Posted on 05/31/2002 9:28:33 AM PDT by xsysmgr
The most-watched sporting event in the world has begun, and most of my fellow conservatives in America are going to miss it.
While some of you no doubt are thinking that the Super Bowl and World Series are both months away, the event I'm referring to is the World Cup of Soccer, watched by an estimated 3.5 billion people around the world, including millions in the United States, almost all of whom are apparently liberals.
As a movement conservative and rabid fan of the beautiful game (that's soccer, by the way), I find myself as something of a de facto missionary for the sport to the political and cultural right. What is it about soccer that makes it (in America) the nearly exclusive domain of liberal sports fans?
Growing up in Ohio, I started following the game at age 12 via the weekly PBS program (should have tipped me off right then) Soccer Made in Germany, which featured a condensed match segment accompanied by English commentary. Youth leagues were just getting started in our part of the state, and my interest grew as I started coaching kids and playing in high school, but even then it was made clear that I was involved in an outsiders' game in a conservative area.
When I took an announcement of a big victory to my high-school principal one morning, I was greeted with a dismissive glare — it's not a real sport, after all. When my coach, the parish priest in a mostly Catholic town (and thus the only person for whom it was acceptable to be a fan) threw a party to view the 1982 World Cup championship match, only three players showed up. Once, before an afternoon match, my mom informed me that if I didn't cut the grass beforehand, I couldn't go to my own game. Does the high-school quarterback have to mow the lawn before his games?
As I became a more avid follower of the game during the '90s, I started wondering why all the soccer fans I was meeting were political and cultural liberals. I had moved to Washington, D.C. in 1994 to work for a member of Congress, and even the fans from the midwest, south, and west I was coming across via the vast and intricate underground soccer network (it exists, trust me) tended to be liberals. With conventional media coverage of soccer not abundant in America, soccer fans turn to the Internet for information. But a casual survey on the preeminent web gathering place for American fanatics — bigsoccer.com — again demonstrates an overwhelming presence of liberals among the rank and file. If I deign, on the other hand, to ask a fellow conservative about the game, I am treated to the usual pejorative responses.
For the uninitiated (those of you who don't persecute soccer, but just tolerate those who persecute it), such responses include "Soccer is not a real sport"; "Soccer is for girls"; "Soccer is a Commie game"; "Soccer is boring"; and the most damning of all, "So… you watch soccer… ?"
It is fair to note that soccer has had very mixed reviews from the American public in general, not just from conservatives. While the sport as a national youth activity has grown by leaps and bounds (an estimated eight million children are playing this year), the professional game has struggled to catch on. The U.S. went for almost 15 years without a top-flight professional league, and only time will tell if major-league soccer, the well organized and energetic effort to establish such a league here, will become an American institution. Soccer's TV ratings in the U.S. are low. While the women's national team attracted a lot of attention when they won the Women's World Cup in 1999, fan interest in that appears to have been quite specific to that event, much as it was for the Men's World Cup held here in 1994.
The main drawback to soccer for "traditional Americans" is that it is a game requiring some patience to appreciate. Baseball, the thinking man's game, has been affected by this national attention-span deficit to some degree, and traditionalists bemoan how the channel-surfing highlight culture has hurt the game. Turn on a soccer match and you are not likely to see something spectacular immediately (it's kind of like a Rembrandt in that way). While the seasoned fan can recognize the difficulty and artistry of a lengthy and complex buildup to an attempt at goal — often unsuccessful — much of modern-day, sports-viewing America wants feverish action, and wants it now.
There is, of course, huge interest in the game among many of our immigrant communities. Fans follow their homeland teams via satellite and cable telecasts of matches from abroad. In some cities, thousands of fans will gather at a theatre or recreational center to watch a closed-circuit pay-per-view match from South America, Africa, or Asia. Go as an American to a viewing place with a predominantly foreign clientele and you will still draw looks of surprise that a "Yank" or "gringo" would be interested in "their" game.
This perhaps touches near the heart of the issue for a lot of conservatives. Americans have typically come up with their own games to dominate. We invented football (even taking "soccer's" proper name and redefining it to an almost Orwellian degree), basketball, and baseball and made those our major sports. To the degree that these are played and/or followed elsewhere, they are American exports. While baseball is popular in Japan and parts of Latin America, and basketball in Europe and Australia, they are still "American" games first and foremost. Soccer will never be that. In fact, American football in part began, as legend has it, when a game of "soccer" became too boring, prompting a player to pick up the ball and begin running with it, and the rest is gridiron "pointyball" history.
Golf and tennis are also "foreign" in their origins, but they are not linked as closely to their international roots as soccer, and at any rate already had made deep inroads in the American cultural establishment by the early 20th century.
While eschewing anything deemed international or, worse, "European" suits the isolationist streak among certain conservatives, it seems to me that a much more proper Ameri-centric response would be to embrace the game for the purpose of demonstrating American superiority through it. For instance, doesn't saying "We play the best football in the world" kind of have a hollow ring to it? I mean, who else is there? But if the U.S. were to produce professional soccer leagues that rivaled those in Italy, Spain, England and Germany, and a national team that could defeat the likes of Brazil, Argentina, and France, how much crow would the internationalists have to eat then?
To be honest, my attraction to soccer is just that I like the game. But if the lure of American superiority is enough to get you interested in the game (kind of like when Americans get interested in things like bobsledding and Greco-Roman wrestling during the Olympics), so be it.
The time is ripe. Following the explosion of youth leagues, the quality of the American player development system has improved exponentially. We are even making some inroads on the rosters of clubs in England, France, Germany, and Holland. If American conservatives dedicate themselves to backing American soccer, the resultant energy and optimistic buzz might just push the U.S. men's national team to the final rounds of this summer's World Cup, or at least lower the percentage of the fans sitting next to me who voted for Mondale, Dukakis, and Gore. Help a brother out already! Strike a blow for federalism, apple pie, and the gold standard, and make a commitment to watch the World Cup this June.
By the way, the matches, played in South Korea and Japan, are airing live at 2:30 a.m., 5 a.m., and 7:30 a.m. EST. Happy viewing.
— Robert Ziegler lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and children, and directs media relations for a nonprofit public-policy group.
Heck, why stop there? Why not instant replay?
Very well stated. I also love baseball because of the sounds, the smell of the park, and the voices of the radio play-by-play guys.
As for soccer, I have to admit that I like it, particularly as a kids' sport. It's great to see the kids progress from game to game, to watch them learn how to start playing on a team, and especially to see their pride and excitement when they've made a good play.
As for grown-up soccer -- well, it's just plain amazing to see what some of those guys can do with a ball.
Knuckle sandwich time!
I like this. It would really throw a wrench into the works as well as force some tough decisions by coaches. For instance, who do you pull first? Do you go with a roster heavy on strikers and risk diluting your defense, or save your midfielders for mobility and one top striker up front? The amount of time would likley depend on how the teams took shape after the second or third round of removals.
Interesting. Then again, I think anything would be an improvement on shoot outs.
I moved to Raleigh from Buffalo in 1996. Was a huge (and still am) Sabres fan. Have been a Canes fan since day 1 as well as I am a fan of Hockey and they are my home town team. Plus I love that the "hockey will never work here" crowd who fought against them coming here has been shut up.
Well, if the Canes win The Cup it will ceratainly be the single biggest "Cindarella Story" in the history of sports and the biggest upset ever. And Lord Stanley's Cup will be won by my team and be in my home town!
Now, if Detroit wins The Cup(if they win tonight), the greatest goalie to ever stand between the pipes, Dominik Hasek will finally have gotten his Cup. And it will serve the Sabres right for trading him away and having him win The Cup right away.
Go Canes! Go Hasek!
I like all sports (except maybe yachting), but can understand why some people find baseball boring.
How many people complain about and dont understand why people watch golf on tv? A lot.
True. But a complaint is all it amounts to really, and maybe a snide comment or two about the clothes they wear. You never hear a bunch of 'commie socialist fag' comments about golfers. But baseball fans and golf fans dont behave the way soccer fans do when it comes to trying to sell their sport. If soccer fans werent obnoxious about and have a condescending attitude toward non fans, us non fans wouldnt say the things we do about the sport.
I see it the other way around. It is the non-fans that have a condescending attitude towards soccer. Of course, the argument has been going on long enough where both sides have been pretty petty about it forever....
I don't think that's accurate. Baseball is quite popular in Latin America and East Asia. (To be fair, only in the Dominican Republic and Japan is it almost certainly more popular than soccer.) Football, admittedly, is not. But volleyball is actually more popular abroad than here, with European countries and Japan supporting professional leagues. I think it's pretty impressive that one country could export three games to the rest of the world (assuming that we count basketball, which was developed and popularized entirely here, as an American export).
Since you brought it up, please tell me where I, a soccer fan, am "criticizing people who are not fans of the sport," criticizing and belittling "people who dont like the sport," and questioning "the mental capacity and 'culture' of those that don't like the sports."
And I agree with an earlier reply that the assumption that soccer is 'Liberal' is completely off-target. What do liberals hate the most? Overt displays of patriotism or nationalism. Now, what does the World Cup represent?
The conservative thing to do is learn to play this sport well enough to kick butt. Then kick butt again. And keep kicking butt until "they" shut up. It's the American way.
So so much for that theory.
How many teams does the US have? 1. Well, we would still need to fly all over north and south america to watch them play.
How many times has the World Cup been in America? 1 if i remember right. So to see 'our team' compete we would still need to travel the globe.
The Superbowl, World Series, and NBA Championship are ALWAYS played in America, plus we have 30 teams in the league spread around the country to watch. And more often than note, The Stanley Cup Finals are played in America.
Yeah, that one's a hoot, golf. Where you see literally 1% of the action if you watch it on TV and where the players have guts, play in pastels, and are about as athletic as my grandma.
They're regular 'ol Americans, but the actually athletic men who watch and play soccer, and the sport itself, are "gay."
How profound.
Chess tournaments are primarily non-stop too. And that is BORING. So, non-stop does not equal action and excitement.
You have to be 300 lb gorilla to play this wrestling type game. You also don’t need a brain either to play American football because somebody else will do the thinking for you. As a matter of fact, your coach can stop the game to tell you how to play?
Real football, soccer for you infidels, is played by regular human being, who got brain to think for themselves. It is a form of art. If you played this game, you would understand why the whole world loves it. If you rather think that the whole world is stupid; then go back to your cave and watch the gorillas beat on each others!
No goalie has ever instilled mass fear in an entire nation as much as Vladislav Tretiak.
That being said, Go Wings Go!
But really, it is a Liberal game... a lot of great big melodramatic running around for HOURS! to accomplishing nothing
Your "insight" fails at about 12 different levels of logic, but thanks for your input, Aristotle.
A small sample to be sure, but 75% of the games ended with either a one or zero goal difference.
Flip a coin, save the effort.
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