Most of this is what I was trying to get at earlier in my first (or second?) post. When my soccer friends discuss soccer, I am as much a part of the conversation (as more of a baseball fan and soccer player) as they are.
If the topic flips to baseball, I can’t interact with them in the same way, because the deeper, underlying, strategic concepts of situation/strategy are not clear to them. It would only take complete willingness (and time!) to peel back the layers - to discover underneath what only appears to be mundane and repetitive play on the surface.
That’s the difference.
And yes, I know there’s strategy in soccer, but again, the combination of situations in baseball/football are simply greater, creating a higher ceiling of interest, for me/most Americans.
A couple of other reasons that haven’t been mentioned.
The popularity of fantasy leagues. Fantasy leagues, as well as gambling, are two huge reasons behind the current popularity of American sports. I can’t imagine how a soccer fantasy league would work.
The prevelance of minor league baseball as well as college football/basketball. There are many opportunities for Americans to be exposed to these sports. Many people don’t live within a close drive of a top level pro team. But, almost everyone in the continental US lives close to a college/minor league team.
There isn’t the less-than-top pro league organization in other sports. College soccer isn’t popular at most campuses and the minor league/indoor soccer leagues struggle to stay organized.
A lot of people have been equating soccer and hockey. My friends and I were playing a game of Super Mario Strikers on the Gamecube, and we had a hockey player/fan with us. He did commentary, and hell, it was like Hockey Night in Canada. We’ve given up on ever getting a Mario hockey game, we just play the soccer one.
Very good point, and what you describe equates to European football, where allegiance to a local team is important, no matter what level the team plays at.
To be frank, as others have mentioned its all about personal investment - the whole point of sports fandom is the emotional rollercoster that you go through following your team and nation (and being in an environment where everyone else is going through the same). If you don’t have that, then you’re never going to “get” the game no matter how much you understand it on a technical level.
I’ve always understood and vaguely enjoyed Gridiron, for example, but as other immigrants to these shores have mentioned, it wasn’t until i actually had a reason to support one team in particular (i.e. living and drinking in New York) that it really gripped me as a sport.
I challenge anyone to go to England and hang out with some decent footie fans and not develop at least some passion for the game.
They’re very easy actually and generally take the form of:
you are given a certain amount of money to spend (Say 60 million quid)
you pick 11 players (1 for each position) from a list of all the players available in a particular competition/league. Each player has an assigned value and your total cannot be more than the amount of money you have to spend. Also, you cannot have more than 2 players from the same team.
Thats it.
You then earn points based on the players performance in games. The points system of the World Cup one i’m currently playing with my mates for example is as follows:
Those points are quite interesting really because they generally reflect the “noteworthiness” of certain player actions in the minds of a fan, which might help those who can’t see how a game with low scores can be interesting appreciate how the “mind” of a football fan works.
That is, of course, false by almost any reasonable standard; I would agree basketball is probably the third most popular sport in America, but it’s not as popular as baseball or football. Football gets far, far more than any other sports in the way of television viewers; baseball trumps everything in terms of live viewers. I can’t imagine how you could massage the facts to get basketball into the #1 position.
I haven’t put a lot into thie thread but I have to admit I’ve very disappointed so far in the calibre of discussion.
The reason soccer is not as popular in the U.S. as other sports has *absolutely nothing to do with the nature of the game and how it is played. * Zero, nada, zip. All this “Soccer is boring” nonsense wholly misses a key point: if that were the deciding factor, then you couldn’t explain why it’s popular in other countries. Sports fans are sports fans; English, Brazilian, and Nigerian sports fans do not have longer attention spans or better tolerance for a slow-moving sport than do American, Canadian or Japanese fans, or fans from anywhere else where the most popular spectator sport isn’t soccer. Lots of slow-moving sports are popular. Football and baseball only have seven to ten minutes of actual play in a three-hour span. Hockey can be hideously boring. Formula 1 races often seem wilfully designed to prevent lead changes and go on for hours with little of interest happening. Golf if a very popular TV sport - it has its own channel now - and it’s almost dangerously dull. You cannot, in any sort of logical or knowledgable way, tell me soccer’s more boring than golf or car racing. Soccer is, in fact, quite an interesting sport if you know what you’re looking at - just like most sports.
The reason soccer isn’t very popular in the United States (or Canada) as a spectator sport can be summed up, I believe, in three basic categories:
1. The quality of the play available to the spectator. An American baseball fan can turn on his TV and watch the world’s best baseball players. Every Sunday, the world’s ultra-elite football players play from 1 to 7 PM. The world’s finest basketball players all gravitate into the NBA. In the case of basketball and football you can also watch the next tier of talent down (And not that far down) in college play. Canadians and Americans in some hockey markets also get the benefit of watching the world’s finest hockey players play.
By comparison, North American soccer leagues, be it MLS or the old NASL, are largely comprised of C-grade talent. The fact is that in the grand scheme of things, MLS doesn’t matter a whole lot. The real soccer is being played in the English Premier League and on the big European club teams.
It is therefore to be expected that a market like North America, which has the world’s premier leagues in a number of big sports, will look somewhat askance at a league everyone knows is minor league. Canadians watch the NFL as much as they do the CFL, despite the fact the CFL teams are local do them, for that very reason.
2. Because cultural ties die hard. Football, baseball and basketball were invented in the United States. Basketball and football date back to the 19th century; baseball to the early 19th at least and probably the 18th. The National Football League dates from before the Great Depression. Baseball’s National League dates to when Ulysses S. Grant was President. Those sports are inextricably linked to the history of the United States; their terminology fills the language, their literature defines their times. Hockey is, if you can believe it, FAR more important to Canadians than soccer is to any country it’s popular in; hockey is a defining part of the nation’s self-image.
You can’t simply wave that stuff away because you think another sport is cool. You cannot displace Babe Ruth’s place in the popular imagination. You can’t simply have Chicago fans forget Walter Payton so they can cheer for a soccer player. Canadians are not going to easily let go of Wayne Gretzky to embrace some guy named “Ronaldninimo.” But look at it this way; if you think soccer isn’t popular in the USA or Canada, ask yourself how popular cricket is. Or rugby. Or water polo. Or lacrosse. In fact, soccer has actually done very well considering it’s a foreign sport challenging such well established cultural institutions; it’s one of the most popular participation sports in America and its pro league seems reasonably stable. It’s done a hell of a lot better than cricket.
3. Media inertia. It’s easy to say “the media will just broadcast whatever is popular” but that’s simply not true; the media doesn’t always know what’s popular - if they did they never would have aired “girls club” - and the media does in fact shape what’s popular.
The print, TV and radio media don’t particularly want to landscape of sport to change, because they have a lot invested, at every possible level, in the existing array of pro sports. If you’ve got a monster NFL, NBA, MLB or NASCAR contract, why in the hell would you want people to start watching soccer? Why would a journalist who’s made his name commenting on basketball want soccer to be popular?
“You Americans are too uncultured and addicted to fast food to appreciate artesanal foods. You really should try this cheese; it’s a variety that’s only made in three Austrian villages.”
“You Americans are all SUV lovers who want to consume the world’s resources and foul the environment. Hey, you really should drive Smart cars.”
“You Americans are all closed-minded to any cultural influences that aren’t home-grown. Why don’t you try out some 210 beat-per-minute techno with women moaning in the background.”
“You Americans all have short attention spans and violance in sports. You really should embrace soccer.”
On the SDMB, America-bashing is so much a part of things, it hardly raises an eyebrow anymore. I’ve noticed that it’s on the rise in many threads, and it usually goes unanswered; Americans are fat, Americans are less disciplined drivers than Europeans, Americans are sexually repressed compared to Europeans, candy in the US doesn’t taste as good as that in the UK, European movies are more intellectual than Hollywood productions, European cars are better than what rolls off of factory floors in Detroit, American beer sucks, Americans are obsessed with being clean unlike the more natural French, and so on, ad infinitum. Reading many posts on the SDMB, one would get the feeling that the US is the most backwards country on the planet.
Outside of the SDMB, on the other hand, Americans tend to be very sensitive to criticism of the country by non-citizens. Sure, we complain among the Bush administration amongst ourselves, but we tend to take it personally when crowds are burning flags overseas. Not too long ago, I saw a Web site protesting the scrapping of a once-famous steamship, the France. The ship wasn’t owned by Americans, and it wasn’t being scrapped by Amercans, but the Web site operator blamed Americans for it, because we’re apparently ignorant louts with short attention spans that have no respect for the past. Huh?
The “Why don’t Americans like soccer?” conversation that comes up every four years always seems to have an anti-American undercurrent about it. “Provincial, insular Americans don’t like soccer because they all have short attention spans (baseball and golf don’t count), they all want games with high scores (nevermind hockey and baseball), it isn’t home-grown (again, let’s not mention hockey, golf, and many other aspects of American popular culture and daily life unrelated to sports), and the strategy is too subtle for their simple minds to understand (like any sport someone isn’t familiar with, but let’s forget about that).” Soccer fans throughout the world aren’t going to win over fans in the US if their evangelism has an anti-American “you can’t appreciate the sport” flavor about it. Even if it’s not outright said, we can sense it.
I think this is all exactly right, although we could argue about whether your three main reasons are in the appropriate order.
I think that Americans have demonstrated that, if they take an interest in something, then they’ll do everything they can to draw the best talent. If Americans suddenly took a real interest in soccer, and convinced the media outlets to do the same, you can be pretty sure that there would soon be some big money being offered to the world’s best soccer players to come to America.
That’s one reason i’d have the “cultural ties” thing at number 1, and “media intertia” at number 2. As it currently stands, even if Americans had weekly access to the best soccer in the world, that still wouldn’t necessarily be enough to change the culture and the media. But if the culture and the media changed, getting the best soccer would be a relatively easy step.
Actually, i can’t believe it, and don’t.
I’m not saying you’re wrong about the significance of hockey in Canada. As i said before, i’ve lived there and seen the place that hockey occupies in the national psyche. The branch of my family that lives in Canada is composed mainly of rabid Montreal Canadiens fans—my aunt spent most of her working career with pictures of Guy Lafleur all over her workspace—with a few Vancouver Canucks fans thrown in.
But i really don’t think there’s any way to say that hockey is more important to Canadians, or more important as part of their national self-image, than soccer is to the citizens of any one of half a dozen or a dozen countries in the world. People in many countries live and breathe soccer, both at club level and at the international level, and have the same emotional and cultural investment in it that Canadians do in hockey.
No doubt about that.
I’ve actually just finished a book about baseball, written by a professional cricketer from England. The book is Playing Hard Ball, by E.T. Smith. Although i think that Smith’s book is, in some ways, a missed opportunity, i also think he does a pretty good job of explaining the appeal of each sport, the similarities and glaring differences, and he also gives a decent account of what it is that someone raised on cricket can find appealing about baseball. I recognized a lot of my own feelings and transitions in his story.
mhendo, I agree about the Canadian hockey thing, and I erroneously skimmed through that part of RickJay’s comment. It’s certainly not a greater part of self-identity than football is to many countries.
OK, here’s my take as an American and a baseball fan:
I have watched soccer, voluntarily. I even own a soccer ball, which I kick around my apartment occasionally. My ex-roommate played soccer in high school. I understand the game.
That said, I’m not going to become a soccer fan. And here’s why:
I find the game uninteresting. Every time it appears someone may score, they are either flagged for being offside, the ball is slide-tackled out from under them or their shot is deflected by a defender diving directly in front of the ball before it reaches the keeper. In between those rare opportunities, the game is “One team plays the ball forward 25 yards, loses possession and the other team advances the ball.” Repeat ad nauseum.
I’m not opposed to the idea of world sports. I was a big fan of the WBC, and I think that basketball has the potential to be just as big as soccer. It’s as easy to pick up and play, since the basket can be something as simple as a peach basket nailed to a wall, and it encourages teamwork since every player has to contribute for the team to succeed.
Will I watch the U.S. soccer games? Sure. They’re representing my country, and I’ll at least pretend to care because of that. But don’t think that I’m going to jump for joy when Real Salt Lake takes on D.C. United.
I think RickJay summed it up nicely - I’d switch categories 1 and 2, though. The caliber of play in the US would likely be much better had it taken a different historical trajectory relative to the other sports (football and baseball especially).
But I think #2 and #3 are important in the context of attracting and/or generating interest. I know I would rather watch an EPL match on television (one good thing about Fox) than watch an MLS match. I think a key to generating continual interest in the sport is by continuing to have the best teams play in the US. Wintness the sellout crowds the last several years when Man U., Celtic, Boca Jrs., Inter, Chelsea, etc. played exhibition matches. And Fulham played MLS all-stars in the MLS all-star game (I know - Fulham isn’t the cream of the crop, but the idea is still there).
“Offensive pass interference. 5 yards and loss of down.”
“Delay of game. 5 yards”
“Clipping on the runback. 15 yards from the spot of the infraction.”
“Official’s time-out while we review the play on the field.”
Driving into the Red Zone…“Time out on the field while be bring you these words from Piss-Water BeerWorks. Piss-Water, when you don’t care what kind of swill you drink!”
Stoppages in play don’t bother me. What bothers me is when there’s actually a scoring opportunity in soccer and then the offense gets penalized for being faster than the defense.
<slighly off topic> Anyone who had the chance to watch La Furia Roja put on a masterful performance vs Ukraine 2day, and still knocks footy as being a “boring, not too technical and repetitive” sport needs to have their head examined.
I have, and it’s in great shape. Especially after that match.
I don’t see the connection between ice hockey and soccer–I cannot watch even 5 minutes of hockey (and what is with all the fighting–what is that crap? They’re paid to play, not fight, right?), but I can watch any soccer game-as long as it is commentated in English (for me).
I liked basketball because of the fast turnovers–and I like soccer for the same reason. I can’t stand guys standing around muttering to one another–football takes forever to do nothing and achieve literally inches. It’s dull. A one hour game should not last 3. Baseball can be (and often is) mind-numblingly boring. It’s a complex team sport? Tell that to the guy out there in right field–the one picking dandelions. Tell that to all the Little Leaguers benched for season after season, while the guys with better eye-hand coordination play clean up. Baseball require minimal physical fitness–and apparently a liking for steroid abuse (sorry, cheap shot). I’m a Cub fan-I am not anti-baseball. I am anti-baseball is a religion and better than any sport, ever.
I think there is strategy in soccer. Dunno how much the coaches help the players in MLS, but in the kid leagues, and in HS, the coaches are key. There is most definetly strategy in soccer-and I think it can be complex.
One penalty kick can revive a flagging team and alter the outcome of the game–so I disagree with whoever upthread who said that there was no chance in soccer for a goal to change things. Tieing a score can change the landscape of the match and effect team standings, if I understand soccer correctly. There is also the admiration (subtle, but there) of holding an opposing team to fewer goals than perhaps might have been, if the game had been less well played.
Re hockey: I don’t get the no tie thing at all–life is not all win and lose, if one thinks so, I would hazard a guess that one is quite young or shallow. What happens when hockey game ends with a score 0-0? Some kind of shoot out? How fair is that? How does that reflect the action that occurred on the field or ice?
You goalie has a bad day or a good day and the agony of defeat or the glory is all his? Meh.
(all that said, I like field hockey a great deal–to me it is soccer with sticks and some wild rules; I like lacrosse, too).
I also don’t like to see overemoting on the field, by anyone, in any sport. I have watched many a football game, though, where the quarterback is zoomed in upon and the color guy makes endless speculations about his dehydration status, the impact of the hit that floored him, the potential injury to his knees/throwing arm/fortitude etc. The guy on the field doesn’t need to be dramatic–the commentators do it all for him.
I, for one, am tired of sports writers refusing to give soccer a fair shake. I didn’t catch the man’s name, but there was a sportswriter on NPR just last week who was declaiming that he didn’t have to “embrace” soccer for his readers. Oh, yes, he does–his JOB is to bring information and an educated perspective on a popular public interest. He needs to meet the needs of his “public”–not sulk and call a “new” sport names, just because he doesn’t have the depth of knowledge about it that he has for baseball etc. Seriously, what other job category could get away with that?
I don’t say that soccer is somehow superior to American sports–as was stated, all sports are silly at some level. But I do feel it is AS legitimate as any other hallowed American pasttime. I see no reason for the dissing or the condescension. To like soccer is not un-American–nor is to express contempt for it somehow patriotic. It may well be generational.
IMO, there is plenty of room on the American landscape for soccer, as well as the other big three. Why not enjoy the variety?
Note that that section was qualified with: “That’s not really fair, as it’s an overstatement.”
I actually mentioned the “hey I looked away for a second and missed a score” because that almost actually happened to me watching the US-Czech game. So after a gazillion times when the US had penetrated the offensive zone and been easily turned away, I had been conditioned that this would be the norm. One time I was lighting a cigarette, which takes less than 3 seconds, and when I looked back up I had missed Reyna’s doink off the crossbar.
It’s not likely I’d be critical of someone who slammed football out of ignorance – it’s a certainty, as evidenced by past posts I’ve made. But I’ve always been willing to engage the discussion, and will happily drone on and on for countless pages about the intricacies of football. Oddly, I’ve yet to see anyone willing to do the same for soccer. Tell me about the depth of soccer; it’s tactics, over-arching strategies and on-the-fly tactics; I’m all ears. Calling me parochial or tendentious isn’t going to make me like soccer any better.
I completely agree with those arguing that being around passionate fans fosters passion. I hate baseball; I still can’t stomach watching it. But one of the waitstaff at a bar where I was a regular was a huge Mets fan. He worked there during the Mets-Yanks World Series, and I was hooked. Nay, I was riveted. That didn’t translate into me becoming an ongoing MLB fan, but to this day I consider myself a Mets fan; as in, that’s the team I like to see do well. (All the way this year, baby!)
You guys have also defensively misconstrued my point about scoring. While not a rabid hockey fan, I have been trying very hard to be a Rangers fan for the better part of a decade, and this season I finally had cause to sink my teeth into it. While I loather waiting through two 20 minute intermissions, they’ve been doing those 60 minute game shorties for virtually every game played. I watched no fewer than fifty of them for the Rangers last season. That’s 50 solid hours of concentrated hockey. So while I’m far from an expert, I have some feel for the game.
The one thing that really, really bothers me about hockey is how amazingly frequent it is that strong, skilled play winds up with NOTHING. No reward at all. I couldn’t begin to count the number of times I witnessed the Rangers mount a great attack and walk away with nada. Probably hundreds of times in just those 50 one-hour recaps. I find that frustrating as hell, and am invariably left with the feeling of “so what’s the point?” I never get that feeling even in baseball if, say, the bases get loaded but nobody scores.
The reason I would say that it is different in the baseball example, or if Eli throws a pick six in the red zone to end the best drive of the day, (rewatched that fucking Vikings game the other day…GAH!) is because in baseball and football, you are actually earning and get rewarded with position. Football is the ultimate in the slow, methodical acquisition of territory, making it the most analogous sport to warfare. But baseball has it too; getting on base, and then advancing around the bases serves that “territory acquisition” imperative that I seem to have deeply ingrained into me.
Just my opinion, but I think that this ties into my strategy angle. Strategic acquisition of territory that you hold. I hypothesize that WWI, and then even moreso WWII, embedded this primal drive into Americans, and it is reflected in our major sports. I could be way off base, but that’s my take on it.
I disagree, though I commend you on your excellent post.
Just because Capoeira may be really popular in parts of Africa doesn’t mean that there isn’t something in its nature that makes it unpopular in other parts of the world as a martial art. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s very nature is what makes it unpopular in other parts of the world, despite it being popular in certain places.
I could imagine the same thing applying to soccer. Hell, you hear Europeans say the same thing about gridiron. (Love that term.) The start-stop action and hands-on coaching are very much a part of its nature, and those may indeed be actual reasons why it’s not popular in Europe.
Hey, that gives me another idea. What American isn’t accustomed to the start-stop hell that is rush-hour traffic, ten times a week? We’re so accustomed to gridlock that we incorporated the experience into our sports! hehheh.
See, there is indeed a huge difference. In all the examples you cite, the offense that committed the infraction still has the ball and can recover the position they had lost through penalty. At the very least, they could go for a consolation score in the form of a field goal, or punt to try and win the battle of field position.
The stop-start of football in on a micro-level. I would argue that there is every bit as much of a herky-jerky stop-start nature in soccer and hockey, but it’s on a macro-level. Either of the latter can easily start to feel like a tennis match, seemingly going back and forth all day long. At least there is a fundamental continuity of action behind the start-stop nature of football and baseball. Basketball has that tennis feel, but it embraces the tennis mentality by awarding points by the truckload.
Note that a big part of the appeal in baseball and football is the situation. The pitcher may just be looking for the signal, or the offense may still be in the huddle, but if the situation is right the crowd will be going berserk. Away team has 1st & goal on their own 1? Crowd is apoplectic before action even begins. There’s a definitive substance to the situation apart from the action. My understanding is that baseball is virtually nothing but situations. Soccer and hockey are more ephemeral and reactionary, with no real definable situations to hang your hat on.
Bravo, astorian! Your points about trying to nag Americans into liking soccer were right on the money.
Pro soccer advocates also ignore the fact that baseball, football, basketball, hockey and car racing each have a long history of popularity here. None of them sprang up fully formed and instantly popular. Baseball got a toe-hold first and became the so-called national pastime a long time ago. Nobody was promoting soccer at the turn of the 20th century when the American League and National League were fighting a war for survival, and College football was getting off the ground with the formation of the NCAA. People in America were promoting those sports and they were and still are widely popular.
Pro football came next and marketed itself so well and put on such a great show that it ultimately moved past baseball in American popularity. The point is that these sports got their starts well before TV came along with its advertising money and breaks for commercials, and well before fantasy leagues, and well before ESPN. Promoters invested their time and money into making baseball, football, hockey, basketball and car racing popular. Soccer, by way of contrast, shows up every 4 years (or with Pele in the 1970s) and says, “We’re here, why don’t you pay attention to us since the rest of the world does?” Most Americans correctly say, we’ve got our own great sports to follow, so run along and kick your ball and leave us alone.
How fair is that? How does that reflect the action that occurred on the field or ice?