bout the only thing MORE boring than sucker, is womens sucker...
Posted on 01/04/2006 3:23:20 PM PST by Right Wing Assault
American football, basketball and baseball have millions of followers, but they can't match soccer for sheer excitement, says a team of scientists.
The reason is its element of surprise, claim researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, US.
Football is more likely to produce an unexpected result, such as a "giant killer" win in the FA Cup.
Scientists analysed results from more than 300,000 games played over the past century.
They reviewed five sports: ice hockey, football, baseball and basketball in the US, and English football.
The team decided to make unpredictability - how often a leading team is overcome by an opponent with a worse record - the best measure of how exciting a league is.
"If there are no upsets, then every game is predictable and hence boring," co-author Eli Ben-Naim told New Scientist magazine.
The results of the analysis showed that the "upset frequency" was highest for soccer, followed by baseball, hockey, and basketball. American football came last on the list, and so was labelled the least exciting sport.
But there was a twist in the tail.
When the scientists looked only at data from the past 10 years, English Premiership football and baseball swapped places.
One interpretation of the finding might be that soccer has become more predictable in recent years.
Soccer - the sport for guys too small to make the football team.
I have never understood the appeal of soccer. What a bore.
And I'm a former athlete adept in many sports.
bout the only thing MORE boring than sucker, is womens sucker...
Soccer's unpredictability means that the better team is less likely to win than in other sports. In other words, soccer punishes the strong and lifts the downtrodden. What perfect social justice!
They need to give them machete's, and maybe a pistol here and there. Maybe then I would watch it.
Actually, I still wouldn't watch it.
Soccer is luck. Kick the s*%t out of the ball and hope it somehow makes it into the goal through all of the obstacles and the gay guy that can use his hands doesn't get there in time.
The only time that soccer is watchable is if it is your seven-year-old child's club games. For "exciting" sports, I'll take NFL/ NCAA football and NCAA basketball over World Cup soccer any day.
If unpredictability makes sports more interesting, why don't we just put the players from the two teams in a hat and pick sides at random?
Why do you think there are soccer leagues for 5 year old girls?
It's a self-esteem sport.
"Oh look, my little Shitney kicked the ball!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Never mind that she kicked it out of bounds or to an opposing player ... EVERYONE in soccer gets to kick the ball in some random direction. And really, isn't that all that matters?
That would be a great game. Muslims would love it, too!
Why anyone would want to go watch a bunch of men poke a ball around a field without the use of their arms (no other "sport" that I have ever witnessed takes away one's arms and hands in its execution) is far, far beyond my comprehension?
This joke of a sport has failed at least four times in the USA. Lack of interest.
I honestly believe that the reason that soccer is so popular worldwide is not because of its being an interesting game; it's because it doesn't require much in the way of equipmet. Consider its requirements, especially as opposed to those of baseball, with its multitude of baseballs, bats, batting helmets,gloves, catcher's equipment, fences surrounding the park, bases and home plate, a pitcher's mound that must be maintained to certain specs. It's the ideal sport for a third world country. Four goal posts, some netting, one soccer ball, and you're in the business.
Soccer has all the excitement of a chess tournament
Surprised that one side actually scored a goal.
Surprised that Australian Rules Football didn't get a looksee. Now there's excitement.
And more blood than any televised slugfest that turmed into a pHockey game.
In my neighborhood loads of kids, both girls and boys play, play soccer. When they grow up, however, the great majority of them have no interest in attending soccer matches.
The earlier scenario made no sense. If it was the bottom of the ninth inning and home team was ahead, they would have won the game.
Found on the Net a long time ago:
After watching my six year old son Justin's first two soccer games this spring I finally understand why
Europeans riot at soccer matches. For the same reason that inmates riot in prisons: out of sheer boredom.
There is no surer sign of decline of America's culture than the modern-day craze over this godawful
European sport. Drive past a park on a clear spring afternoon and your likely to witness a depressingly unpatriotic sight: the baseball diamond lies empty as crab grass grows in the infield,
while herds of healthy red-blooded American children dressed in preposterous looking polyester
uniforms run around aimlessly kicking a white and black ball nowhere and to no apparent end.
Soccer at any level--from six and under peewee leagues to the pros (I am forever amazed that there
are people who would actually pay money to watch a soccer game)--is about as scintillating as 90
minutes of Court TV. Soccer is somewhat reminiscent of ACC college basketball games in the
pre-shot-clock era when halftime scores were in the single digits: North Carolina 9, Virginia 7.
(What is it they used to say about Dean Smith? The only man who ever held Michael Jordan to less
than 20 points a game.)
Soccer is the least offensive-minded game ever invented. They might as well establish a slaughter
rule once a team gains a two goal advantage. Throw in the towel. No mas. To overcome such a
deficit is to ask the losing team to climb Mt. Everest.
During the second period of one game last year a Good Humor truck drove by the park and on
hearing the tinkling of the bells half our team instinctively awoke from their on-field slumber and
scrambled from the playing field in joyous pursuit. Finally a prize worth pursuing.
Meanwhile, on the field the game relentlessly continued. For more than five minutes our opponents
commanded the equivalent of a five-man power play advantage and they still couldn't score. Now I
know what it must have been like to have lived through the Hundred Years War. Soccer is the
furthest thing imaginable from instant gratification.
No other activity in life requires so much effort for so little reward. Ninety-nine point nine percent of
the action in a soccer game has virtually no bearing on the outcome of the game. Herein may lie the
explanation for why so many of my government-bureaucrat neighbors in the Virginia suburbs of
Washington, D.C. have a love affair with soccer.
In soccer every mother's child is above average. There's no shame in losing (no wonder the French
love this sport so much) and a tie is the likely outcome. No one's performance is better than anyone
else's and no child can be, God-forbid, judged. This egalitarian philosophy extends to the absurdity
of giving every kid a trophy at the end of the season. Even the kids that stunk up the place.
I am convinced that the ordeal of soccer teaches our kids all the wrong lessons in life. Soccer is the
Marxist concept of the labor theory of value applied to sports--which may explain why socialist
nations dominate in the World Cup. The purpose of a capitalist economy is to produce the maximum
output for theleast amount of exertion and work. Soccer produces huge volumes of work and effort
but no output.
What makes peewee soccer particularly insidious is that boys and girls play together. The left has
converted this sport into a giant social experiment imposed upon us by the geniuses that have put
women in combat in the military. No one seems to care much that co-ed sports is doing irreparable
harm to the psyche of America's little boys.
At this prepuberty state of life girls tower over the boys and typically have greater coordination. Last
year the Pele of my son's league was a kindergartner named Kate Lynn--Secretariat in pig tails.
During one game, Kate Lynn stampeded over Justin repeatedly, which, of course, did wonders for
his fledgling self-esteem. After the third knockdown, I quietly pulled him aside and advised:
"Remember that rule about never hitting a girl. Let's suspend that for he next 40 minutes." But he
never did because she was bigger than he was.
If the girls are bad, the moms are worse. They berate the referees. Taunt opposing players. Nag the
coach unmercifully to put their no-talent kid back in. One woman paced the sidelines all game in a
wild-eye frenzy screaming: "Jeffrey, Jeffrey, Jeffrey..." My kingdom for a muzzle. Once the game
mercifully ended she smothered him with hugs while cooing: "Oh Jeffrey you are soooo good at
soccer." Take my word for it, Newt, the Republican party is much better off without these women.
If she's in, I'm out.
During the games, I usually stand mute on the sidelines reading the newspaper. My refusal to feign
interest is a source of great irritation to some of the more fanatical soccer moms. They now whisper
disapprovingly among themselves:
"Oh, that's Justin's dad. He has an attitude problem." They regard my cavalier attitude as a form of
child abuse. Next they'll be notifying the child-welfare league about me. So the issue of the day is
whether we Americans will take back our culture from the un-American soccer enthusiasts. We
need to begin to channel our kids energies into more productive activities: baseball, football, tennis,
MTV--even smoking would be an improvement.
Soccer is draining America of its top talent in the sports that really matter--like basketball. Charles
Barkley recently warned that within the next three Olympics the Europeans will be competitive with
the U.S. Dream Team. When Sweden beats the NBA stars in basketball, Americans will assuredly
awaken from their slumber. But by then it will be too late.
Nothing, and I mean nothing (apart from maybe the Highlander Games and kilts) is gayer than "lining up behind center" and "taking the snap" in American football. Sorry.
IN SOCCER
There Are No Timeouts
There Are No Helmets
No Shoulder Pads
No Commercial Breaks
No Halftime Extravaganza
No Cheerleaders
So If That's What You Need
Go Play Football you big wuss.
The surprise secret is that testosterone levels are lowered precipitously by viewers. Many males at the event try to overcompensate by going on murderous rampages.
In the mid-70s, TIME magazine had an article pointing out all the "homosexual references" in football.
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