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Myopically biased stubborn isolationism is not a valid reason...
Try again.
If anything the essay (satirical I imagine) shows one of the reasons why the U.S. is shunned by many other countries...
Here is a portion of an essay from Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs It took me awhile to find it on the net, but it's a very funny, and great read. Check it out, I bet you find yourself laughing.
George Will vs. Nick Hornby
Like many U.S. citizens, I spend much of my free time thinking about the future of sports and the future of our children. This is because I care deeply about sports.
In the spirit of both, I've spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, and exercise that has been lauded as "the sport of the future" since 1977. Thankfully, the future dystopia has never come. But people continue to tell me that soccer will soon become part of the fabric of this country, and that eventually be as popular as football, basketball, karate, pinball, smoking, glue sniffing, menstruation, animal cruelty, photocopying, and everything else that fuels the eroticized, hyper kinetic zeitgeist of Americana. After America placed eighth in the 2002 World Cup tournament, team forward Clint Mathis said, "If we can turn one more person who wasn't a soccer fan into a soccer fan, we've accomplished something." Apparently, that's all that matters to these idiots. They won't be satisfied until we are all systematically brainwashed into thinking soccer is cool and that placing eighth is somehow noble. However, I know this will never happen. Not really. Dumb bunnies like Clint Mathis will be wrong forever, and that might be the only thing saving us from ourselves.
My personal war against the so-called "soccer menace" probably reached it's peak in 1993, when I was nearly fired from a college newspaper for suggesting that soccer was the reason thousands of Brazilians are annually killed at Quiet Riot concerts in Rio de Janeiro, a statement that is-admittedly-half true. A few weeks after the publication of said piece, a pe ion to have me removed as the newspapers' sports editor was circulated by a ridiculously vocal campus organization called the Hispanic American Council, prompting an "academic hearing" where I was accused (with absolute seriousness) of libeling Pele. If memory serves, I think my criticism of soccer and Quiet Riot was somehow taken as racist., although-admittedly- I'm not completely positive, as I was intoxicated for most of the monthlong episode. But the bottom line is I'm still willing to die a painful public death, assuming my execution destroys the game of soccer (or--at the very least--convinces people to shut the up about it).
According to the Soccer Industry Council of America, soccer is the No. 1 youth participation sport in the U.S. There are more than 3.6 million players under the age of 19 registered to play, and that number has been expanding 8% every year since 1990. There has also been a substantial increase in the number of kids who play past the age of 12, a statistic that soccer proponents are especially thrilled about. "These are the players that will go on to be fans, referees, coaches, and players in the future," observed Virgil Lewis, chairman of the United States Youth Soccer Association.
Certainly, I can't argue with Virgil's math: I have no doubt that battalions of Gatorade-stained children are running around the green wastelands of suburbia, randomly kicking a black and white ball in the general direction of tuna netting. However, Lewis's larger logic is profoundly flawed. There continues to be this blindly optimistic belief that all of the brats playing soccer in 2003 are going to be crazed MLS fans in 2023, just as it was assumed that 11 year old players in 1983 would be watching Bob Costas provide play-by-play for soccer games right now. That will never happen. We will never care about soccer in this country. And it's not just because soccer is inherently un-American, which is what most soccer haters tend to insinuate. It's mostly because soccer is geared towards Outcast Culture.
On the surface, one might assume that would actually play to soccer's advantage, as America has plenty of outcasts. Some American outcasts are very popular, such as OutKast. But Outcast culture does not meld with Intimidation Culture, and the latter aesthetic has always been the cornerstone of team sports. An outcast can be intimidating in an individual event-Mike Tyson and John McEnroe are proof-but they rarely thrive in the social environment of a team organism (e.g. Albert Belle, Pete Maravich). Unless your Barry Bonds, being an outcast is an hetical to the group concept. But soccer is the one sport that is the one exception to that reality: Soccer contentiously rewards the outcast, which is was so many adults are fooled into thinking kids love it. The truth is that most kids do not love soccer, they simply hate the alternatives more. For 60% of adolescents in any 4th grade classroom, sports are a humiliation waiting to happen. These are the kids who play baseball and strike out 4 times a game. These are the kids who are afraid to get fouled in basketball, because it only means they're now required to shoot two free throws, which equates to two air-balls. Basketball games actually stops to recognize their failure. And football is nothing more than a ironical death sentence; somehow, outcasts find themselves in a situation where the people normally penalized for teasing them are suddenly urged to annihilate them.
This is why soccer seems like such a respite from all that mortification; it's the one aerobic activity where nothingness is expected. Even at the highest levels, every soccer match seems to end 1-0 or 2-1. A normal 11 year old can play an entire season without placing a toe to a ball and nobody would even notice, assuming he or she does a proper job of running about and avoiding major collisions. Soccer feels "fun" because it's not terrifying- its the only sport where you can't up. An outcast can succeed simply by not failing, and public failure is every outcast's deepest fear. For society's prepubescent pariahs, soccer represents safety.
However, the demand for such an oasis disappears once an outcast escapes from the imposed slavery of youth athletics; by the time they reach the 9th grade, it's perfectly acceptable to quit the team and shop at Hot Topic. Most youth soccer players end up joining the debate team before they turn 15. Meanwhile, the kind of person who truly loves the notion of sports (and perhaps, sadly, unconsciously needs to have sports in their life) doesn't want to watch or play a game designed for losers. They're never going to care about a sport where announcers inexplicably celebrate the beauty of missed shots and the strategic glory or repe ive stalemate. We want to see domination. We want to see athletes who don't look like us, and who we could never be. We want to see people who could destroy us, and we want to feel like that desire is normal. But those people don't exist in soccer; their game is dominated by mono-monikered clones obsessed with falling to their knees and ripping off their clothes.
Soccer fanatics love to tell you that soccer is the most popular game on earth and that it's played by 500 million people every day, as if that somehow proves it's value. Actually, the opposite is true. Why should I care that every single citizen of Chile and Iran and Gibraltar thoughtlessly adore "futball"? Do people making this argument also assume Coca-Cola is ambrosia? Real sports arn't for everyone. And don't accuse me of being the ugly American for degrading soccer. That has nothing to do with it. It's not xenophobic to hate soccer, it's socially reprehensible to support it. To say you love soccer is to say you believe in enforced equality more than you believe in the value of compe ion and the capacity of human spirit. It should surprise no one that Benito Mussolini loved being photographed with Italian soccer stars during the 1930's; they were undoubtedly kindred spirits. I would sooner have my kid deal crystal meth than play soccer.
That said, I don't think my thoughts on soccer are radical. If push come to shove, I would be more than willing to compromise: It's not necessary to wholly outlaw soccer as a living en y. I concede that it has the right to exist. All I ask is that I never have to see it on T.V., that it's not played in public, and that nobody-and I mean nobody-ever utters the phrase "soccer is the sport of the future"
Myopically biased stubborn isolationism is not a valid reason...
Try again.
If anything the essay (satirical I imagine) shows one of the reasons why the U.S. is shunned by many other countries...
I really don't give a if it's big in the United States or not. I actually think it's hilarious that most Americans care more about women's softball and other sports (or games; like golf, poker, hot dog eating contests, bowling, billiards, etc...). The only thing that gets to me is listening to the ESPN bags speak of how Barry Bonds is about the break the "most important record in ALL of sports."You've gotta be in kidding me...
Yeah, I laughed when I heard that too...
The most coveted record in all sports belongs to 'O Rey' Pelé....
Soccer will never be big in the us because americans have a love for instant gratification. They want to see thier team winning by means of score, they want to see flashy plays that actually "score".
I love basketball but youll never see me travel to other parts of the world to watch our team play in a world wide tourny, unless it was at the oly only cause Im there to watch soccer in the first place!
Soccer is the world's game because they aren't smart enough outside the US to come up with better than kicking a black and white ball back and forth. And back. And forth. And back. And back...
Like NASCAR?
Not a fair comparison. We're talking about ACTUAL sports here. Rednecks driving in a circle doesn't fit that desription.
case closed. With this you showed how ignorant you are about the subject. You don't like it, because you don't care to learn about it, plain and simple. You opinion on the subject just went from poor to irrelevant.
FYI- the Galaxy game is on tv right now on some spanish language channel. In San Antonio, time warner cable, it's channel 19.
I don't mind people not liking football, its perfectly understandable, tastes vary... but please refrain from commenting on things you have not a clue about. I don't like American football or baseball, but I'm not about to claim football is better than the two.
The funny thing is, Americans don't like people from around the world touting football as the best sport out there, and yet people in this thread are quick to label the sport as boring and for people "not smart enough" to play anything else? Yeah... that makes sense.
Soccer will never be popular because it isn't a homegrown sport and networks always fight televising games because there is only one stoppage in play, as opposed to 19 90 second breaks in the NFL, 13 in NCAAF and breaks every half inning in baseball.
I still can't believe that people actually think 1 billion people watch the Super Bowl.
Last edited by DisgruntledLionFan#54,927; 07-24-2007 at 11:30 PM.
USA doesn't need soccer, and soccer doesn't need the USA; plain and simple. I mean, being a soccer fanatic, I don't want soccer to turn into a in Hollywood parade as it did when Beckham "arrived" in the USA. They overhyped and diluded his coming to the MLS, mostly because of what The_Worlds_Finest said: Americans want INSTANT GRATIFICATION. They want to see a pretty face, with his pretty-faced wife, playing the world's most popular, most important sport for ONE GAME. It's not the fault of the Americans that they don't "ACCEPT" soccer as an important sport; it's just that they have choices. They are Red Sox fans in the summer, Patriots fans in the fall/winter, and Celtics fans in the spring. The rest of the world refers to "sports" as ONE sport: soccer.
So England should have the only soccer fans in the world?
No, I meant why Americans don't like it.
Take motor sports, for example: Most Americans who love NASCAR don't follow, or even know of, F1 or MotoGP racing.
I was being sarcastic.
Soccer still sucks.I was being sarcastic
That's your problem..................... aside from being a Lions fan, but that's a topic for another day (and another forum)
the situation in the US, is just like what is happening to the league in australia
no one supports it, even the big corporates dont support it, soccer/football will always be a minority player in australia. When they tried to promote the league, it was on free to air tv, and ppl still didnt watch it, untill a revamp of the league, a proper structure, more govt funding it got back on its toes.
The league only does well when the national team does well, look at the worldcup for example, socceroos did well and ppl started to watch soccer and supporting the national league, and whats fukd up about it is that after that success, the league thought it could make more money and getting more suppporters by not havin free-to air coverage which is wrong. Not many ppl have cable etc so they are either force to attent the games or a joint to watch it.
No offense...but the fact that NASCAR has a tab on ESPN.com shows why any commentary about the legitimacy of soccer or any sport in general from America should be ignored.....
It's just not on enough here.
Plus, what we get is like watching Serie C2.
... which brings me to my next point. ESPN in the USA is such a damn joke. They choose to ignore the more important sports, and show fukin poker in the middle of the night. Change it to ESPN Int. or ESPN deportes and they're showing some kind of sport: Pan American games, basketball, soccer, track & field, swimming, taped Champions League games, ing something that takes sweat and balls to play.
Rock, Paper, Scissors isn't sweeping the globe?
Probably because at udes like that.
I hope futbol never takes off in the US. It gives me something to watch abroad that I can't watch here - I like that in my vacations.
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