[Central Scrutiniser]

Yeah, and baseball is just nonstop beehive of activity!

LOL


Soccer is a strategy game, each goal is exponentially important, and the players are true athletes. I'd like to see an NFL player run nonstop for 45 minutes.

[dakine]

"I'd like to see an NFL player run nonstop for 45 minutes."


Jim Fixx was an awesome football player....

[ReaganCowboy]

Everybody has the opportunity to score in baseball...I frankly I'm no baseball fan.

Seriously, the NFL is worried that what happened to baseball -- youth turning to play soccer in the spring instead of baseball, growing into adults that don't watch professional baseball nor buy tickets -- will happen to football next, if fall soccer encrouches.

NFL, NFL Players Association put up $2.5M four years ago to start USA Football, a non-profit to promote/support amatuer football in America. Check out their web site, usafootball.com

My worry is that as high schools get bigger in terms of student body population, and as America continues to urbanize, fewer boys will every learn to knock the crap out of each other and keep going. Football unfortunately is becoming a sport of behemoths, discouraging young men from playing a phyically adverse game that involves hard contact. Maybe lacrosse will become our next teen national physical contact sport and save our national manhood -- soccer sure as hell won't.

I'll grant you soccer is a sport, and is physically demanding, but it does not involve near-fighting conditions, complete with hitting, intentional physical and physcological intimidation -- and bell-ringing and bloodletting.

We need men that can fight, not dance around a ball.

[processing please hold]

Hey, at least in baseball if another player pi$$es you off...you're already armed. In soccer what do you have...a ball of air surrounded by leather.

[SoCal Pubbie]

"I'd like to see an NFL player run nonstop for 45 minutes."

One of the biggest myths of soccer is that the players are always in motion. Two players on the field never leave a small area around each goal at any time of the game. About half the rest never leave either the offensive or defensive side of the field. At any one time, there are rarely more than three or four players actively engaged in the pursuit of the ball. A fullback watching his team attacking the other side's goal over a hundred yards away is hardly "running nonstop".

Furthermore, asking such a question is like asking a sprinter to run a marathon. Do you think Carl Lewis was not in shape because he could not have been competitive at long distances?

Soccer demands great conditioning but no more so than hockey, basketball, or football. Every sport has its unique specialization.