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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.

Very good post.

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.

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.