Posted on 06/27/2014 8:16:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
I think the points have been made:
— Soccer is largely a tedious game featuring long stretches of uneventful play punctuated by the all-too-rare moment of scoring;
— The clock concept is infuriating. We love the 45-minute halves with no commercials, but then the arbitrary one or three or six minutes of “extra time” violate every concept of precision that a clocked sport should have;
— Soccer has its fan base, and it is not small; but the pressure on America to embrace it to some far larger degree is absurd. We simply never will as long as we have other sports featuring far deeper intrigue.
I have spent a lot of time during World Cup 2014 making these very points against those passionate souls who have insisted that this is the year, this is the time, now is the juncture at which America welcomes soccer in a fashion approaching football, baseball, basketball— hockey, maybe ? Golf? NASCAR?
Nope. Not going to happen. They say never say never. I’m saying never. Soccer will never— ever— reach consistent viewer levels approaching even our fifth or sixth most popular sports, in terms of TV ratings and attendance.
The attempt by elites to cram soccer down our throats are comical, as we are made to feel like rubes for not embracing the sport most of the world loves— because most of the world doesn’t have anything else.
That said, I have heard the diatribes and read the columns crafted by people pushing back against soccer fever— and enjoyed them all, and agreed with most.
But with the USA team’s improbable path into the World Cup’s final 16, I want to offer advice to all the soccer critics— everybody gets it. Points made. Now shut up and root for the Americans.
There has been a window for slapping soccer around. It was wide open for the opening games, when soccer dorks scolded anyone not embracing the sport as God’s greatest gift. We gave as good as we got, and we won. Even the late-arriving bandwagon types knew they were crowded into various venues for two reasons— first, the USA was playing, and second, we understood what a big worldwide deal it is.
As soon as America is ousted— and that could well be after the Belgium game Tuesday afternoon— this entire phenomenon evaporates. We will not gather by the thousands to watch Argentina battle Colombia. But if we can get by Belgium and make the Final Eight— the nation will be going crazy, and everyone keeping the soccer hate alive will come off looking like a bunch of jerks.
I say this with all love to people I share a lot of space with. Conservatives in particular have had a great time savaging soccer— from Ann Coulter, who properly taps the brakes on any sport where girls compete alongside boys, to Marc Thiessen, who crafts a sublime argument that soccer is socialist.
But the fact of the matter is that the world plays it, the world cares about it, and the United States of America might just crash the party even further.
If we do, there is only one proper reaction: celebration. By dinnertime Sunday, July 13, the World Cup final will be over. The USA team will probably not be involved. The next day, America will return to its default soccer setting of ambivalence leaning toward disinterest.
All the critics will have been proven right. There will be no burst of marketplace appetite for soccer in our daily, even yearly lives.
But between now and whenever the USA is done, if the whole World Cup thing is too boring for you or too foreign or too whatever— keep it to yourself. Thousands of your countrymen will be busting their behinds to excel at a game the world cares about a lot more than we do— which should be cause for enthusiasm. We all know American football, baseball and basketball are far better than anything other nations can offer up. As such, American successes in those sports on a world stage are not so surprising.
But for a team of Americans to fight its way out of a group containing three teams from nations that live and die for soccer? To face next week another country that does not have Jack Squat except for soccer? For us to excel in that context makes me enormously proud, even with my pocketful of criticisms for what the world calls “football.”
I know what football is. It is the punishing, compelling, high-scoring affair culminating every year in a Super Bowl that excites me more than any soccer game ever will.
But right now, a team of Americans is trying to win a tournament followed by more human beings than will watch any Super Bowl. I, for one, will cheer for them to win it. And to all of you who have sought to show us how cool you are, or how conservative you are, by bad-mouthing soccer? Stow it for a while. Not because you are wrong, but because large throngs of your fellow Americans will be rooting for our nation to do well on this world stage. And a handful of your countrymen wearing our colors are fighting hard to make us proud.
So let’s be proud. We have the rest of our lives to push back against those who overstate soccer’s appeal. Until our fellow Americans are shown the door, let’s appreciate them by not denigrating their field of battle.
With all due respect to Rush, he is way off base on this one. The group stage at the WC is analogous to the regular season in American football. Is it not possible for a team to lose its last regular season game and advance to the playoffs despite losing? Do we criticize football for that?
The US did not win the World Cup by losing. They merely advanced to the playoffs, ie the knockout round. At this point, the games are more or less analogous to the playoff games in football. You lose and you’re out. No more celebrating after a loss now. To win the WC, you have to keep winning.
No thanks. It’s baseball season and the Nationals are in first place in the NL East. I’ll stick with American sports.
You’re humor-impaired, Obviously
Yes, and a meter is a little more than a yard. Inches, feet, and yards are far more useful for everyday needs. That’s how they came to be. The metric system is far more useful for precision, due to it’s Base 10 organization.
I am laughing heartily at this, as, when my children were young, I would say to them that "soccer is a Communist plot". I was half joking; but, I am glad to find a fellow "traveler" who also thinks soccer is a Communist plot.
It shouldn't. It's a simple reality, understood by anyone who has ever done physical work or been in serious physical training. The female athletes understand this as well as anyone.
We have an insane GI Jane notion running loose in generally leftist circles that discounts the physical differences between the sexes. I find it difficult to believe that its advocates take it seriously, but if they do, I suspect most of them have been so insulated from physical work/training that they simply have no clue.
Women's sports will never succeed financially if they try to be clones of the men's game. They have to be taken on their own merits and develop their own fan base.
I have soccer playing daughters and they and their teammates sometimes attend Washington Spirit games (Women's Professional Soccer). The stands are full of youth soccer players and older women (i.e., early 20's and up), many with boyfriends/husbands, most of whom clearly used to play the game (and perhaps still do, recreationally). That's a start.
Really?
5280 feet per mile?
16 oz. per pound? 2000 pounds per ton?
45,360 square feet per acre? 640 acres per square mile? 27,878,400 square feet per square mile?
8 quarts per peck, 4 pecks per bushel?
16 oz. per pint, 8 pints per gallon, 128 oz. per gallon?
The problem is not that "standard measurements" don't use decimals, it's that every type of measurement uses a different number.
All that said, the metric system can screw you up royally just by misplacing the decimal point.
Wow. Talk about trying to have it both ways. I would suggest that if this clown’s interest in soccer is that superficial, he should go back to watching his trained gorillas beat each others’ (minimal) brains out in between Miller and Budweiser commercials.
Soccer sure as hell doesn’t need him.
Excellent riposte, Don. As one who wouldn’t walk across the street to watch the Super Bowl if you gave me free tickets (although I would scalp them for an obscene amount) it gets a little tedious listening to soccer bashers brag about the superiority of American sports, especially the absurdly misnamed football.
I notice that in UK they still talk about how much a person weighs in stones, not kilos. I have to look up every time how much a stone is. (14 pounds.)
They were talking yesterday morning on Fox and Friends about Ann Coulter’s column and the census was that she should stick to something she understands and not criticize what she doesn’t
Simply a point of information: NBC paying $250M for a three-year deal to broadcast English Premier League games in the U.S. is not an indication that NBC is counting on illegal immigrants from England to watch.
*** Even Americans who’ve watched all three US World Cup games so far would be hard pressed to give the last name of any player on the US team.***
Last name or first name? Last names are on their backs. I have trouble remembering their first names.
Where I work it seems the only ones interested are the spanish-speaking “immigrants.”
The World Cup is getting much better ratings than for the NBA Finals.
The MLB World Series gets lousy ratings.
Don’t think the ratings are great? The U.S.A. v. Portugal match was the highest rated non-football event, EVER, on ESPN.
Marc A. Thiessen is an American author, columnist and political commentator, who served as a speechwriter for United States President George W. Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
A peck is 2 gallons, a peck is 1/4 bushel
>> 16 oz. per pint, 8 pints per gallon, 128 oz. per gallon?
It's not that complicated. It's halving/doubling
2 cups = 1 pint 2 pints = 1 quart 4 quarts = 1 gallon
Halving/doubling is better suited to everyday use than metric is. That's why it hasn't caught on.
Actually, disagree.
You can be exactly as precise in standard as in metric. What is easier in metric is not precision, it’s conversion.
The old English money was 12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound, and for some utterly obscure reason the guinea had 21 shillings. And then of course they had farthings and half penneys.
That’s the main reason we went to the metric system for our money.
The Founders, however, did not have the French Revolution compulsion to remake everything. They even decimalized the clock and the calendar, which didn’t take.
However, if the metric system had been available, I suspect the Founders would have adopted it.
Don’t forget about the fruity celebrations and chest pounding displays that are so common in football and basketball. At least in soccer that stuff doesn’t happen 40 times a game.
I like that it is so hard to score in soccer. I will never get how the ease of scoring is held up as some type of benefit, ‘Oh, we made it less difficult, so much better.’
Freegards
Oh is this why so many football players are brain damaged from their injuries?. If it were safer how come they have to wear helmets, mouth guards, shoulder guards, etc. Think about it
What I don't like is the first tie-breaker is not head-to-head results.
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