I don’t care for watching sports, generally, but I find myself enjoying the World Cup immensely this year.
Part of it is how “important” (lacking a better word) it is - I watch the Superbowl for the same reason. The players certainly won’t be slacking off. Also, soccer is a simple game with simple rules - most American sports drive me nuts with their absurdly complicated regulations and elaborate special cases. It’s easy to understand what’s going on, and easy to appreciate good play.
Also, the broadcasting is very convenient. All the matches are shown, and all of them are shown live, without commercials, during reasonable hours, on major channels, not tape-delayed on some specialty satellite channel at 3:00 AM. I can even watch them live over the Internet while at work.
Finally, I can identify with the teams. I don’t have any knowledge or opinion of the various teams in the US: I couldn’t care less whether the Dallas Blowhards or Cincinnati Whatevers win a game, but I do know and have opinions of all the countries in the world, and it’s sort of fun to think “Hmm, who am I rooting for, Russia or Italy?”, “Damn, the US lost”, and so forth.
Anyone else have the same opinion?