Well some sports stars do you their star power for charity (like the NBA in Africa recently) but that should only be a slight nit-pick to a post I agree with as their effors s are dwarfed by the efforts of regular folk. I assume, there are way more of us so it makes sense.
Some of us football fans don’t attempt to pretend otherwise. Don’t lump us all together.
What’s wrong with finding it fascinating how a country with so much shared culture and history should end up with completely different popular sports?
Huh. In previous threads, I’ve basically said this, especially to those who find the low scoring boring, or struggle to follow it on television. You’re reading what you want to read, and ignoring everything that doesn’t back up your argument.
To be fair, they do try that approach. And when it almost certainly fails, they can turn mighty unpleasant. Usually it’s something like, “Well, you just haven’t REALLY watched a soccer game!” (as if I weren’t smart enough to comprehend the game without assistance) or a reference to American uncouthness.
At least now I can choose to inject myself into the discussion or not. Back when I was the sports editor of a small newspaper, I couldn’t help but be confronted by occasional soccer evangelicals who didn’t feel like I was giving their preferred game enough space in my cramped sports section. They apparently thought it was my job to build interest in the game for them. It wasn’t.
Hey, we LOVE football in India! After cricket, it probably commands the next biggest fan following. A distant second, but second all the same. Top footballers make much more money than all other sportsmen except the top cricketers.
FYI, Brasil and England are overwhelming favourites for Indians… Brasil for history, and England because EPL is what we get on tv, and because Beckham is marketed brilliantly :rolleyes:
The only people who get worked up about this are American soccer-bashers. It doesn’t take much to start one of you off about about how soccer is a “gay” sport in which nothing happens except that the fans kill each other.
Nobody over here flys off the handle about Americans’ inexplicable love of baseball or whatever (and personally I like baseball and your version of football). If anyone is saying “each to their own” it’s us.
Basketball was invented in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Heh, I think Ellis Dee meant to say a seminal moment.
True- but Dr. James Nasiamith, the game’s inventor, was Canadian.
I nearly reached that conclusion, but I had a few reservations.
As opposed to, say, grown men - or even children, for that matter - in baseball outfit. 
I figured as much, but the 21-3 didn’t ring any bells. Now, if you’d used 23-0, that would have been a good dig.
There are many things wrong with this paragraph. Mainly, to assert that basketball is the most popular sport in terms of fandom? That’s just crazy. There is a legitimate debate (that I’ve engaged RickJay about on occasion) whether baseball or football is the #1 sport in America. Either one comes out ahead depending on how you slice the numbers. The end result is that they have similarly large fanbases, with baseball probably edging out football in the end. Basketball, OTOH, very well might lose out to NASCAR for the #3 spot. Do you have any reason to think that basketball is the #1 sport? TV ratings, ticket sales, radio ratings, total spectators per calendar year, playoff game ratings; anything? Also, it’s actually pretty funny that football is “cheating” its high scores with 3 point scores while basketball is earning their 3 point scores. That’s just a nitpick, though, as your point still stands about basketball being higher scoring. Just a funny coincidence.
But the thing is, the skill of the players who scored ZERO goals is really not what is important, is it? They earned NOTHING. As I went into before, soccer only rarely rewards good play, which is a problem. You refer to skilled playing that results in nothing as the “dance.” Part of the appeal of sports is that you earn objective, tangible results from skilled play. The fact that there are too often no results (zero goals) from skilled play kills much of the appeal.
Also, those arguing that it’s all about the action and none of the appeal comes from the results, I trust you get just as invested in exhibition games (I think they’re called “friendlies”) as you do in actual World Cup games? If not, then that argument (it’s all about the action. you Yanks are too wrapped up in results) is hypocritical.
Nothing at all, but generally we feel like we’re eating a porterhouse steak with a Guiness to wash it down while being asked to justify why we aren’t instead eating a Big Mac and having a Budweiser. I’m not saying that soccer is as crappy as McDonald’s and Budweiser; I’m saying that’s the feeling we get.
It felt wrong when I typed it, but I forgot to include the disclaimer that I wasn’t sure if that was the right word. It was a fair cop, Mal, reminding me of when I used “sheik” instead of “chic.” heh.
It happens…
The main advantage of soccer is that kids can play it anywhere, from a favela in Rio to a suburban neighbourhood in any European big city. You can play it on pretty much any level surface, all you need is a ball, which doesn’t need to be a ridiculously expensive Adidas whatever-they’re-calling-it these days (I’ve made many a paper and tape foot ball in my youth) and rig a goal line with a few rocks. And it’s fun.
To play baseball you need a bat and a baseball ball and a large field, to play basketball you need a basket and a flat surface, to play American football you need heavy duty body armor, same for volleyball, tennis, golf, etc.
But as the sport became more professional it has lost a lot of appeal. Teams do not have incentives to play offensive football. Most are content to tie the game or score a goal and protect that result until the play time runs out. Then you have grown man pretending to have life threatening injuries from a light touch on the shoulder and the use of penalties as a tactical weapon to stop a counter attack. The game has become too physical and star players that can make the difference on their technical skills are taken down by hard hitting defenders.
The main problem is that the game is sloowwwww. Actual game time is around 50% of the clock time and you have about 5 shots aimed at the goal net per team in 90 minutes. Most quick offensive plays, the heart and soul of the game, are halted on a dumb technicality called the offside rule (with many, many bad calls).
Soccer bores me too and I’m not American.
I think that the way many of the players look has a lot to do with it. Many soccer players just fit the “greasy foreigner” stereotype, with bad, long hairstyles.
Combine that with the aforementioned flopping and writhing to try to garner fouls, and you get something that will turn off a large percentage of prospective American fans.
Actually no. To quote the band Alabama from it’s song “Mountain Music”
Bats and balls here though are cheap and numerous but sometimes I have made do with a nice stick and a good round rock. And as long as you know how to run really fast should you break anything you can play it anywhere. And I’ve played it with as few as two people by the invention of ghost runners. There’s an iconic scene from the 20s or 30s of a group of inner city kids playing baseball in an alleyway. One of them brought a ball he probably caught at some game. Some trash and other objects for bases. And of course they break a window and scatter like roaches.
And we either played tackle football without pads or we changed it to touch football. Sure you could hurt someone but we’re nowhere near as strong as the pros. The only person I know that did get hurt when we played was the girl who went to near the concrete curb and got tackled and even then it was just a bruise. You really need 2 teams of at least 3 to get a decent game of football going but you can also play it anywhere. You do need a ball though but again those are cheap and numerous. Pick up games in a parking lot are very common.
Sure, I never said you couldn’t throw stuff and hit it with sticks or run around holding a football, and maybe I did overstate the case, but I’m sure you will concede that it’s much easier to get a soccer match going and much closer to the professional sport (and, to me, more fun - actually, friendly games are usually without a lot of the flaws of professional soccer).
How could anyone consider a baseball uniform silly? (see post #24) 
No, it’s not a problem, because it’s not true. If a team doesn’t play well for most or all of the 90 minutes, they will lose. Your argument is like saying that a marathon is boring, because it can end up just depending on the sprint finish.
See “Home”
That’s a cultural thing again -
you need a ball and a bat-like object (stickball is an American tradition). For soccer you need just as big of a space and a ball. Neither is that hard to come by. Growing up, even though many of the kids in my neighborhood played soccer (and well), given a larger ball (instead of smaller ball) we were more likely to play pick-up kickball (baseball like game) than soccer.
That is one thing I do notice. The kids I’m around are more likely to play pick up soccer and make the trees goal posts than baseball and making the funny spot second base.
I’m an Australian who has lived in the UK (2 years) and Canada (2 years), and who has now been living in the US for almost six years. I consider myself a fan of rugby league, rugby union, Australian rules football, cricket, soccer, hockey, American football, and baseball. I follow the results of all those sports, and will watch any and all of them when the opportunity presents itself.
I really think that the familiarity argument is an important one, and that extended exposure to a new sport can give a person an understanding and appreciation that may surprise them. If you had told me, when i landed here in 2000, that i would be, within about a year, a huge fan of baseball and American football, i would have laughed in your face. Yet that’s exactly what happened.
I guess it’s possible that i’m unusually adaptable or susceptible to new things, but i think it’s just more likely that learning about the sports themselves, and being a part of the culture and community in which they are appreciated, helped me to understand them and come to love them as a sports fan. There are still things about both sports that annoy or infuriate or perplex me—the two-minute warning in football, the designated hitter in baseball—but those are things that American fans also argue about.
And when i say “familiarity,” i don’t just mean knowing the rules or being able to watch a game and understand what’s going on. I mean actually immersing yourself in the whole thing—the games, the fandom, the rivalries, the history, the continuity. It’s easy to dismiss a game when your understanding of it is only at the superficial level of rules and layout and strategy. If that’s all you’ve got, then you miss much of what is great about a sport.
Australians and Brits are just a guilty of this as Americans and Canadians. I know plenty of Aussies and Brits who laugh when i tell them of my love for baseball and football, and i get all the usual criticisms of those sports thrown in my face. But it’s a matter of leaving behind at least some of your preconceptions and being willing to try and look at the sport the way that its lifelong fans do. I’ll never know baseball or football in the same way as someone who’s lived here their whole life, and there will always be aspects of the game that i can’t take for granted the way that Americans do, but i can at least try.
I think Ellis Dee makes an important point in his argument about strategy. The problem is that, like most sporting parochialists, he presents his argument as if his own preferences constituted some absolute, objective measure of what makes a sport better or more enjoyable, rather than acknowledging that our preferences are, to a considerable extent, culturally conditioned.
One of the first things i noticed about American sports, especially baseball and football, is how strategic they are. And, as someone who grew up watching soccer and rugby and cricket, i actually found that quite disconcerting, even annoying. For me, the influence of the coaching staff during a game of football or baseball actually detracts from the game, relieving it of the spontaneity and player control that i love about my childhood sports. The idea that a manager should tell a hitter whether or not to swing at a 3-0 pitch really grates on me, as does the image of a football coach calling plays from a massive playbook on the sidelines. My favorite part of football, for example, is the hurry-up offense, with no huddle and the quarterback calling the plays.
But while i find some of the emphasis on strategy over spontaneity in American sports frustrating because of my background and conditioning, i’ve also come to appreciate the way the that this aspect of the game improves the spectacle and makes the game interesting. I’ve seen baseball and football games won and lost because of good and bad management, and it is really fascinating and exciting. It’s just a matter of trying to appreciate something you’re not used to.
This section seems to me indicative of an unwillingness to contemplate the possibility that people might learn to appreciate different aspects of sports. This section assumes that scoring is, in and of itself, the only reason to watch. In your formulation, lead changes and winning and losing are the only aspects of a game that matter, which strikes me as a profoundly narrow-minded way to view sport.
And your “oh hey, they scored while I looked away for a second” dismissal of soccer really is indicative of a lack of understanding of the game. You clearly know plenty about football, and a bit about baseball, but while your interpretation of soccer may well be genuine and honest, it reflects a lack of understanding of the game and the reasons that other people find it fascinating. That’s not a problem—we are, after all, discussing why it is that Americans don’t watch soccer—but i submit that you’d be critical of someone who slammed football without taking the time to try and understand and appreciate it like a fan.