How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad (In honor of the World Cup)

First Things ^ | 3/5/2009 | Stephen H. Webb

[antiRepublicrat]

If they stop talking then a lot of people will get to concentrate on the game for once and realize just how boring it really is and they might stop watching.

My initial hatred of announcers came from watching American football. They are by far the worst. Maybe you're right about the reason.

BTW, German announcers doing soccer aren't as bad. And overall racing announcers aren't as bad as the games played on fields. Golf announcers annoy me with their whisper voices, trying to add tension and excitement to the most boring pro game on the planet.

[1rudeboy]

Did you get it playing football, or soccer? Equally likely.

[1rudeboy]

NFL announcers are the worst. It's almost as if they think their audiences will doze-off and miss the commercials.

[Grunthor]

Golf announcers annoy me with their whisper voices, trying to add tension and excitement to the most boring pro game on the planet.

---

I wouldn’t know. I’ve never sat through a match.

[Vermont Lt]

I photography about fifty college soccer games a season. Some of them are really good college teams (NCAA finalists and what-not.)

For the most part I think the problem is the inability of TV to capture what is going on, and missing the athleticism that happens. It is not dissimilar to hockey in that way.

When I shoot a college team that is good, and does not have a football program, the fans tend to be more soccer-smart and they are really into it. However, if there is a football program, the stands are filled with parents. And Girlfriends. Sometimes.

I appreciate the strategy and effort that goes into a well played game. But when I am standing around in a New England November on a Saturday night, I would rather be watching a football game than a 90 minute freeze fest.

Just my opinion.

[Dr. Sivana]

That’s just silly.

While I don't completely share Andy's take, it isn't completely silly. Here's why. (I am going to simplify, but I believe the gist is true)

Like it or not, every sport has its ambassadors. When I was growing up, baseball was on par with NFL football and in New England, hockey was also well appreciated by blue collar types, basketball by urban types.

Then, the '70's

The NASL was introduced to great fanfare. The great Pelé was going to introduce soccer to masses of ignorant Americans and it would become a major sport here, if not THE major sport. Equipment was comparatively cheap, so it got expanded in the schools. Moms, especially divorcved moms, perceived soccer as being less aggressive than football or baseball (rightly or wrongly).

In that wave, then the ambassadors of the sport were in charge moms and Euro-weenies. By Euro-weenie, I don't mean Stanley Slobovski on the bowling team. I mean Francois at the prep school (I went to prep school) who either ignored at the popular American sports in general, or simply sneered that anyone who didn't appreciate soccer was parochial and unsophisticated.

The New York Cosmos sold out the Meadowlands a few times, and people tried watching it, and found it lacking. The NASL eventually shrunk to four teams (The L.A. Aztecs were one). The standings were based, not just on wins, losses and ties, but on bonus points, which were based on offensive goals to encourage more scoring, to a point. It did not take long for a couple of under the bubble teams playing each other to figure out that each team could improve its place in the standings by simply aggreing to allow a few extra goals on each side to be scored .. a bit of a scandal.

Anyway, the NASL died, but the pod seeds were planted in the elementary and jr. high schools. While most of the youths changed sports as they got "too big for soccer" (extreme example, Ndamukong Suh, drafted #2 by Detroit Lions), those who stuck with it largely adopted the attitudfe of the Euro-weenies.

In the next wave, you can add recent Latin American immigrants, legal and illegal, and some Americans get perturbed that some number of them do not adopt, or even learn, English, or pick up American culture (this ain't the 50's so I don't necessarily blame them for the latter). When they start kicking around the soccer ball in a softball outfield where a local team in having batting and fielding practice, it can create an annoyance. To the Latinos, no one is doing anything very important in the outfield, and aren't particularly interested in having it explained to them, even if they COULD understand English.

These people do not necessarily make the best ambassadors. Moreover, certain kinds of conservatives will be wary of a sport with such ambassadors in the same way they are wary of Volvos, hemp-based soap and Birkenstocks. The main consumers of these items are associated with a certain lifestyle. Conservatives don't want to be associated with that lifestyle. Soccer has fallen into both the Euro-weenie "citizen of the world" AND the hooligan/not interested in being American immigrant that many don't want to be associated with.

For my part, I don't like the sport, and there are enough sports in my life that I do like.

[Vermont Lt]

Blindsided in football.

Quite honestly, soccer was big in my high school—bigger than football.

But, since i was a rather large young man, the constant running in soccer was a significant downside.

See my post above about my covering soccer for a living. Seriously, without significant changes in the way TV covers it, it will not be popular here.

[AGreatPer]

A 1-1 draw would be a wonderful win for South Africa.
They are major underdogs.

[Dr. Sivana]

Soccer is important throughout the world.

Soccer is not important in the U.S. If watching the World Cup became impossible, there would be no major disruptions, except in some Latino neighborhoods. The importance of the U.S. worldwide is greater than its population. If the U.K., France, Spain and Germany dropped soccer spontaneously, that would be smaller than the U.S. population, but few would claim it as the worldwide sport, even if it became more popular in Asian nations to make up for the loss.

[Grunthor]

Very good post.

[1rudeboy]

Professional sports is a business. I might think Mountain Dew is for kids, and Perrier drinkers are effete, but I don’t mind someone trying to sell me one or the other. If I want it, I’ll buy it. And I don’t feel insecure about people out there drinking Coke.

[antiRepublicrat]

I can't get over how biased these English announcers are. They hate SA.

Well, the only reason SA is in the finals is because they're hosting. They would not have qualified on merit as all the other teams had to.

That's not pure guesswork either. SA played the qualifying rounds for the WC because those same games constituted the qualifying rounds for the African Cup of Nations, and SA didn't even qualify for that.

[andy58-in-nh]

Interesting analysis. I said what I did half in jest, as you may now realize. The grain of truth within is that soccer is not a sport that (in its chosen incarnation) ever translated well to the U.S. professional sports mainstream. Failed leagues and flagging attendance figures testify to that reality: for as much as our educational establishments tried to push it upon students, eventually (as adults) their interests often returned to football, baseball, basketball, and hockey.

[Vaquero]

I like bacon with my bacon.

"excellent choice and to drink???"

Meatballs

[AGreatPer]

"Well, the only reason SA is in the finals is because they're hosting."

You obviously don't know what your talking about.
They are undefeated in their last 12 games.

[Dr. Sivana]

The cup was broadcast in primetime on NBC.

Shows how much I follow TV these days. The best since 1974 (when it was also on NBC) ratings tells us two things.

1. The NHL would do well to stick (in the U.S.) with northern big market cities. The ratings were much better with Chicago-Philadelphia than they would be with Carolina-Minnesota.

2. Get the best deal you can for exposure. ESPN2 is better than the Field and Stream network. NBC is better than either.

Because of the importance of Canada in the NHL, they are in a sticky position. I think a Maple Leafs-Bruins matchup would be incredle for US/Canada ratings (nothing against the Rangers, just that Boston's market isn't split three ways).

[antiRepublicrat]

Soccer is not important in the U.S. If watching the World Cup became impossible, there would be no major disruptions, except in some Latino neighborhoods.

Yet there would be riots throughout the world, while the rest of the world wouldn't care if the Super Bowl got canceled.

[Fiji Hill]

“Baseball is only dull to dull minds.”—Red Barber

[antiRepublicrat]

They are undefeated in their last 12 games.

Against whom? I see that they have a bottom-rung history in the WC, and they failed to qualify for even the African Cup of Nations this year. But it's understandable. They've only been playing high-level internationally since the mid 90s due to Apartheid.

[dfwgator]

This was not a good result for El Tri.