Posted on 06/25/2014 8:47:40 PM PDT by fkabuckeyesrule
I've held off on writing about soccer for a decade -- or about the length of the average soccer game -- so as not to offend anyone. But enough is enough. Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation's moral decay.
(1) Individual achievement is not a big factor in soccer. In a real sport, players fumble passes, throw bricks and drop fly balls -- all in front of a crowd. When baseball players strike out, they're standing alone at the plate. But there's also individual glory in home runs, touchdowns and slam-dunks.
In soccer, the blame is dispersed and almost no one scores anyway. There are no heroes, no losers, no accountability, and no child's fragile self-esteem is bruised. There's a reason perpetually alarmed women are called "soccer moms," not "football moms."
Do they even have MVPs in soccer? Everyone just runs up and down the field and, every once in a while, a ball accidentally goes in. That's when we're supposed to go wild. I'm already asleep.
(2) Liberal moms like soccer because it's a sport in which athletic talent finds so little expression that girls can play with boys. No serious sport is co-ed, even at the kindergarten level.
(3) No other "sport" ends in as many scoreless ties as soccer. This was an actual marquee sign by the freeway in Long Beach, California, about a World Cup game last week: "2nd period, 11 minutes left, score: 0:0." Two hours later, another World Cup game was on the same screen: "1st period, 8 minutes left, score: 0:0." If Michael Jackson had treated his chronic insomnia with a tape of Argentina vs. Brazil instead of Propofol, he'd still be alive, although bored.
Even in football, by which I mean football, there are very few scoreless ties -- and it's a lot harder to score when a half-dozen 300-pound bruisers are trying to crush you.
(4) The prospect of either personal humiliation or major injury is required to count as a sport. Most sports are sublimated warfare. As Lady Thatcher reportedly said after Germany had beaten England in some major soccer game: Don't worry. After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.
Baseball and basketball present a constant threat of personal disgrace. In hockey, there are three or four fights a game -- and it's not a stroll on beach to be on ice with a puck flying around at 100 miles per hour. After a football game, ambulances carry off the wounded. After a soccer game, every player gets a ribbon and a juice box.
(5) You can't use your hands in soccer. (Thus eliminating the danger of having to catch a fly ball.) What sets man apart from the lesser beasts, besides a soul, is that we have opposable thumbs. Our hands can hold things. Here's a great idea: Let's create a game where you're not allowed to use them!
(6) I resent the force-fed aspect of soccer. The same people trying to push soccer on Americans are the ones demanding that we love HBO's "Girls," light-rail, Beyonce and Hillary Clinton. The number of New York Times articles claiming soccer is "catching on" is exceeded only by the ones pretending women's basketball is fascinating.
I note that we don't have to be endlessly told how exciting football is.
(7) It's foreign. In fact, that's the precise reason the Times is constantly hectoring Americans to love soccer. One group of sports fans with whom soccer is not "catching on" at all, is African-Americans. They remain distinctly unimpressed by the fact that the French like it.
(8) Soccer is like the metric system, which liberals also adore because it's European. Naturally, the metric system emerged from the French Revolution, during the brief intervals when they weren't committing mass murder by guillotine.
Despite being subjected to Chinese-style brainwashing in the public schools to use centimeters and Celsius, ask any American for the temperature, and he'll say something like "70 degrees." Ask how far Boston is from New York City, he'll say it's about 200 miles.
Liberals get angry and tell us that the metric system is more "rational" than the measurements everyone understands. This is ridiculous. An inch is the width of a man's thumb, a foot the length of his foot, a yard the length of his belt. That's easy to visualize. How do you visualize 147.2 centimeters?
(9) Soccer is not "catching on." Headlines this week proclaimed "Record U.S. ratings for World Cup," and we had to hear -- again -- about the "growing popularity of soccer in the United States."
The USA-Portugal game was the blockbuster match, garnering 18.2 million viewers on ESPN. This beat the second-most watched soccer game ever: The 1999 Women's World Cup final (USA vs. China) on ABC. (In soccer, the women's games are as thrilling as the men's.)
Run-of-the-mill, regular-season Sunday Night Football games average more than 20 million viewers; NFL playoff games get 30 to 40 million viewers; and this year's Super Bowl had 111.5 million viewers.
Remember when the media tried to foist British soccer star David Beckham and his permanently camera-ready wife on us a few years ago? Their arrival in America was heralded with 24-7 news coverage. That lasted about two days. Ratings tanked. No one cared.
If more "Americans" are watching soccer today, it's only because of the demographic switch effected by Teddy Kennedy's 1965 immigration law. I promise you: No American whose great-grandfather was born here is watching soccer. One can only hope that, in addition to learning English, these new Americans will drop their soccer fetish with time.
I was wondering just this morning—does the explosion of interest in the NFL coincide with the explosion of illegal immigration? Something to ponder.
you mean besides Aaron Hernandez? Wait, that’s a different level of ‘illegal’ ;)
“If the ref didn’t see it, it didn’t happen and it seems that the number of ref’s is purposely limited to prevent flagrant violations of the rules from being noticed by the officials. The fans however see all of this and it seems to encourage the players to compete for a shadow game of revenge that plays out behind the officials backs.”
I guess I would rather have the shadow game of retaliation than a million stoppages on foul calls. The ball goes out of bounds often enough as it is, but even with those stoppages it seems like you are getting big meaty chunks of product with no commercials. And the only jerky celebrations I have seen were for goals, which I find grating but at least it doesn’t happen all the time.
The problem with football and basketball in the modern era is that with modern officiating penalty trends and a million camera angles the players can’t self police themselves. So if you want to be a near seven footer who chest pounds after you dunk with no defender within 20 feet of you, no one can stop you from being a tremendous jerk. Same with a 300lb + lineman who falls on a loose ball, you can get up and break out the gyrating self-congratulatory prancing all you want.
Freegards
I too hate soccer: It should be banned from American schools!
I don’t understand people who call soccer boring, but think baseball is exciting.
Someone reported on a radio talk show in Chicago this morning the following incident. The late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was informed that Great Britain had lost an important soccer match to the Germans. She replied: "That's all right. We beat THEM twice this century in their national sport!"
That picture is hilarious, wish I knew the backstory.
I agree with Ann. Soccer is subpar. Why watch and inferior product? why regress and go backward to the stone age of sports? In fact, new sports should be created that may be superior to what we already have or improve upon what we already have.
We already have a superior version of soccer, it’s hockey. We have a league and everything. If someone likes soccer, they should like hockey. It’s keep away, but faster and much better!
so many countries like soccer because they don’t have much else.
There you have it . . . the sponsors of the NFL/NBA/MLB appreciate your support. Now go watch some more commercials.
I like soccer, and I like hockey. I watch both. What’s the controversy?
There is a supreme game out of England far better than Soccer, Football, Baseball Basketball and Hockey, called “Eton Wall Game”! /sarc
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_wall_game
Get the flopping out of the game and there will be something to talk about.
Who,like Beckel,knows zero about the sport and like so many other topics feels free to pontificate on it. Sounds like Annie may have made "friends" with a pro football player. I hope that he makes enough money to buy her a decent meal or two.
I will gladly watch some commercials in exchange for vastly superior on field products as compared to the “beautiful nap” that is soccer.
So you like napping while watching your preferred sports. That’s cool.
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