Alternative History
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Athletics were all but forgotten when the missiles were launched in the early hours UTC of September 26, 1983.

In the aftermath, gone were the great soccer leagues of Europe, the vaunted sports programs of the Soviet Bloc, the glamour of the National Football League in the United States, the deep-rooted tradition that baseball had in the U.S. and the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere also lost athletes in the nuclear war and its aftermath.

As nation-states came into existence, or continued their existence through the difficult years post-Doomsday, and their societies stabilized, athletics became an important tool for cultural morale.

In recent years, domestic competitions in numerous sports have returned in the survivor states in Europe, North America, Asia and Africa. South America's domestic leagues in soccer and other sports resumed play in the mid-1980s and today are considered the strongest and most successful leagues in the world. The ANZC competitions also resumed in the late-80s after government officials deemed that rugby and Australian Rules football would aid public morale as the country rebuilt from the loss of three of its greatest cities.

International competition has resumed, foremost in soccer, which is finishing qualifying tournaments for the 2010 FIFA World Cup to be held in the Celtic Alliance. The Federation de Internationale Football Association (FIFA) was restarted in 1986 by South American soccer officials and its headquarters are currently located in Paraguay; discussions are ongoing about whether to keep it there or relocate it to its previous headquarters, Zurich in what is now the Alpine Confederation.

International governing bodies for various other sports, from swimming to rugby, cricket to basketball, athletics to baseball, are in various processes of organizing themselves, in cooperation with the League of Nations. The ANZC, the South American Confederation and the LoN helped to reorganize the International Olympic Committee, and the revival of the Olympic Games. The first resumption of the Winter Games is scheduled for February 2010 in the Alpine Confederation; the first post-Doomsday Summer Games will be in the ANZC in 2012, with the Games to be contested in Brazil in 2016.

Professional sports have slowly reorganized, beginning in Central and South America; the rest of the world began to catch up during the 2010s.

Competitions[]

See also[]

Basketball

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