zequist Posted June 28, 2009 Report Share Posted June 28, 2009 There aren't enough points. It's not violent enough. We didn't think the game up and it is therefore suspect. We have never won a championship. Were too fat Let’s take this point-by-point (and for the rest of this post I’m going to call it “soccer” and American-style football “football” just so that there’s no confusion). *There aren't enough points. This is true of a certain small subset of American sports fans, and the ones who would dislike soccer for this reason also tend to dislike baseball too. The real problem for this type of fan, though, isn’t so much with the amount of scoring as it is with the pace of the game – if they just wanted scoring they’d watch cricket. These are impatient sports fans who want lots of fast-paced action, and sports like baseball and soccer are too slow, too deliberate, too tactical for them. However, this is a very small percentage of the fans. *It's not violent enough. Again, tends to be that same small group of sports fan who would say there aren’t enough points. The reality is that mainstream American society has been moving away from violent sport for a long time. Football has become more popular as it has introduced more rules to clean up the game and eliminate the most dangerous/violent types of tackles. Meanwhile, a lot of people have told me that they don't watch hockey because they think it's still too violent (even though it has also tried very hard to clean itself up), and boxing is on life support in this country. *We didn't think the game up and it is therefore suspect. This seems to be your central argument, but I am Not Buying It At All. That sounds like the sort of thing that an insulated sociology professor or self-righteous journalist thinks that a sports fan would say. Frankly, the only sport that is an entirely American invention is basketball, and I’ve personally known a hell of a lot of Americans who won’t watch basketball, for all kinds of reasons. I have yet to meet a single person who lives in the real world (and not in a classroom or a newsroom) who has ever said, implied, or even hinted that they or anyone they know won’t watch a certain sport simply because it’s “not American.” I'm sure there are a few, but it's probably an even smaller subset than the ones who demand more violence. 99.9% of American sports fans just want to be entertained – it doesn’t matter if the sport that we’re watching was invented in America or England or Zimbabwe, as long as we enjoy it. *We have never won a championship. Again, not buying it. The only sport where there is any correlation in this country between national popularity and expectations of international success is basketball. Otherwise, forget it. We’ve never won a major international title in baseball, and football has no global competition of any kind, but they remain two of the three biggest sports in this country. Meanwhile sports like hockey, tennis, track, and volleyball remain niche sports at best, even though we have won more than our fair share of World Cups, Davis Cups, and Olympic golds in them (in fact, the hockey gold medal we won at the 1980 Olympics is one of this country's proudest sports memories - still didn't help hockey's popularity at all, though). *Were too fat That would be a reason to not play soccer, of course, not a reason to not watch, but in reality playing soccer has never been the issue in this country. Lots of people play soccer…in fact, recent statistics show that soccer is currently the MOST-played recreational sport in America, believe it or not, followed by baseball (#2), basketball (#3), tennis (#4), and golf (#5). The problems is that so far, just playing soccer has not translated into those people necessarily becoming fans of watching soccer or dreaming of pursuing professional careers. So why do we still trail the world in global soccer? I see two main reasons, one at the amateur level and one at the professional level, and neither of which you addressed. First, one thing that IS true of America (and also many other countries, including England) is that the majority of our professional athletes tend to have grown up in lower-class or working-class homes. Definitely the vast majority of our football and basketball players come from those backgrounds. However (and this IS a key difference between us and other countries), for whatever reason things have evolved so that most of the kids who grow up playing soccer in America are middle-class suburban white kids, who are less likely to feel driven to pursue a career in professional sports, especially a sport like soccer that doesn't pay as much. Understandably, since they have a much wider range of career choices open to them than that lower-class kid who might see athletics as his only ticket out of the slums. Other people have commented on the youth structure and the lack of academies and such, but I don't think that has much to do with it. We don't really have formal sports academies for any sport like Europeans do, but that doesn't stop us routinely churning out some of the world's best golfers and basketball players and swimmers and track athletes and so on. Even in women's soccer it works well (remember we have one of the world's best women's teams), it's just men's soccer where things fall down a bit. The best American athletes are still choosing other sports. And that ties into the second thing, which is... The lack of a credible major professional soccer league until very recently. Kids want to play the sports that they grow up with - that they watch on TV and play with their dads and their friends and see their favorite athletes playing. Every little boy in America for the last 50 years who grew up watching sports has had a dream (however fleeting) of being a star baseball or basketball or football player, because those sports are everywhere - you can't get away from them. There are also sports in this country with strong regional popularity, like hockey in Minnesota and Massachusetts, lacrosse in Maryland, or surfing in California and Hawaii. For a long time, soccer was one of those regional sports too. There were a few local hotbeds in New Jersey, around St. Louis, and up in the Northwest (Portland & Seattle areas), but prior to the '94 World Cup there wasn't really a time when the sport was able to command nationwide attention. That is starting to change now, though. MLS has been around for about 13, 14 years, and the sports media here don't treat it like a curiosity anymore. Teams like Seattle and Toronto have proven to have very loyal and passionate fan bases, and the numbers of people coming to games are pretty solid, even in a recession (last year MLS ranked 12th among soccer leagues worldwide in average attendance). Even so, it's going to take a lot of time for the league to weave itself into the national fabric the way the NBA, NFL, or MLB have. The youngest of those leagues, the NBA, is over 60 years old, which means four or five full generations of kids have already grown up with the NBA as part of their lives and passed it on to their kids. The first generation of kids who grew up with MLS haven't even started having kids of their own yet. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rubecula Posted June 28, 2009 Report Share Posted June 28, 2009 Just watched the final..... USA go 2 - 0 up against Brazil... and then get beat 3 - 2. Good try though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chongli Posted June 28, 2009 Report Share Posted June 28, 2009 Well said JD. I was going to add something, but I think you just about said it all. I do have a hard time believing that more people play baseball recreationally than basketball. Maybe that's my bias from being in a city. . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
holystove Posted June 28, 2009 Report Share Posted June 28, 2009 (edited) I love baseball .. I just wish Europe would begin to take baseball seriously . Edited June 28, 2009 by holystove Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest efctaxi Posted June 28, 2009 Report Share Posted June 28, 2009 Let’s take this point-by-point (and for the rest of this post I’m going to call it “soccer” and American-style football “football” just so that there’s no confusion). *There aren't enough points. This is true of a certain small subset of American sports fans, and the ones who would dislike soccer for this reason also tend to dislike baseball too. The real problem for this type of fan, though, isn’t so much with the amount of scoring as it is with the pace of the game – if they just wanted scoring they’d watch cricket. These are impatient sports fans who want lots of fast-paced action, and sports like baseball and soccer are too slow, too deliberate, too tactical for them. However, this is a very small percentage of the fans. *It's not violent enough. Again, tends to be that same small group of sports fan who would say there aren’t enough points. The reality is that mainstream American society has been moving away from violent sport for a long time. Football has become more popular as it has introduced more rules to clean up the game and eliminate the most dangerous/violent types of tackles. Meanwhile, a lot of people have told me that they don't watch hockey because they think it's still too violent (even though it has also tried very hard to clean itself up), and boxing is on life support in this country. *We didn't think the game up and it is therefore suspect. This seems to be your central argument, but I am Not Buying It At All. That sounds like the sort of thing that an insulated sociology professor or self-righteous journalist thinks that a sports fan would say. Frankly, the only sport that is an entirely American invention is basketball, and I’ve personally known a hell of a lot of Americans who won’t watch basketball, for all kinds of reasons. I have yet to meet a single person who lives in the real world (and not in a classroom or a newsroom) who has ever said, implied, or even hinted that they or anyone they know won’t watch a certain sport simply because it’s “not American.” I'm sure there are a few, but it's probably an even smaller subset than the ones who demand more violence. 99.9% of American sports fans just want to be entertained – it doesn’t matter if the sport that we’re watching was invented in America or England or Zimbabwe, as long as we enjoy it. *We have never won a championship. Again, not buying it. The only sport where there is any correlation in this country between national popularity and expectations of international success is basketball. Otherwise, forget it. We’ve never won a major international title in baseball, and football has no global competition of any kind, but they remain two of the three biggest sports in this country. Meanwhile sports like hockey, tennis, track, and volleyball remain niche sports at best, even though we have won more than our fair share of World Cups, Davis Cups, and Olympic golds in them (in fact, the hockey gold medal we won at the 1980 Olympics is one of this country's proudest sports memories - still didn't help hockey's popularity at all, though). *Were too fat That would be a reason to not play soccer, of course, not a reason to not watch, but in reality playing soccer has never been the issue in this country. Lots of people play soccer…in fact, recent statistics show that soccer is currently the MOST-played recreational sport in America, believe it or not, followed by baseball (#2), basketball (#3), tennis (#4), and golf (#5). The problems is that so far, just playing soccer has not translated into those people necessarily becoming fans of watching soccer or dreaming of pursuing professional careers. So why do we still trail the world in global soccer? I see two main reasons, one at the amateur level and one at the professional level, and neither of which you addressed. First, one thing that IS true of America (and also many other countries, including England) is that the majority of our professional athletes tend to have grown up in lower-class or working-class homes. Definitely the vast majority of our football and basketball players come from those backgrounds. However (and this IS a key difference between us and other countries), for whatever reason things have evolved so that most of the kids who grow up playing soccer in America are middle-class suburban white kids, who are less likely to feel driven to pursue a career in professional sports, especially a sport like soccer that doesn't pay as much. Understandably, since they have a much wider range of career choices open to them than that lower-class kid who might see athletics as his only ticket out of the slums. Other people have commented on the youth structure and the lack of academies and such, but I don't think that has much to do with it. We don't really have formal sports academies for any sport like Europeans do, but that doesn't stop us routinely churning out some of the world's best golfers and basketball players and swimmers and track athletes and so on. Even in women's soccer it works well (remember we have one of the world's best women's teams), it's just men's soccer where things fall down a bit. The best American athletes are still choosing other sports. And that ties into the second thing, which is... The lack of a credible major professional soccer league until very recently. Kids want to play the sports that they grow up with - that they watch on TV and play with their dads and their friends and see their favorite athletes playing. Every little boy in America for the last 50 years who grew up watching sports has had a dream (however fleeting) of being a star baseball or basketball or football player, because those sports are everywhere - you can't get away from them. There are also sports in this country with strong regional popularity, like hockey in Minnesota and Massachusetts, lacrosse in Maryland, or surfing in California and Hawaii. For a long time, soccer was one of those regional sports too. There were a few local hotbeds in New Jersey, around St. Louis, and up in the Northwest (Portland & Seattle areas), but prior to the '94 World Cup there wasn't really a time when the sport was able to command nationwide attention. That is starting to change now, though. MLS has been around for about 13, 14 years, and the sports media here don't treat it like a curiosity anymore. Teams like Seattle and Toronto have proven to have very loyal and passionate fan bases, and the numbers of people coming to games are pretty solid, even in a recession (last year MLS ranked 12th among soccer leagues worldwide in average attendance). Even so, it's going to take a lot of time for the league to weave itself into the national fabric the way the NBA, NFL, or MLB have. The youngest of those leagues, the NBA, is over 60 years old, which means four or five full generations of kids have already grown up with the NBA as part of their lives and passed it on to their kids. The first generation of kids who grew up with MLS haven't even started having kids of their own yet. Well presented and interesting read . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Churinga2 Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 Removed my pic .You were the only person to see it , so now I will have to locate you and kill you µI'll be looking out for a rabbit driving a taxi on the wrong side of the road Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest efctaxi Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 µI'll be looking out for a rabbit driving a taxi on the wrong side of the road Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DangerMouse Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 (edited) Frankly, the only sport that is an entirely American invention is basketball Just to be picky.... Basketball was invented by a Canadian............... One thing I didnt like was..... what your basically saying in one of your points....... is that your all a bit middle class and that has an effect on youngsters playing sport...... Basically having a dig as us I think arnt you.... although I kind of agree I dont know to much about it but im guessing the scholership system you have over there would have a massive effect on that......... Edited June 29, 2009 by DangerMouse Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian C Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 Not really, he's saying that soccer is popular with the middle class in America, just as its popular in the middle class in Britain/Europe. It just doesn't have any hold on the working classes the same way basketball/football have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lowensda Posted June 29, 2009 Report Share Posted June 29, 2009 Wicked read JD, well done, must have taken time! I agree with the biggest recreational sport bein soccer, as most films that involve kids seem to always refer to a soccer ball, weird! (unless its a specific sport film lol) but US did amazing through the tourny, and you know what id hold them up there as a potential dark-horse next year at the World Cup. They ran Spain ragged, and even came close to beating Brazil at their own game. Next year is going to be very open i feel, its going to be a quality world-cup, i cant wait well done USA! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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