Unsportsmanlike Conduct?
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The latest Tank McNamara strip imagines a conversation between referees before today's Ravens versus Cowboys game in Rio:
What Cristo Redentor is signaling, visible from near Estádio do Maracanã (though probably not from inside it):
How the comic strip ref is interpreting that gesture:
In my opinion, the orientation of the statue's hands, presumably offering an embrace, is not consistent with the gestural iconicity of its interpretation as a referee's signal for unsportsmanlike conduct. But still, it's a good joke.
See also "If the NFL goes international, what are the challenges and what cities make sense?"
Jason said,
September 27, 2026 @ 8:42 am
A whole essay could be written on the semiotics of framing it as "forcing our version of football" on the world, given that British Association Football's spread in Europe and former European colonies eradicated the indigenous game of Field Handball, and most of soccer's success is clearly due to the legacy of cultural imperialism of the British Empire. It's amazing that Bill Hinds manages to resist making charges of "cultural imperialism" in this strip. It may only be a lightweight cartoon strip, but it's still revealing as to how much self-flagellation is the reflexive stance of what passes for satire among the chattering classes.
Tom Ace said,
September 27, 2026 @ 10:06 am
The statue could be construed as signaling R in flag semaphore, especially on International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
David L said,
September 27, 2026 @ 11:48 am
most of soccer's success is clearly due to the legacy of cultural imperialism of the British Empire
Clearly? Soccer is huge in South and Central America, all of Europe and Russia, pretty much all of Africa…
Cricket was spread internationally via the British Empire, but hasn't gone very beyond that. Similarly squash. Badminton is thriving mostly in non-Empire countries.
Jerry Packard said,
September 27, 2026 @ 12:07 pm
The ref is signaling that the runner is ‘safe’ .
Jonathan Smith said,
September 27, 2026 @ 1:11 pm
re: association football / soccer "eradicated the indigenous game of Field Handball" in northern Europe etc. — no haha, field handball was soccer turned into a throwing game.
Comic presumably began as a funny idea re: christ the redeemer as American football ref signaling "unsportsmanlike," to which five panels were (p)added on to build up to the punchline such as it is. Author/artist goes to special lengths to dodge heehaw from the heehawing classes by including a second ref to balance rhetorically-central first ref's arguable "wokeness" — for naught of course.
Andrew Usher said,
September 27, 2026 @ 1:11 pm
Given that _all_ popular sports were invented in the Anglosphere, I don't think that alone can justify any claim of 'imperialism'.
The distributions noted by David L show that the popularity of sports can't be explained solely by that, and even where there is a historical connection, that's not likely to be an 'imposition' as much as a spontaneous shift under exposure to that sport. For you really can't 'force' anyone to like a particular sport – and the NFL just believes (rightly or wrongly) that there's enough current and potential fans outside North America to make it worthwhile to do this.
BasJ said,
September 27, 2026 @ 1:28 pm
Clearly a cricket umpire signalling a wide:
https://www.gettyimages.nl/detail/foto/cricket-umpire-signaling-wide-ball-royalty-free-beeld/144459832
David Morris said,
September 27, 2026 @ 3:25 pm
The 'core' 'colonial' countries (Ireland, USA, Canada, Australia, NZ and South Africa) are among the very few places where association football/soccer isn't the dominant football code, and the Indian sub-continent countries are among the few where it isn't the dominant sport of any kind. (Australia has four football codes played at high level.)
Dwight Williams said,
September 27, 2026 @ 5:21 pm
Jesus is all about meeting people where they're at. So, the refs do need a refresher on that, and on the "palms out vs palms down" thing…and yeah, He'd probably feel free to have some fun with Talk Like a Pirate Day, too!
Steve Morrison said,
September 27, 2026 @ 8:14 pm
That reminds me of Touchdown Jesus.
Seonachan said,
September 27, 2026 @ 10:37 pm
On a main road in my town there a church at a T intersection, with a statue of Jesus facing the traffic coming from the side street. His arms and hands are extended forward, so he's known as Stop Sign Jesus.
Richard Hershberger said,
September 28, 2026 @ 4:30 am
All major team sports were, as Andrew Usher notes, invented in the Anglosphere. This is not because the English invented team sports, but they were the first to arrive at the idea of organized adult clubs competing against one another. Which sport is dominant where is totally about the history of the British Empire:
Divide British Imperial history into three (overlapping) phases: The first from roughly 1600 to the American Revolution, the second from the Seven Years War to the Scramble for Africa, and the third from then through the Second World War.
The first phase predates the rise of organized team sports. The North American settlers brought sports with them as part of their shared cultural heritage, but as folk games. Baseball was the one that won out as an organized adult game in the 1850s. (Forget any fairy tales you might have heard about an American inventor of baseball.) There also was a substrate of football, which due to some very contingent circumstances landed on rugby in the 1870s, which in North America quickly evolved into the gridiron forms. There also were several Caribbean island colonies in this era, but their white populations were small, and continuously rotating back home, so their sporting traditions developed during the second phase.
Cricket was the characteristic sport of the second phase. It remains wildly popular in India, which today is the real center of the sport. Australia famously beat England in a test match in 1882, leading to The Ashes obituary for English cricket. Look at the serious cricket nations and their sporting traditions arose in this era.
English Football (soccer) clubs arose in the 1850s (the same time as American baseball–any serious history of world sport should ponder this correlation) but did not really get going until a few decades later. The first international football match was in 1870, but that is "international" in the England vs. Scotland sense. Its spread was tied to the third phase of the Empire, via both direct imperialism (that huge swath of pink on maps of Africa), economic imperialism (large expatriate populations in Buenos Aires and the like) and soft power (continental Europeans copying the Brits, who obviously were onto something). These account for a huge part of the globe, accounting for football (soccer) being the dominant sport through so much of the world.
Gokul Madhavan said,
September 28, 2026 @ 11:08 am
Harvard’s cricket club was founded some time in the 1860s. (I played a tiny role in reviving the club during my undergrad days, and that was when the club secretary discovered documents in the university archives regarding the original founding of the club.) Here’s an article from the Crimson from 1885 discussing the sport: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1885/4/30/the-harvard-cricket-club-a-casual/
Charlie Hallinan said,
September 28, 2026 @ 6:44 pm
The strip inevitably brings to mind the University of Notre Dame, home to both Touchdown Jesus (https://www.uhnd.com/history/touchdown-jesus/) & Fair Catch Corby (https://www.wndu.com/2024/07/02/fair-catch-corby-honored-with-flags/).
Jason said,
September 29, 2026 @ 9:00 am
@Jonathan Smith
"no haha, field handball was soccer turned into a throwing game."
No, incorrect, field handball is a game as old as any of the 19th century football codes, I have an article from 1805 describing it. The specific version played in Europe, particularly Germany, in the early 20th century owes a lot to association rules, true, but the actual game is much older
HS said,
September 29, 2026 @ 7:12 pm
Given that _all_ popular sports were invented in the Anglosphere,
Really? Depending upon what you mean by "popular" (and where in the world you are referring to), what you mean by "invented" (and is that the same as or different from "codified"), and whether you are talking about team sports versus individual sports, that might possibly be true, but athletics goes back to at least ancient Greece and those funny things called the "Olympic Games" (and the modern Olympic Games must be one of the most watched sporting events on the planet), wrestling in one form or another goes back to ancient Greece and Egypt and Turkey and Mongolia and Japan and is very big in some of those countries, tennis goes back to medieval France (though it seems they didn't use rackets, which were apparently an English invention), and cycling goes back to France and other European countries in the 19th century (and the Tour de France must also be one of the most watched sporting events on the planet, while the Giro d'Italia probably isn't very far behind). Oh, and while golf is generally considered to go back to 15th century Scotland (and you could debate how much of that was part of the "Anglosphere" at the time) there is some evidence that a form of it was played earlier in the Netherlands.