Lucky Number Nineteen

And so it's all over, bar the shouting.

Unless Blackburn pull out a surprising win over Manchester United on Saturday lunchtime (and it's over 5 years since United last failed to secure at least a point at Ewood Park), Sir Alex Ferguson will have guided United past Liverpool to a record 19th English league title.*

The expected 19-18 scoreline, however, is somewhat misleading. The first of Liverpool's 18 came in the 1900-01 season, and their most recent was in 1989-90, in the year after the Hillsborough disaster; United's started 7 years later than Pool's, in 1907-08, and their 18th was in 2008-09. While the chronological spread isn't so very different -- 89 years vs. (to date) 101 -- there is one fact that marks the two achievements as qualitatively different: United won 7 of their titles before the 1992 start of the English Premier League, and 11 have come since.

Traditions, as a collection of essays published in 2000 asserts, are invented. In other words, as much as the word 'tradition' conjures up ideas of age-old practices and dusty tomes, a 'tradition' is often a remarkably recent construction.

Nowhere is this more evident than in sport. The most recent example of this, in cricket, is the Indian Premier League, a competition that has brought together cricketing superstars -- often, as I commented last week, in the twilight of their careers -- to compete in a supercharged, low-attention-span, fizzy-drink form of the game.** Although the 20-over form of the game was in fact introduced into the English county game in 2003, it was the 2008 inauguration of the IPL -- with all the commercial perks of advertising, sponsorship, and astronomical signing fees -- that marked the beginning of the youngest of sporting traditions.

This commercial aspect is significant. To return to my initial topic: the tradition of football's English Premier League, 16 years its similarly named cricketing cousin's junior, saw an explosion in advertising, sponsorship, attendance, and merchandising revenue for the 22 (reduced to 20 in 1995) clubs in the English top flight. The link with BSkyB, who were granted exclusive broadcasting rights at the inception of the league, is a particularly contentious one. This particular tradition, then, as well as being heavily constructed, has been -- from the beginning -- a heavily commercial one.

My point, then, is this: while I do not mean to suggest that United's 18 (well, ok, 19) titles are in some way inferior to Liverpool's, having been achieved in the main (11/12 out of 18/19) with the help of the significant commercial backing that has arisen through the tradition of the BSkyB-backed Premiership, they should be seen as undoubtedly different.

But congratulations, United, on another success. And extra congratulations to the alcoholic-nosed, gum-chomping septuagenarian cyborg; will SAF ever retire?

*If United don't leave Ewood Park as champions, it'll be the first time in 9 years -- when Arsenal's 2-0 victory over Chelsea on May the 4th 2002 preceded the Gunners' clinching of the title four days later -- that the destination of FA Cup trophy has been decided earlier than the Premiership title.

**I'm aware this sounds like I have a fairly grumpy view of the IPL; this isn't in fact true, and this sentence was mainly included for the purposes of a cheap laugh along it's-just-not-cricket lines. Sorry about that.