Posted on 06/20/2014 8:05:16 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
There’s popularity and there’s popularity. Especially in America. Every 4 years America loves gymnastics, but in between Olympics nobody cares unless their kid is participating. The World Cup is getting fairly popular, in between the audience is still pretty small.
I give them a red flag for even suggesting that soccer is more than a diversion for the bored and inadequate.
Oh, please. Again, who cares? Can we cheer for the USA (incidentally, World Cup qualifying begins not too long after the World Cup ends) without a conservative American telling us that we are wasting our time?
It’s the topic of discussion. Don’t get your panties in a twist. Relative popularity and revenue pictures are interesting to some people, I personally have always found the business aspect of the entertainment business almost as interesting as their product. And I didn’t say anybody was wasting their time, though it is entertainment so technically yeah.
And more Americans are following the European Leagues, especially The Premier League.
Great, so we can have a discussion about sports economics! Looks to me that you got your panties in a twist because I observed that relative popularity is irrelevant.
Baseball: Pitcher takes 5 minutes to loosen up. Batter steps in, takes a pitch. Steps out of the box. Steps back in, pitcher shakes off sign, archer calls time and trots out to mound to have a chat, catcher resumes his place, batter steps out...
Eventually, after half a dozen pitches or so, the ball may be put in play, with the runner reaching safely less than 1/3 of the time, and that's just to get on base, let alone scoring.
Oh, and the average game runs appx. 3 hours.
Football: In 3.5 hours of elapsed time, there may actually be 120 timed plays between the two teams. Half of these are running plays that actually last 2-3 seconds, tops, the other half are passing plays where the ball isn't completed 40-50% of the time. Every once in a while, the game comes to a screeching halt because teams don't even manage to get the next play off in time. Plus, incessant video review of mostly inconsequential plays.
To those who say soccer is boring, a question.
You come across a football game between two teams you don’t know about, with no players you’ve ever heard of, are you going to be excited watching it? Same goes for baseball, basketball, etc.
If you’ve never watched soccer, you’re not going to be familiar with players, or the history between the teams: all the things that create the drama in sports.
Up until a few years ago, I was not familiar at all with the professional European leagues. I knew of Liverpool back from their 70s heyday, but that was about it. But once I invested the time in learning about the teams, players and history, now I’m completely hooked on The Premier League.
Soccer is being hyped here because the medium term future for football is bleak. Take off your fan glasses and see what’s happening. The sport is being torn apart from within and without - or rather it is being exposed by those within and without for the brutal effects it’s had on the players.
But football cannot be knocked from its perch as the number one sport in America until some other sport moves in to fill the void at the top of the American psyche. Whatever sport is to take football’s place must be television friendly. (This is a challenge for soccer because its action doesn’t stop for TV timeouts and such.) It also must be visually stimulating. This is the factor above all others that makes football fun for its fans to watch. All the camera angles! All the replays! You can see the wideout drop that durn pass 10 times from 6 different angles!
Soccer doesn’t lend itself too readily to the demands of TV. If it ever does, the networks will move in for a land grab on TV rights.
Just realize that no sport can remain the number one sport for all time. Not boxing (as in your grandfathers day) or baseball (in the years following) or golf (as in the 90s). Change happens. Football’s had its day.
I can’t tell you exactly when but there will be a day in our lifetimes when football will be regarded as a brutal, vicious, inhumane and cruel sport enjoyed only by the brutal, the vicious, the inhumane and the the cruel. These seeds have already been planted and they’ve sprouted.
Every time you hear broadcasters discussing concussions and new rules to protect the QB or to limit head trauma or ...or the myriad of other injuries that are part of the game ...you are witnessing another nail being pounded into the viewers consciousness about the nature of the game.
Whether or not it will be soccer that replaces football, no one knows. It does offer the one angle of world competition that no purely American game offers. Maybe some other sport will ascend but it’s hard to predict which it will be.
My flame retardant suit is on. Flame away. But if you decide to flame me, do yourself one little favor. Bookmark these words and come back to read them in five years. you’ll see what I mean.
I was participating in a discussion on sport economics. I’ve got nothing in a twist, you’re the guy throwing around the exclamation marks and the bolds.
Actually, “popularity” is more of a notion of sports sociology. Glad to clear it up.
To be purely technical, Soccer is NOT egalitarian in that it has a position (Goaltender) with special privileges & capabilities above and beyond the average player. In this respect, basketball would more so be the “global” sport. Ultimately though, WRGAS
I’ll be watching the World Cup with more than casual interest, particularly rooting for the USA team to move on after their thrilling opener … I was sad to see England lose its recent match against Uruguay – their hard-working “lunch-pail” ethic is more appealing than the South American prima-donna style.
Yeah, England, if they are not there already, are becoming the Chicago Cubs of FIFA.
Dang autocorrect. That was supposed to be "catcher", obviously.
National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer.Haven't read it for a long time, but interestingly, soccer and baseball evolved at the same time but took radically different directions. A really interesting book.
I have never seen anyone fully explain this thought. What about sport is un-American?
I can't wait to hear the answer to this myself.
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