Posted on 03/11/2009 8:56:05 AM PDT by AreaMan
As far as I can tell from my travels, it is a purely home-grown American concept. And the people "blaming" it on soccer are projecting in the worst way.
Ahh yeah...Ice Fighting (a.k.a. Hockey)
Unnngh! You had to remind of hockey now that my Stars are in the tank.
Regardless of the sport I am sick of my kid coming home with a trophy or medal from every sport he participates in, regardless of wither they ever won a single game. Mementos and souvenirs are fine, that’s what the team picture is for, but the everybody needs a trophy to feel like a winner thing is ridiculous and only harms these kids down the road when they get in the real world and the boss does not give them a raise and bonus for just showing up.
Association football appeals to social levelers because the rules have been constructed (as many have here indicated) to minimise scoring opportunities. As such, those who oppose competition in principle found it congenial.
The anticompetitive types made common cause with the litigation-shy city recreation departments, who saw the risk of expensive lawsuits much reduced by embracing soccer. Couple this with a notable “white-flight” reluctance of many suburban parents to seek athletic activities for their children which would not pit them against “inner-city” teams, and it becomes clear why American association football represents much of what has gone wrong with American society in the last 40 years.
But, the bottom line remains, that it was the atmosphere surrounding association football in the U.S. that was objectionable, and that in turn was merely symptomatic of several deeper social problems. Association football itself is an eminently respectable sport wherever it is not a plank in some broader poltical agenda.
My Jackets are tearing it up this week; an 8-2 win at Detroit and a 2-0 win against the Bruins last night. We might actually see the post season this year.
If anything, the nature of the sport makes it harder to "level."
Kids who are first learning to play the game are completely capable of playing to 0-0 ties; I would venture to say that half of the games played by beginners end with scoreless ties.
Any low-scoring game is disproportionately likely to end in a tie.
This pleases social levelers greatly.
The fact that the game was equally foreign to almost all American children was considered another point in its favour by the social levelers who pushed association football in the U.S. in the 1970s—not only would the games be more likely to end in ties, the fact that none of the children knew the game and few had developed any of the important skills of the game made it additionally attractive to those who wished to put all the children on the same level.
Us and about six other teams, but we've lost six in a row at home.
I certainly wish the best for the Jackets, we still love Hitch down here.
So your problem appears to be more with tie scores rather than social-leveling. (Although I see why the social-levelers went after baseball with such a vengeance).
More of a historical accident, than anything . . . but still.
I am convinced that College Football overtime rules are part of a global communist conspiracy.
Thanks. Hitch is the best thing to ever happen to this team.
Soccer is where ‘everyone is a winner’ started. The sport anyone can do because even if you’re just standing on the field the people actually running around will eventually get back to that area of the field.
American rules football destroyed American interest in the development of association football. When it was reintroduced in the 1970s, it was essentially as a foreign import.
I don’t have a problem with soccer. I have a problem with what it meant to a lot of its original advocates—lots of tie games and no one is measurably better than anyone else.
The ties were a symptom (and desired result) of this thinking, not the underlying problem.
All I am pointing out is that is why most American men are never going to be interested in it.
There are other reasons too. We already have three major sports that are American-made. How many people are going to play a European sport when it means you have to drop one of the other native games?
Chalk onto it the stigma of ‘everyone’s a winner’ and that just isn’t appealing to most goal-driven people in the US.
I think there’s two big problem Europe has embracing American football.
The first is that it’s American and it’s an important part of the European psyche to reject all American things.
The second is that when we tried to give them some football it was a pathetic minor league. American football is one of those sport that really doesn’t work well in the minors. Most other sports when two fairly evenly matched teams play the game is pretty entertaining, might not be the crispest and most dynamic play anybody has ever seen but it’s fun. Anybody that’s ever seen bad NFL teams (like the old “bay of pigs” days of Green Bay vs Tampa for instance) knows that when two bad football teams play it sucks. I think it’s because football is such a timing oriented game, if somebody is in the wrong place at the wrong time the whole play falls apart. I tried watching NFL Europe games and they were just bad, they were worse than 4th quarter pre-season NFL ball, I don’t blame the Europeans for not going.
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