[Dr. Sivana]

Small sample sizes.

My observations are based on 50 years of observations in Connecticut, northern Illinois, Missouri, Virginia, Georgia and Arizona. It includes institutions that were too poor to have football. In Georgia, my boy was of prime Little League age, and his teammates played football in fall, NOT soccer. That was only last decade. Maybe your part of North Carolina is loaded with IT ex-pats that provide a skewed view.

The ONLY place I have seen soccer here in big-city Phoenix/Glendale/Mesa/Scottsdale outside of insular Latinos playing each other in parks was an overcrowded British-themed pub. All of the patrons (there WERE a lot of them) appeared to be European ex-pats watching a UK soccer match at noon (prime time in England), meaning we had to eat elsewhere. That is not a reflection of the society at large.

[Salvavida]

Sorry, the data is against your observations. That was a very cursory search confirming my observations. OTR trucking doesn’t keep a person in one side of a state, or in one state. It makes sense that an entire industry got rid of all the obstacles that kept it from growing in the past 60 years.

Meanwhile, MLB rosters are littered with Latin American players that don’t speak English because American kids don’t want to play. Particularly black kids.

The “participation” data is the key. That is money flowing a different direction.

https://firsttouchonline.com/the-growth-of-soccer-in-usa/
https://sfia.org/u-s-soccer-participation-data/
https://www.thepanthernewspaper.org/sports/analysis-soccers-continuing-growth-in-the-us
https://san.com/cc/underdog-no-more-how-soccer-is-surging-in-us-less-than-a-year-from-world-cup/