What I don't understand is why people who claim baseball and soccer are boring can't get into hockey, because there's no standing around and great gaps between action -- the action is almost constant. Even in (American) football, the action only occurs about fifteen seconds at a time. One MLS player whose name escapes me said in ESPN The Magazine that he doesn't understand why Americans call what we call football "football" because only one player on the team kicks the ball. Says he, "They ought to call it 'throwball!'" and I have to concede he has a point.
WSJ blogger James Taranto refers to soccer as "metric football" because it's popular everywhere they use the metric system.
Hockey is a great game. But Versus & NBC do a p-poor job covering the games. Announcing & camera angles wise.