Why America hates football (soccer)

Hockey and soccer and very similar sports in both movement and strategy, and popularity. Hockey really isn't very popular in America, Stanley Cup Finals generally get around a 2 share, worst of the big four by a LOT.

Hockey and soccer and very similar sports in both movement and strategy, and popularity. Hockey really isn't very popular in America, Stanley Cup Finals generally get around a 2 share, worst of the big four by a LOT.

And what ratings does the MLS final draw? Oh, that's right, UHF stations normally don't show up in the Neilsen Ratings...Hockey is more popular in America because it involves more strategy and guys kicking each others' rear ends and losing teeth. Soccer remains popular with the EuroPeons and other assorted socialists, and Third Worlders who can't afford to buy equipment.

Hockey is more popular than soccer, but it's significantly less popular than baseball, basketball and football. And in the numbers it comes closer to soccer than it does the others.

Your nostalgia for the days of the Edmonton Oilers is understandable, but there are a number of factors that come into play here.

Modern NHL history (and by this I mean the modern era that began with the expansion of the league from six teams to twelve in 1967) is remarkably simple. It can be described as a period in which the dominance of the game alternated between the "Montreal Canadiens" and "Edmonton Oilers" teams.

I use those terms in quotes because they don't really represent actual teams -- they represent styles of play. I'll describe them in detail here:

1. The Montreal Canadiens were a classic "transition" team -- often mistakenly described as a "dull, trapping" team. Their strength was not in their dominant offensive prowess, but in their ability to shut down opposing players in the neutral zone and generate scoring chances through their rapid transition game after opponents' turnovers. They were really not a "defensive" team at all -- in fact, they were usually among the top scoring teams in the league.

Their real strength was their depth -- not relying on a few offensive stars. They spread their offense among three solid forward lines, none of which was "spectacular" by most standards but all of which contributed to the team's offensive totals. With the exception of a three-year period from 1976-78 in which Guy Lafleur set the scoreboard on fire, there hasn't been a single Montreal player to win a scoring title since the expansion of 1967.

The 1976-77 Canadiens may have been the greatest team in NHL history. They finished the 80-game season with a 60 wins, 12 ties, and an unthinkable 8 losses. Lafleur won the scoring title that year with 136 points, and his linemate Steve Shutt finished with 105 (and 60 goals). What was most remarkable about that team, though, was their offensive dominance from one end of the bench to the other. They scored 387 goals that year (an average of nearly five a game); eight players on the team had 20 or more goals, and fourteen had 10 or more.

The team also boasted what may have been the finest defense corps in modern NHL history, with three Hall of Famers on the blueline (Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe, and Serge Savard).

The Canadiens success after the 1970s was limited to Stanley Cup titles in 1986 and 1993, but their style of play was used to perfection by the New Jersey Devils in the last ten years. This should come as no surprise to anyone, since the Devils' recent success began with the arrival of former Canadiens' stars Jacque Lemaire and Larry Robinson on their coaching staff in 1994 (and later Pat Burns, who himself began his coaching career in Montreal). The Tampa Bay Lightning were the latest team to ride the classic Montreal transition game in a championship year.

2. The Edmonton Oilers, on the other hand, employed a back-and-forth, high-stakes style of play that drove scoring totals through the roof. They deliberately refrained from playing any semblance of a defensive game in the neutral zone, and took pride in their style of play by referring to themselves as the "non-Canadiens." This tempo and attitude was very popular in the modern, rapidly-growing areas of western Canada.

The Oilers redefined offensive play in hockey, with a series of unbelievable team and individual efforts that bordered on ridiculous. They included the following:

-- Wayne Gretzky's 92 goals in 1981-82;

-- Five consecutive seasons (1981-82 through 1985-86) in which they scored 400 or more goals;

-- Four players with 40+ goals and 100+ points in 1982-83 (Gretzky, Mark Messier, Glenn Anderson, and Jari Kurri);

-- Three players with 50+ goals in 1983-84 (Gretzky, Anderson, and Kurri);

-- Two 70+ goal scorers in 1984-85 (Gretzky and Kurri);

-- Defenseman Paul Coffey's 121 points in that same year, and his 138 points (along with an astonishing 48 goals) the following season.

-- Gretzky's 163 assists in 1985-86, and 200+ points in four out of five seasons during the mid-1980s.

Edmonton also boasted what may have been the best power-play unit ever to step on the ice in an NHL game, with Gretzky centering a line between Messier (who played left wing on the power play) and Anderson, and Coffey and Kurri playing the points (Kurri was a natural right wing but played the point on the power play due to his devastating shot).

The team won five Stanley Cups in an eight-year period, including the last one (1989-90) after Gretzky had been traded to the Los Angeles Kings. The "Edmonton Oilers" style of play, however, dominated the league for several more years after their last Cup -- the Pittburgh Penguins and New York Rangers won a total of three Stanley Cups in the four years immediately following the Oilers' last championship year (the 1993 Montreal team interrupted this long stretch).

. . .

These two styles of play still compete for dominance in the NHL today. What has changed dramatically in the last 15 years is the following:

1. Expansion. Despite the addition of a lot of talented European players to the NHL, there is no doubt that the talent pool is severely diluted these days. What sets this era apart from previous periods is not so much the lack of talent (illustrated by the decline in 50-goal and 100-point scorers), but the lack of talented groups of players on the same team. Nowhere was this more evident than in last year's Stanley Cup finals, in which two teams reached the finals with their star players (Martin St. Louis and Brad Stuart for Tampa Bay, and Jarome Iginla and Mikka Kiprosoff for Calgary) and not much else.

2. The Patrick Roy Factor. When Roy first entered the NHL in Montreal's 1986 Stanley Cup season, nobody would have realized that he would eventually define a new era in the league. He was the first modern "superstar" goalie who had played the position for his entire childhood (before, goalies were usually "position players" as kids who converted to goaltenders in their teen years due to a lack of offensive skills). The Roy era reached its peak in the last couple of years as the league saw multiple Hall-of-Fame caliber goalies (Roy, Dominik Hasek, Martin Brodeur, and perhaps Ed Belfour) setting new goaltending records on a regular basis.

. . .

Another factor I didn't mention has been an ice surface that is effectively getting smaller as players get bigger. And hockey, like many other sports, is now "over-coached" in that coaches have done their best over the years to break the game down into simple, predictable segments over which they can maintain some level of control.

There are no simple answers as far as what the NHL can do to restore some excitement to the game (aside from the most obvious -- go back to a league of 21-24 teams). Some Freepers have posted some very interesting suggestions here, and the league has considered experimenting with some of these in pre-season games.

I'll post some more on this later . . .

My random rants on the subject:

1) I like soccer - it is the sport that draws my interests most. But I wouldn't want to shove it down everyone. I also disagree people saying "Americans are stupid becuase they don't like soccer." or things like "US sports are garbage, oops, rubbish.". I also like soccer, basketball, rugby (that's rugby union), and baseball.

2) The original author of the Guardian article didn't realize that in parts of Asia in which soccer is popular (which he applauds), basketball, which he seems to belittle, is also big there. In fact, soccer and basketball are equally popular in (Eastern) Asia like Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Singapore. NBA has as huge following in that part of Asia as the English Premiership (and also lots of sports bettings on the NBA matches). Although I admit the NBA is virtually ignored in more British-influenced countries like New Zealand, India or Britain itself - ask about the results of the Lakers to a Kiwi and he will probably return a blank stare.

3) It is not strictly true that soccer as the term is only used in the US and everyone uses "football". Here in New Zealand, or across the Tasman in Australia, or even South Africa, we never use "football" for soccer and sorry, it isn't because of American influence. Australia has Australian Rules Football (but NSW and QLD refers rugby league as football), and here in NZ and South Africa we never call a specific sport "football": we prefer to say rugby, league, soccer, American football, Australian football, but no football.

4) Many soccer supporters are less conservative, true, but I consider myself a rabid soccer fan and yet I would be considered fringe right by NZ standards. (I'm a great deal more conservative than George W. Bush)

5) To be fair, soccer depends a lot on what we call "luck": how the ball is flown around, and whether weather affects performance of players. By contrast, basketball as a sport is a more purely skills-based contest. If you win in a soccer match, it's often becuase you are lucky in addition to being more talented. If you win in basketball, there is no question you are a better team.

6) The world's best known sport stars are from soccer and basbetball. Michael Jordan, David Beckham, Ronaldo, Yao Ming are all as famous as each other on the global scene.

7) Soccer doesn't have a huge following in the United States. So is in New Zealand and Australia. Here it is a decent primary and high school sport but it never catches rugby and cricket's popularity on the national level. In Australia it is perceived as a sport of immigrant communities (which specifically means non-Anglo Celtic Europeans like Italians and Greeks, of which there are plenty in Australia). Italy's Christian Vieri, for example, grew up in Sydney as a second generation Italian immigrant.