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.
In American Football, it is quite common for a punter to grossly exagerate contact to draw a penalty flag. Nice try, play again.
Not looking down on anybody. A "sport" (which NASCAR really isn't) in which the fans hang out for seven hours with people waiting for a guy to crash a car is an inferior sport.
I have no problem or compunction classifying cultural activities into hierarchies of inherent worth. Must be the conservative in me.
Kind of hard to watch the games when there was no TV for those many many decades. And when all the games were played during the day while everybody else was at work. And most jobs didnt provide someone with a cube or office where they could listen to it on the radio. Especially since radios were not portable!
Soccer has come to be in America at a time when everyone has a tv and portable radio. It has had more advantages than any other sport in history and it still fails.
Uhh- dude it was the semi finals that the USA got put out by Brazil. What we were realistically shooting for in that game was a tie at the end of regulation so we could've gone on to a shoot out- which is how the final between Italy and Brazil ended. In a shoot out- anything can happen and actually the US side might've found itself in the final match if it had gone to that. We were that close (holds up thumb and forefinger) but after Brazil scored- it was over for us.
I would venture to say that they either do not vote or vote for big government candidates. LIBERALS!
That and the fact that the players are a bunch of crybabies who threaten to strike if the owner looks at them the wrong way. Baseball is constantly shooting itself in the foot.
And speaking of hockey, a player will take a puck or stick in the face, go to the locker room and get 20 stitches and then return to the ice. Same with borken bones. Put a cast on it and get back on the ice.
Vlade Divac?
It's often noted that immigrants bring their passion for soccer to this country. It will be interesting to see whether their children gravitate toward the NBA/NFL/MLB colossus or toward the MLS.
I'd bet the former, though. Like the metric system, Americans seem proud of their rejection of soccer.
Yep. If he needs less than 10 stitches, I've seen them do ir right on the bench. The player may only miss one or two shifts. Now that's tough.
One, its not an American sport and we have traditionally liked playing our own.
Two, there are ties in the game and Americans hate ties. Do you remember all the handwringing that used to go in in college football before they had overtime? Hell, they even incorporated an overtime in hockey.
Three, Americans are now supposed to only like high scoring sports. A 2-1 baseball "pitchers duel" is now a thing of the past with juiced balls and pee-wee ball parks where the fences are moved in. In basketball, a 24 second shot clock was installed and a "no zone" rule was put into place just so nobody could play defense. They even seriously discussed having the "no zone" rule in football because they thought the scoring was too low, but they changed the kicking and passing rules instead to encourage higher scores.
They should worship us and we should look down on them. Wimps.
I do hope FIFA won't give over to pressure (American?) and change the offsides rule. (Part of the fun is the difficulty in scoring.) Soccer would be completely ruined without it, AND shootouts;-)
How can anyone sit through a shootout and be bored???
What do you mean, "nice try"? I'm not "trying" to do anything. Merely giving my observations as an onlooker.
And the practice I mentioned is not "quite common" in American football. It happens occasionally. And it is frowned upon by other players.
In soccer, it is epidemic, indeed universal and has become an art form, from what I've seen.
Why not admit that it is a blemish on the sport rather than going for the "everyone does it" approach.
I agree here. Flopping in more prevelent in soccer than just about any other sport, except maybe basketball....but like in basketball, they usually do it for strategic purposes.
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