7 is what takes the cake, though. It’s probably the most extra-curricularly violent sport I’ve seen besides hockey. I’ve seen players leg-stomped when they were on the ground and the ref was supposedly not looking. The fans of course are another story.
*(1) Because they consider it a game for women.
*
Women, no. Mono-monikered metrosexuals, maybe.
*(2) Because Americans never win at soccer, so they don’t want to be defeated…
*
Maybe.
*(3) Because it is a real team game and Americans are too individualistics
*
Baseball is the ultimate “real team game” and it’s America’s national pastime.
*
(4) Because it lacks lot of equipment and Americans like sports with a lot of protections, hard hats, etc.
*
Baseball players wear pretty minimal protection (so do basketball players.) Both intensely popular in America.
(5) Because it is too boring, not many goals on it.
The same could be said of baseball (and is said, by many people.) Yet it still enjoys tremendous popularity.
*
(6) Because it is played by normal people, unlike most of American games that are for tall or oversized peoples.*
This is, again, also true of baseball. Pro baseball players’ physiques are perhaps the most “normal” of the big American sports.
*(7) Because is not violent, in general. (Not much on the field, at least; the public is other story)
*
Yet again, this is also true of baseball.
I disagree with (1). Americans regard it as a children’s game. It’s a game we keep our children amused with (hence the existence of “soccer moms”) and then the children outgrow it and take up sitting on the couch drinking beer while they watch a real sport.
And the worst kind of Indian: Tea-drinking British Indians from Britain! They lull you into a false sense of Britishness while they hide their Indian-ness behind a veneer. (A veneer of British.)
(8) Because soccer isn’t indigenous to North America. Baseball, basketball, American football and hockey were all developed here, and the fan base grew along with each sport. If a sport had to be manly, individualistic and violent and requiring expensive equipment, then buzkashi would be popular here. It isn’t.
I remember the first time the World Cup was held in the USA, and MAD Magazine did a feature to help Americans prepare. They made some suggestions to help Americans learn to understand the game. The two suggestions I remember were:
Watch soccer on TV! Thrill to the excitement of Portugal and Argentina battling to a 0-0 tie!
To help understand why soccer scores are so low, get a ball and go to an empty soccer field, and discover for yourself just how difficult it is to kick the ball through a goal that is only 26 feet wide.
They also had a fun suggestion for a good way to profit from soccer. They explained that most Americans have no idea what foreign soccer stars look like, so all you need to do is purchase a soccer uniform and have some 8 by 10 glossy photos of you wearing the uniform printed up. “Autograph” the photos and sell them for $25 a pop.
pinguin, most of your suggestions are far off the mark. People already told you why. I can’t get all Americans to respond here but I will still try to speak for the typical American if you really want to know.
1 - 10) Soccer is boring - that explains most of it.
It is a game for primitives. People all over the world play it because kicking a ball, a rock, or a severed human head towards or away from something is about the most primitive sport you can play. Americans already have our own sports that are a bit more sophisticated. It isn’t like there is only one simple game that was handed down from God for kids to start on. American kids play primitive versions of baseball and basketball starting young for instance. Soccer also has a bad reputation in America as being a haven for hooliganism and oddly primitive behavior like blaring vuvuzelas in South Africa. Besides just plain bad behavior and event management, nobody wants to listen to that in the U.S.
It isn’t a good game for homo sapiens. One of our most notable traits is our hand and arm dexterity. Soccer just trashes that and makes everyone except the goalie play like they have a substantial handicap for no obvious reason.
It plays badly on TV. This one is big. Besides point #1 - 10, there aren’t good places for commercial breaks. Money talks in the U.S. for sports and you can’t produce sports like we are used to seeing without big money coming in from corporations. Our sports may not be be the ultimate game but the overall execution and entrainment value are about much more than the sport itself and that is what Americans expect. Many people watch the Superbowl just for the commercials for instance.
Not all countries in the world enjoy soccer like most soccer fans like to claim. Canada doesn’t either because they have the people and the money to do better. The Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Japan are all over baseball and produce top talent. Basketball is also popular in many parts of the world including the former Eastern Bloc. Soccer fans are a little aggressive in their assertions. They take it for granted that it is the ultimate sport and everyone should naturally like it when that isn’t the case. It isn’t the case in America because we have other things.
Ultimately, the reason is that baseball took the ecological niche that soccer took in other countries. The British Football Association was founded in 1863; the National Association of Base Ball Players was founded in 1859, and the first pro league began in 1871. Thus sports fans in the US watched baseball, and sports fans in the UK watched soccer.
By the time soccer started in the US, baseball was king. Soccer couldn’t compete for the fans, especially since it was usually played during the same time as baseball and football.
Ultimately, the reason why soccer didn’t catch on in the US is the same reason why baseball didn’t catch on in the UK.
I think the real question is, “why is it so popular in the rest of the world?” Michael Landsberg of TSN compared it to rice being the most popular food in the world: it’s not because everyone just loves rice so much, it’s just that there’s nothing else around if you’re living in poverty. Conversely, if money was no object, I wonder how many people who play or enjoy soccer in the developing world would rather play tennis or ice hockey, to name but two.
Of course, Europe flies smack in the face of this theory, but their love of unrefrigerated beer also defies reason and logic, so there.
I actually think the clock has something to do with it.
[ul]
[li]Games are 90 minutes. That’s wrong; American sports last 60 minutes.[/li][li]The clock counts up. That’s just backwards.[/li][li]The clock doesn’t stop. When 90 minutes are reached, the game doesn’t end; it goes on until the referee says that ‘extra time’ is up. How can anyone watch a game if they don’t even know when it’s supposed to end?[/li][/ul]
It just seems foreign, and I think that puts people off.
I don’t like soccer because I just don’t like sports, period, unless I happen to be playing in it (and those days are long past) or someone I know personally is playing in it. That is, if one of my nephews is on the football team, I’ll probably watch the game. If the Cowboys are on, I am NOT watching that game.
The first point has a lot of truth. In the rest of the world soccer is a very macho culture–much like American football here. The problem in the US is that kids get into soccer because their parents think other sports are too competitive or rough. That tags the sport with a “sissy” image.
The biggest reason I think is we don’t dominate the sport. The US is so used to being the top dog that being an also ran doesn’t sit well. I don’t think it’s a coincidence sports like tennis, women’s golf, and Indy Car have plunged in popularity as fewer Americans hold the top spots. We’re the only country where stock cars are the most popular form of racing–and stock car racers are almost entirely American.
