Posted on 06/28/2006 3:40:11 PM PDT by new yorker 77
Despite a high level of media coverage for the World Cup soccer tournament, three-fourths of Americans (78%) are not following the action very closely if at all. A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 adults found that just 6% are following the tournament very closely.
Nine percent (9%) of men are paying close attention along with 3% of women.
The Super Bowl remains the biggest sport championship in terms of fan appeal. Thirty-five percent (35%) of Americans say it’s their favorite championship to watch. The World Series is the only other championship to reach double digits—12% of adults say it’s their favorite.
One-fourth of all Americans (25%) say they don’t want any sports championships.
Despite the general lack of interest in the World Cup by the US audience, the soccer tournament is more popular than the NBA basketball championship and the NHL’s Stanley Cup hockey title. Both of those events were being held at the same time as the World Cup.
Fourteen percent (14%) of Americans say they played soccer in an organized league at some point in their life.
Fifty-two percent (52%) of Americans believe there is a professional soccer league in the United States (and they’re right).
The survey was conducted before the U.S. soccer team was eliminated. However, few were surprised by the lack of success--just 5% of the nation’s adults thought it was very likely the U.S. team would win the tournament.
Your mother wouldn't have been like that and that's why I adored her. Anyway, I just went to Vegas and the news isn't good ...
I'm surprised Mexicans are still interested in the World Cup, especially after their team lost to Argentina 2-1 (overtime) with one of the most beautifully-executed goals I've ever seen.
Sure. Try this one on your gay soccer friends...
Q) What's the difference between watching a drinking contest and a soccer game?
A) In one, you watch people pass out, and in the other, you pass out from watching.
Yeah, but Mia Hamm had to take her shirt off so that everyone could see her (sponsored) bra. That's the point. Soccer will never be as popular as other professional sports here in the U.S., but who cares? It's something you can watch on TV without commercial breaks every few minutes.
And finally, how insecure does someone have to be to think that a sport is being forced upon oneself? It's a sport, for chrissakes. [someone pointed out the WNBA to me as an example, but you should still get my drift]
Much better. Not hooligan-level, but good just the same.
No. Football has the highest dead time to game time ratio of any sport except baseball. Snap to whistle football games only play around 12 minutes, yet it takes 3 hours to play that 12 minutes. That's not exciting, it can be interesting and fun but it is not exciting. That's one of the reason 2 minute drills are exciting, during a two minute drill is the highest percentage of play time to game clock time in the game, there's no other two minutes on the football clock where you're probably going to get more than 1 minute of actual play.
Many sports are more exciting than football because you get real end-to-end action and not a constant stream of commercials and replays. If you know how to watch soccer (like all sports the more you know the more you get out of watching it) and you have two good teams playing it's a VERY exciting game, much more exciting than football. Outside the clutch and grab era in the NHL hockey is almost always more exciting than football. One of the problems with basketball is late in close games it tends to suck (lots of foul-free throw-time out, repeat), but in the meat time it's a very exciting sport, again much fewer stopages than football, more action more excitement.
Football's strength in this TV world is that it's a good game to analyze and disect, which is what TV coverage of sports leans towards. It's not exciting, it's interesting and discussable, and one of the biggest reasons that it's so interesting and discussable is that it's so not exciting.
I don't think they're disruptors, I think they're just garden variety jack asses. Every sports thread, regardless of the sport, will draw a couple of the doofuses that must inform the world of their superiority because they don't watch that sport. Soccer, being not a very popular sport in America in the first place, and also being a sport than many dumb people (particularly liberal dumb people) insist that its lack of popularity is indicative of some character flaw in America, draws more of these doofuses than other sports. But they really aren't unique to soccer, you see them on the NFL threads and the college football threads and the NASCAR threads and the baseball threads, and even non-sports threads. Maybe FR needs to add a new house rule "if you're not interested in the topic of a thread prove it by not clicking on it".
". . .just 5% of the nation’s adults thought it was very likely the U.S. team would win the tournament."
I think they all live in my neighborhood and were at the
Circle K down the street the day the U.S. was eliminated.
Perhaps you're right in the first sentence, but the impossibility of enforcing the last makes me intolerant and suspicious. It becomes even more apparent when the same offenders are found on different topics, and always trying to drive a wedge, even in incidental things, like Utah republican primaries.
There actually is a tremendous amount of DE FACTO "dead time" in soccer - look at how little time many of the players actually spend running at full speed.
Actually I've never been that big a fan of soccer, I watch a few games here and there but it's way down on my list of prefered sports. But I do respect the game, I think it needs some tweaks (like a real clock, maybe some more substitutions, stronger anti-diving rules) but it's still an interesting game played by some pretty amazing athletes.
Regionality always plays into it, countries define much of their character through the sports they play. Part of it though is resentment, for a very long time there's been a crowd of people, inside and outside America, that claim there's something wrong with America because we don't like soccer. Calling people idiots (not you, that other group) has never been a good way to build an audience, unless you're Don Rickles.
It wouldn't be that hard to enforce, you only have to spend a couple weeks here to spot the style of the "I don't care about this topic" posts (when you get right down to it there just aren't that many ways to say you don't care) punish them all with a 24 hour suspension, after a couple of weeks only the real disruptors wouldn't learn.
If your job was to run up and down a field that's 100 by 130 yards for 90 minutes with only a 15 minute break in the middle you wouldn't go top speed either. These people are trying to win a game, not all die of massive coronaries before the final whistle blows.
Personally, I have nothing against soccer, but I have no interest in it either. It's like the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. I have been struggling to figure out why I feel this way about soccer. I have watched about 10 minutes of this world cup on TV, and I think I know why Americans don't like it. Soccer does not allow players to score and advance through use of their hands, just their feet. Americans carved out a wilderness with their hands. They fought Indians, who threw tomahawks and shot arrows with their hands, using firearms with their hands, and over time developed more elaborate weapons, all involving use of the hands. We don't kick a hand grenade into an enemy trench, we throw it, and then we jump inside and jab the bayonet that we hold in our hands.
Sports are a form of peaceful competition that allow people to "fight" without killing each other. They reflect the attitudes of the people who engage in them towards conflict. Soccer is a way of using circus tricks to roll a ball downfield to get near enough to the goal that you can take a shot. Football, basketball, baseball and even hockey use the legs for speed and maneuver, but use the hands and arms to score. A football pass is like an artillery strike, or a long range missile. A strikeout is like destroying an opponent in swordplay. A basehit is like engaging the enemy on the front lines. Scoring a run on a hit is like outflanking that enemy. A basket is like a rifle shot at an enemy. A three pointer is like a sniper taking out a high value target. And so on.
Soccer? What is soccer? How do you defend yourself in a dangerous world with your feet? We simply don't respect soccer because it does not have skills that translate to manliness, notwithstanding the athletic talent that is required. Sorry to all you soccer fans, but I think that explains American attitudes.
Simple:
Touchdown.
Tv Commercials.
Extra point
Tv Commercials.
Kick Off
Tv Commercials.
incomplete pass
Tv Commercials.
punt
Tv Commercials.
Compare the NFL playoffs TV ratings to World Cup Soccer matches. Case closed !
Actually, compare any given Sunday's NFL ratings to the soccer "world cup" ratings. 'Nuff said.
Wasn't that Brandy Chastain?
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