I'm gonna watch these guys kick a ball up and down the field for more than an hour and end up with a score of 1-0?
I don't think so.
Posted on 08/03/2004 3:12:33 PM PDT by swilhelm73
Reduce the number of players and allow them to sub so they have the energy to really go all out and you may be on to something...but that's more or less already a sport called ice hockey...
Soccer is a foreign invention. Americans don't play cricket, do we?
I would also point out that soccer is not popular in the U.S. for the same reason that baseball is losing its popularity: It simply has a reputation for being a Third World sport.
I'm gonna watch these guys kick a ball up and down the field for more than an hour and end up with a score of 1-0?
I don't think so.
Whether you're on the edge of your seat waiting on a 3-2 with two outs pitch, or anticipating a fourth and inches with 45 seconds left - the moment gets to be savored.
Soccer is just ants running back and forth.
It's paintball!
This is a dumb article.
The reason soccer hasn't taken off in the US is because it is not a TV sport. For several reasons its not a TV sports. For one.. Soccer is best viewed in attendance, not sitting on your couch watching it.
Number two, there is less advertising opportunity in soccer. You can only run TV ads at half-time. .
Also, the quality of soccer has alot to do with it. You can't see much world class soccer in the US, anything less than world class soccer is horrible on TV.
Soccer is too subtle for most American sport's fans, hockey has the same problem. People get irritated by movement without scoring, they don't understand flow and positional mechanics. Add to that the fact that the TV networks hate sports without regular and predictable stoppages of play for commercials and you've got a sport that will never crack the top three.
That being said I don't understand why so many people on both sides of this discussion have to be such insulting doofuses. So you do/ don't like a sport, who gives a damn, neither position makes you special or interesting.
My solution:
400 players on the field at once.
50 balls in play at the same time.
Ditches and barbed wire across the field.
Topless cheerleaders.
Then I'll watch it!
Now you sound like Michael Moore.
What is more subtle than the difference between an 0-2 count and 2-0 count?
We don't like soccer? News to me. It can't be because it's lacking in violence -- we don't watch Aussie Rules Football either (well, I do, but not many others).
I think the biggest reason is because we don't dominate. Like Patton said, America loves a winner. And we don't like being in a sport where we know we aren't the best and don't even have the ability to win world titles. However, we are getting better, from total nobodys to the quarter finals in the World Cup rather quickly.
Wait until we start winning, then see the crowds. And we WILL start winning. Nothing stops Americans once we get our hearts set on something.
This article was pretty boring too.
Perhaps the physcially distinguishing characteristic of human beings---opposable thumbs, digital dexterity---and you play a game where that is the one thing you DON'T use? Makes no sense to me. Of course, look at the acheivements of the US (where the loved sports pastimes are football, baseball, basketball) and then look at the societies that play soccer----they generally can't figure out basic hygeine and civil utilities. What does that tell you?
Hence the critical mass of American cycling fans, that Lance has inspired... </sarc>
How about giving one player on each team a baseball bat for use on opposing players' shins? That'd loosen things up!
This is like the "paperless office" or the end of "brick and mortar retail".
Well hey, riding a bike, unlike soccer, is fun. But why on earth would I want to watch someone else do it?
I'm not insulting anybody just telling the truth. In soccer, much like in hockey, there's a lot of movement with the sole purpose of trying to teach the opponent to do one thing in reaction to you so that later in the game you can do something he doesn't expect catch him out of position and get a scoring opportunity. And historically American sports audiences don't like that kind of subtlety, they don't enjoy sports where tilting your shoulders one way is all about setting the other player up for an embarassment in 20 minutes.
Just about everything in soccer and hockey is more subtle than the difference between an 0-2 and a 2-0. In the world of flow oriented sports there is nothing about baseball that's even remotely subtle.
I am open to anything to make it more exciting! Livestock grazing? Fireworks? Live electrical wires? Waxing the grass? Snipers in the stands?
Wow, the game's over . . . No, we must first play seven minutes of "injury time" after the clock has run down to 00:00!
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