Maybe you can answer this for me then. I just moved to Wilmette.
What the heck is a Trevian? Even the student there we have asked don’t know.
A Trevian is a student at New Trier High School. I grew up in Evanston, and they were our arch-enemies.
I’m English and, generally, I detest soccer/football. I don’t support a team, and a match between two teams in which one has no interest is, as many people have pointed out, boring.
However, I love the World Cup. I put it down to caring a lot about the fortunes of both England and Ireland. I find when I have an emotional stake in the result, it suddenly becomes the most exciting sport in the world.
Just my €0.02.
Perhaps the reason that there is a low level of interest in FOOTBALL is that the deep seated connection that football teams have with their area is lacking. Football teams are not frachises and of the 92 English footy teams 91 are named after where they play. Thus they represent that area. (The other one are a bunch of nomads that get moved on every so often for stinking out an area)
Also for reasons of geography it is perfectly possible to follow your football team away, as this is a small country, and there is a strong tradition of this, which I believe US sport doesn’t have.
I’m actually quite glad that the US doesn’t “get” football as if they did the economic weight they would bring to bear would bugger it up (ad breaks, etc)
i played soccer until i was a junior in high school. i liked playing, but i could never watch the sport. but i find it hard to watch baseball as well. and football is great, but i can admit that it is a little action followed by a whole hell of a lot of waiting.
i think that i detest watching soccer because the field is so damned big. it’s the size of a mall parking lot, for chrissakes! there’s too much action in the midfield, which doesn’t appeal to those who are casual viewers. but i guess there’s nothing wrong with that, if you aren’t into it you aren’t into it.
that said, i think that americans will never be huge soccer fans because we’re either used to huge bursts of action (football) or relatively nonstop action (basketball). we like baseballl because of its instant action. when the pitcher winds up, you know what’s going to happen. the batter either hits it or doesn’t.
hockey seems to be gaining on us, but it seems a lit more offense-oriented than soccer. but still i think it’ll never fully catch on.
Hockey has improved its popularity by emphasizing its speed and violence. Americans like things that go fast and run into each other.
Of course, I’ve seen some pretty nasty collisions in soccer and it has its share of goons. I still remember Schumacher taking out that French player in the 1982 World Cup semis in Seville. Turned around the whole match.
Nothing like a good forearm shiver to the face to change the momentum of a match.
What you like to watch played professionally probably depends what you grew up with to a large extent, IMHO.
If you’re playing with a ball in a back yard or something, don’t have any equipment, and don’t wanted to get slammed hard into concrete, you can either not let people pick the ball up (football) or not let them run with it (basketball). American/rugby football seem less ideal.
My dad’s a Brit who started a soccer league in Montreal, and coach myself and my sibs to trophies several times, so I know the sport well.
But I’m still not gonna watch it unless it’s the World Cup. The calibre of play at that level is excellent!
That being said, I never watch any other sport at all. Baseball is so dull they use statistics :eek: to liven it up. Football is an excuse for really fat men wearing padding to pretend they’re sumo wrestlers-- and even then it’s stop, start, stop, start action.
Hockey? Sorry, if I want to watch a fight I’ll tune into boxing.
Basketball-- doesn’t anyone ever play defensively? It’s just up and in, up and in for however damn long a game is. Yawn.
The big 4 sports are very goal-oriented, and that conditions north american audiences not to pay attention to the actual quality of play. You don’t need to know if he’s a good player, all you need to know is the score. It’s like taking a test!
Soccer is also more of a team sport. It’s really rare that you’ll have one great player on a team who can dominate through the entire game, let alone an entire season, but it seems (to this non-sports watcher) that that’s not the case with other sports.
Any sport is easily played with cheap equipment, but many of the world’s top soccer players make millions too, so there’s no real economic reason for N.Am. not to watch soccer.
Are you talking about ice hockey?
I don’t think field hockey is like that in the US, is it? 
Hockey games aren’t like fights here!
Field hockey? Are you trying to tell me that watching women in skirts carrying shepherd’s crooks smacking in other in the legs isn’t violent? 
I think he’s talking about ice hockey, since he mentioned the big 4 (which I believe is football, basketball, baseball, and hockey).
That said, I don’t really understand that comment. Most games actually play in their entirety without a fight breaking out. Sure there’s checking and overall … aggression, but fights are less common nowadays (although when they DO breakout, whoooboy! :D).
The idea of sports you “get” being related to the ones you were exposed to in your youth is probably correct. I grew up on hockey (and to a MUCH lesser extent, lacrosse). I’m a rabid hockey fan and I enjoy watching lacrosse, but most other sports… meh. I don’t find them exciting at all.
And hockey is a tremendously fascinating game. It’s not all go-go-go get a breakout to score. Set ups, defensive strategies, et al are wondrous things to watch. But that may just be me.
After all, I detest basketball, I still don’t understand the appeal of football, and baseball is only bearable as a two minute clip summary.
Terribly boring the game this morning, what?
NOT!!! 