed rugbys inclusion at the modern Olympics) resigned the following year. Rugby was eliminated from the program in one way or another.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThen, there was another thing: the United States lost their rugby stardom. Although it is not clear exactly why, there could have been multiple reasons. A lack of an Olympic competition has deprived the sport of a high-level stage that potential rugby players could dream of. There isn't a major professional league for the sport in the United States. Although there are college rugby teams, scholarships are not available and only a handful of women's teams are sanctioned by the NCAA. Rugby is very competitive with other sports. In fact, Americans began to look for another sport to satisfy their bloodlust. American rugby was not helped by the rise of football in the middle 20th century.AdvertisementOur national rugby teams are not part of the elite group of elite squads. The American men rank 16th in the world, and they are nonfactors at the Rugby World Cup, which has a 322-year-old record. The women rank sixth. They won their first World Cup in 1991 but are still a long way behind the greats.AdvertisementThe 2020 Games are upon us and the United States stands a chance of winning both the women's and men's medals. Both the men and the women had a slightly less than 50 percent chance of reaching the podium according to pre-tournament betting odds. There are good chances that one of the American teams will make it to the podium. What happened? The IOC brought back rugby in a format that is highly beneficial to American rugby. The stars and stripes may just be a growing force in rugby sevens, which was introduced by the IOC at the 2016 Games.AdvertisementThe national rugby teams' recent success in Tokyo could be a major boost to efforts to make rugby more mainstream in America.Conventional rugby (or rugby union) is the 15-player-aside version of the sport which first appeared at the Summer Olympics in the early 20th Century. It is also the Rugby of the World Cup, where the United States often gets crushed. Traditionalists would consider rugby union to be the true rugby. Rugby union isn't the best choice for the Olympics. The game is brutal, with 30 players sharing one pitch, making for intense contact over the course of an 80-minute match. The 20-team men's World Cup took six weeks to complete in 2019. The Olympics cannot accommodate the recovery time required to host a proper rugby union tournament. Rugby advocates had been pushing for sevens inclusion since before the IOC adopted it in 2016. From start to finish, the Olympic sevens tournaments only take a few days.AdvertisementAdvertisementOne would be more suspicious to notice that the IOC is fond of television ratings and media attention. These metrics may be higher for a version that the United States excels at. I would not suggest that the IOC did not care about all sports interests. The Americans have made significant improvements in the seven-player version of the sport. The U.S. men's sevens team was ranked second worldwide in 2019, the last year of international matches before COVID-19 disrupted the calendar. It was ranked seventh in the 2020 season. The women's team finished second in 19 and fifth 20. These were both high marks in the annual sevens series competitions. The event featured a variety of international events. The men's series began in 1999 and the women's in 2012.AdvertisementSpeed seems to be the key. Sevens matches are played on the exact same pitch as union matches (100-by-70m). The drop in players from 30 to 14 gives plenty of space. Sevens matches last 14 minutes, instead of the usual 80. This rewards faster teams who can run for longer periods of time. This also reduces the chance of big, brutish opponents being physically worn down by long matches. Carlin Isles is the U.S. men's team's star. He was a former NFL practice squad player and elite sprinter who provides most of Team USA's offense. Isles is known as the Fastest Man to Rugby. Alev Kelter, a former Wisconsin soccer and hockey player, is the women's team's international try scorer. The try, which is the main scoring play in rugby sevens or union, is where a player runs down the field and holds the ball against the ground in order to score. You can think of rugby touchdowns.AdvertisementAmericans are well-suited to speed-based sports. The Americans were dominant in many track-and-field events. It is only natural that rugby sevens would be an ideal landing spot for some our most talented athletes. The Ringers Rodger Sherman explained that the men's national rugby team deliberately targeted former football players, and those at the end of their gridiron careers to make them useful rugby sevens players.AdvertisementTokyo's sevens tournament moves quickly. Both the men's and women's soccer competitions have a World Cup-style group stage. Twelve teams are divided into four groups of four. The top two teams from each groupplus the two third-place finishers advance to the quarterfinals. With wins against Kenyan and Irish on Monday, the American men have already made it to the quarterfinals. The U.S. women have joined a pool with Australia, the No. The pool includes Australia (the No. 2 team in the world last year), Japan (No. 11), and China (12). Japan (No. 11) and China (No. 13), are the other two teams in the world. 13), in a tournament which starts on Thursday. They can advance by simply beating the teams that they need to beat, even if they lose to the Aussies.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe United States is far from being the world's most powerful sevens power. Fiji and New Zealand are the top men's teams, but Fiji and New Zealand trade off for the top spot in the game. The top women's teams, however, remain with the Australians and Kiwis. We are still miles away from glory in old-school rugby union. Perhaps that will change one day. The United States should make rugby a popular sport. Its got brutal violence! It's a football-esque strategy! You can actually see the faces of the players, unlike American football! Given the American flavor for contact sports and the bright lights at the Olympics, it is easy to see one of the U.S. team in Tokyo winning hearts and minds. Even though it is possible for rugby sevens to benefit in the long-term, parents could steer their children away from football. However, that would take many years.AdvertisementUSA Rugby, the country's governing body, wants to be a more global player in the sport. It seeks to host the Rugby World Cup in 2027-2031. This is what its CEO describes as a benchmark for American Rugby. The Americas has never hosted a men's event; Canada hosted the women's once.AdvertisementThe success of the Japanese national team in Tokyo, fulfilling their promise to rugby, could be a major boost for efforts to make American rugby more mainstream. This would be a great achievement for American rugby and a unique way to do business in America. It would be a great sporting accomplishment to do something similar to us: take a sport that we don't know well, modify it, win an Olympic medal, while traditionally great rugby countries watch it happen.
