Maybe so but that hardly makes it mainstream. You can also pack 20K fans dressed like Darth Vader into a Star Wars Convention but that doesn't make it a national pastime.
I was watching one of the games at the hotel bar the other night and noticed that the time counted up instead of down like it does in other sports. That's just weird. I'm sure the game holds a certain appeal to a small subset of Americans, kind of how certain people like Jimmy Buffet music and listen to it all day long in Hawaiian shirts while sipping from margarita glasses. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you happen to be in Hawaii or out in the Caribbean.
If I lived in Portugal or Brazil, I might like soccer more.
That's actually how time counts.
Time counting backwards. That's weird. Unless you're a maybe a bomb or something.
But, now, I guess you could run a mile in 0 seconds (or 0 minutes even,) if you started at 20 minutes and stopped for ice cream or something, as long as the line wasn't that long.
I would dare say it you watched any sport where you didn’t know the teams or any of the players, it wouldn’t be very exciting to watch, because you’re not vested in it.
Once you get vested, either with a professional club or a National Team, then you sweat every kick.
I’ve watched a lot of Gator football and basketball games over the years, and nothing there matched the tension of today’s game.
Game clocks going up is the international standard, we’re the outliers there. International hockey does it too. In some ways it makes sense, especially when you start looking at the stats sheet. Our game clock goes down but the “events” (scores, penalties) are recorded with an upward moving clock (that LA goal with .7 seconds left is recorded as happening at 19:59 in the period), so an upwinding clock actually makes the live game match the stat sheet. Thanks to the NFL though we’ll probably never switch, because a “13th minute warning” would just sound goofy.