Posted on 03/11/2009 8:56:05 AM PDT by AreaMan
How Soccer is Ruining America: A Jeremiad
Soccer is running America into the ground, and there is very little anyone can do about it. Social critics have long observed that we live in a therapeutic society that treats young people as if they can do no wrong. Every kid is a winner, and nobody is ever left behind, no matter how many times they watch the ball going the other way. Whether the dumbing down of America or soccer came first is hard to say, but soccer is clearly an important means by which American energy, drive, and competitiveness is being undermined to the point of no return.
What other game, to put it bluntly, is so boring to watch? (Bowling and golf come to mind, but the sound of crashing pins and the sight of the well-attired strolling on perfectly kept greens are at least inherently pleasurable activities.) The linear, two-dimensional action of soccer is like the rocking of a boat but without any storm and while the boat has not even left the dock. Think of two posses pursuing their prey in opposite directions without any bullets in their guns. Soccer is the fluoridation of the American sporting scene.
For those who think I jest, let me put forth four points, which is more points than most fans will see in a week of games—and more points than most soccer players have scored since their pee-wee days.
1) Any sport that limits you to using your feet, with the occasional bang of the head, has something very wrong with it. Indeed, soccer is a liberal’s dream of tragedy: It creates an egalitarian playing field by rigorously enforcing a uniform disability. Anthropologists commonly define man according to his use of hands. We have the thumb, an opposable digit that God gave us to distinguish us from animals that walk on all fours. The thumb lets us do things like throw baseballs and fold our hands in prayer. We can even talk with our hands. Have you ever seen a deaf person trying to talk with their feet? When you are really angry and acting like an animal, you kick out with your feet. Only fools punch a wall with their hands. The Iraqi who threw his shoes at President Bush was following his primordial instincts. Showing someone your feet, or sticking your shoes in someone’s face, is the ultimate sign of disrespect. Do kids ever say, “Trick or Treat, smell my hands”? Did Jesus wash his disciples’ hands at the Last Supper? No, hands are divine (they are one of the body parts most frequently attributed to God), while feet are in need of redemption. In all the portraits of God’s wrath, never once is he pictured as wanting to step on us or kick us; he does not stoop that low.
2) Sporting should be about breaking kids down before you start building them up. Take baseball, for example. When I was a kid, baseball was the most popular sport precisely because it was so demanding. Even its language was intimidating, with bases, bats, strikes, and outs. Striding up to the plate gave each of us a chance to act like we were starring in a Western movie, and tapping the bat to the plate gave us our first experience with inventing self-indulgent personal rituals. The boy chosen to be the pitcher was inevitably the first kid on the team to reach puberty, and he threw a hard ball right at you.
Thus, you had to face the fear of disfigurement as well as the statistical probability of striking out. The spectacle of your failure was so public that it was like having all of your friends invited to your home to watch your dad forcing you to eat your vegetables. We also spent a lot of time in the outfield chanting, “Hey batter batter!” as if we were Buddhist monks on steroids. Our chanting was compensatory behavior, a way of making the time go by, which is surely why at soccer games today it is the parents who do all of the yelling.
3) Everyone knows that soccer is a foreign invasion, but few people know exactly what is wrong with that. More than having to do with its origin, soccer is a European sport because it is all about death and despair. Americans would never invent a sport where the better you get the less you score. Even the way most games end, in sudden death, suggests something of an old-fashioned duel. How could anyone enjoy a game where so much energy results in so little advantage, and which typically ends with a penalty kick out, as if it is the audience that needs to be put out of its misery. Shootouts are such an anticlimax to the game and are so unpredictable that the teams might as well flip a coin to see who wins—indeed, they might as well flip the coin before the game, and not play at all.
4) And then there is the question of gender. I know my daughter will kick me when she reads this, but soccer is a game for girls. Girls are too smart to waste an entire day playing baseball, and they do not have the bloodlust for football. Soccer penalizes shoving and burns countless calories, and the margins of victory are almost always too narrow to afford any gloating. As a display of nearly death-defying stamina, soccer mimics the paradigmatic feminine experience of childbirth more than the masculine business of destroying your opponent with insurmountable power.
Let me conclude on a note of despair appropriate to my topic. There is no way to run away from soccer, if only because it is a sport all about running. It is as relentless as it is easy, and it is as tiring to play as it is tedious to watch. The real tragedy is that soccer is a foreign invasion, but it is not a plot to overthrow America. For those inclined toward paranoia, it would be easy to blame soccer’s success on the political left, which, after all, worked for years to bring European decadence and despair to America. The left tried to make existentialism, Marxism, post-structuralism, and deconstructionism fashionable in order to weaken the clarity, pragmatism, and drive of American culture. What the left could not accomplish through these intellectual fads, one might suspect, they are trying to accomplish through sport.
Yet this suspicion would be mistaken. Soccer is of foreign origin, that is certainly true, but its promotion and implementation are thoroughly domestic. Soccer is a self-inflicted wound. Americans have nobody to blame but themselves. Conservative suburban families, the backbone of America, have turned to soccer in droves. Baseball is too intimidating, football too brutal, and basketball takes too much time to develop the required skills. American parents in the past several decades are overworked and exhausted, but their children are overweight and neglected. Soccer is the perfect antidote to television and video games. It forces kids to run and run, and everyone can play their role, no matter how minor or irrelevant to the game. Soccer and relevision are the peanut butter and jelly of parenting.
I should know. I am an overworked teacher, with books to read and books to write, and before I put in a video for the kids to watch while I work in the evenings, they need to have spent some of their energy. Otherwise, they want to play with me! Last year all three of my kids were on three different soccer teams at the same time. My daughter is on a traveling team, and she is quite good. I had to sign a form that said, among other things, I would not do anything embarrassing to her or the team during the game. I told the coach I could not sign it. She was perplexed and worried. “Why not,” she asked? “Are you one of those parents who yells at their kids? “Not at all,” I replied, “I read books on the sidelines during the game, and this embarrasses my daughter to no end.” That is my one way of protesting the rise of this pitiful sport. Nonetheless, I must say that my kids and I come home from a soccer game a very happy family.
Stephen H. Webb is a professor of religion and philosophy at Wabash College. His recent books include American Providence and Taking Religion to School.
“It is unfortunate that lacrosse is a spring sport, it really should be a winter sport, at least in California.”
Don’t think that would work in the hotbeds, like Syracuse, New Jersey and Baltimore. Oh well.
“...lots of tie games and no one is measurably better than anyone else.”
Really? My son’s JV team just beat another JV team 16-0.
“It’s not my bias. I talk with my friends who have kids in soccer and that’s what they tell me. Nobody keeps score, everybody plays, only cheering allowed, nobody’s a loser.”
Where I live this is true at the youngest levels and I have no problem with that, but certainly not as you grow older. The rec leagues still require that everybody get at least a little playing time, but in the more serious leagues you’ve got to earn your time by being good.
“Clock-ruled games which permit ties are not positive metaphors for life.”
Where I live, clock-ruled games are necessary because there are only so many fields and a lot of teams. Most fields don’t have lights, so you have to get through the schedule before it gets dark. In tournaments, only the playoffs can’t end in ties. Once again, there are time limitations. It’s a practical thing, not a feel-good measure.
You do know that pro football games can end in ties, don’t you?
Yes, and that’s unfortunate, but it rarely happens.
JV are not beginners. Soccer was initially introduced to and is most widely played by elementary school-aged children.
I’m talking about at the lower levels of the sport. Obviously the pro’s and college level folks are incredible athletes. But at the lower levels, I stand by my earlier statement.....
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I’ve watched plenty soccer and my father in law is hooked....I enjoyed watching my college team....But for the lower levels, see above...
“Actually, had you read the article you would have
discovered that he a college professor and author.
You offer no rebuttal and just name calling.
Must be a soccer fan!”
I did read the article, which is why I concluded he knows nothing about soccer. I also know that he is a professor, I was merely commenting that journalists ALSO write daily about stuff they know nothing about, which is why our voting populace is so ill-informed. And I am indeed a soccer fan and player, which is how I know that soccer is right next to ice hockey as one of the most physically demanding sports. People who think it isn’t, is socialist, or is for wimps are without fail ignorant of soccer and likely not enough of an athlete to play it.
I don’t know what kind of soccer league you or your friends’ kids have experienced, but every league I’ve played in has been cutthroat competition since a young age. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of breaking two guy’s legs and have had my own hand and fingers broken several times in the goal. If you aren’t a top-notch athlete, you quickly fail and are not allowed on the field.
Funny read. This article also appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
http://online.wsj.com:80/article/SB123680101041299201.html
Since it became popular in New England, and that's the best time to play it, I guess there is nothing we can do about it now.
When do they play soccer in Syracuse? Isn't it a winter sport? It is in California.
I would guess the schools up there play soccer in the spring. Lacrosse players are generally beefier than soccer players, but both need to have good legs. Here in Virginia, we have track, baseball, soccer, tennis and lacrosse in the spring. So you’ve got three sports competing for good runners. A handful of people who play soccer also run in important meets, but of course they’re not in top track shape.
It certainly would not apply to the high school select travel level either.
They are tough as nails...witness the broken tibias and ACLs.
I guess that leaves the YMCA hurd ball and kids in high school that play on rec leagues.
My earliest memory of soccer is of watching the illegal aliens play it at Flushing Meadows Park just before they totally ruined the neighborhood of my infancy. (That would be Corona, NY, which used to be a nice place but is now an unrecognizable sewer.)
Never quite got over that image, which is one of the reasons my own boys never played it. Also, as a slightly older child, soccer was known as “the silk panty sport,” due to the silky drawers they wear. Not to mention the author’s quite correct assertion that the game is as dull as watching somebody watching paint dry.
Regards,
May I suggest fencing?
When my oldest was about three, he saw Darth Vader have it out with Luke Skywalker and spent the next few years pestering me with, “I wanna learn how to sword fight! I wann a learn how to sword fight!”
So...when he was nine, he came running into the kitchen saying, “Mommy! Come quick! You gotta see this!” It was a commercial for a local fencing academy that was running a week-long summer camp. We signed him up, and, well...that was four years ago now and he is a highly accomplished youth fencer, with a good chance at a college scholarship (if he keeps it up, stays on the Honor Roll and keeps his nose clean). One day he hopes to step up onto a pedastal and sing the National Anthem with a medal around his neck.
The sport is a good one. Its rules are courtly and courteous, it prizes agility and speed over brawn and raw power, and you have to be a neither a giant nor as small as, say, a gymnast to be good at it. That said, being tall with a long reach does give you an advantage and strength certainly doesn’t hurt.
Plus...you son will get to actually STAB his friends with a pointy (but not sharp) metal object, and nobody’s going to yell at him! What more could a boy want?
Regards,
Well, thanks, I will indeed look into it. They’ve been stabbing each other with light sabers for years.
Olivia,
I happen to be sitting at fencing class right now, and I just asked Billy’s coach if she could recommend a fencing school in the SF area.
She has recommended this school: http://www.halberstadtfc.com/
Apparently, there is another club (starts with an M, but I can’t remember the exact name right now), and that club does indeed produce champion fencers but is not very good at developing the whole child, or instilling a sense of good sportsmanship.
This is, of course, our coach’s opinion, but hers is an opinion I trust in these matters.
Let me know how it goes!
Regards,
Face it. Soccer sucks.
I can assure you with 100% certainty, I will not watch a single minute of any world cup match, regardless of who is playing.
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