Not to turn this into a Great Debate, but wouldn’t the overwhelming majority of Americans fail the following test:
“Name a male soccer player other than Pelé or That Guy Who Married Posh Spice.”
(And, no, saying “Uh, the neighbor’s kid, Hunter” doesn’t count. But I mean anyone, past or present, who competed professionally or at the Olympics, for America or for anyone else.)
Cite?
The majority of the people in the US couldn’t identify a soccer ball if it hit them in the head. The only way they are going to care in the slightest is if they are either: 1)foreign-born, 2)one of the 12 people in the US who saw Bend It Like Beckham, or 3)read “Cleats” in the comics every morning. It just isn’t on the radar.
I agree with WW that several of us, including me, have been engaging in hyperbole. But it’s not entirely unjustified, as we are trying to describe broad trends in popular culture.
Once we get the broad trends out of the way, we are getting down to the details. Yes, most major newspapers carry several pages of agate type listings of the results in all the major professional sports nationwide (baseball, football, basketball, hockey), the major college sports nationwide (football, basketball), minor sports (tennis, boxing, horse racing, etc.), and the local listings for minor leagues (all four major sports), college athletics (all team sports played), and high school athletics (all team sports played).
Note, however, that in the United States, major newspapers are all local newspapers. The only daily that can be called a national paper is USA Today. That paper has a huge sports section, but even it has to do tremendous condensing of the available material.
That’s the agate-type (7 point) listings. In the front of the sports section, you have several pages of stories, but you’ll see that the day-to-day articles generally concentrate on the locally popular clubs. Yes, the major tennis and golf tournaments will get full coverage, but when it comes to team sports, unless there is something particularly notable going on, the other matches in the league will get just a few sentences of coverage.
Even the truly local minor league teams get extremely sparse coverage, because in the United States, minor leagues (the equivalent of anything below Premiership in the United Kingdom) draw precious little interest as far as news coverage is concerned. College athletics draw far more interest.
But here we’re talking about the local newspaper. You can’t compare that with a national television news show. They’re completely different animals.
Okay, this really is hyperbole, because as has been stated, most Americans have played soccer in their youth, so they would be able to identify a soccer ball.
And, indeed, there is some group of non-Hispanic Americans who are interested in soccer as a spectator sport, but it is proportionally a very small segment of the population.
silenus writes:
> The majority of the people in the US couldn’t identify a soccer ball if it hit them in
> the head.
You’re wildly exaggerating again. The majority of the people in the U.S. have played a few games of soccer, if only in elementary school physical education. A large proportion have played on a soccer team. The total proportion of the people in the U.S. who are either foreign-born, Hispanic, grew up in a well-off suburb and are younger than 30 (and hence either played soccer as a child or had friends who did), or who are the sorts to watch foreign sports and films is not quite a majority, but it’s pretty close to it.
You have a point, but you’re wildly exaggerating it. Just what’s the use of making huge overstatements of every point you make? Do you think that we’re impressed with you more if you overstate everything? This is the Straight Dope Message Board. We’re fighting ignorance here, not hitting people over the head with wild exaggerations.
Well, if you really want to know: IT’S A SODDING GAME.
The TV news should be for important things- wars, current events, deaths, political news, major international happenings, that sort of thing. It should not be for sports, celebrity gossip, or to plug other shows on the same network (Channel Ten, I’m looking at you!)
That’s not to belittle the importance that sport has for some people’s lives- we all have our hobbies and interests. I’m just saying it doesn’t need to be on the evening news, that’s all.
Baseball isn’t a matter of life or death. It’s far more important than that.
Some of us feel there is a place for both sodding games and that other stuff. How did the line get drawn in your mind as to what is “important enough” to make the cut?
ummm, That Girl Who Married Nomar Garciaparra?
Mia Hamm
The Soccer World Cup is not the under 15 tiddlywinks championships. Even if it was reported just as a financial story, it would be newsworthy around the world. How much advertising and merchandise sales will be driven by the World Cup Soccer? Surely you can admit that is newsworthy.
The point still remains that many many people are more interested in the sports news than the latest news from Iraq ar the latest boring politicians speech.
If you want to get something out of the news- I agree -get rid of gossip and plugs for other shows. When those two guys who lived in a hole for two weeks were interviewed on Channel 9 guess what the 6 o’clock top story was. “Tonight on channel 9 two guys down a hole are interviewed here on 9 at 7.30 tonight.” What a joke ! That was the top news story of the day apparently.
As I’ve always associated this quote with Bill Shankley (and therefore certainly not about Big Bat Rounders 
), is there any way of knowing which sport is actually not a matter of life or death?
I’m not sure if people in the US appreciate how much of the TV news here and in NZ is taken up with sport.
Something truly huge and international- like the Olympics or the World Cup Soccer (but not the Commonwealth Games :p) could merit a minute or two as a brief round-up at the very, very end of the news- perhaps after the weather, even- but it doesn’t need extended play-by-play commentary.
I’m not saying there shouldn’t be sport TV shows (well, perhaps they could create a special free to air sports channel and then ban sports from the other channels…)- but really, I’d submit that everything is more important that local or regional sport (just as those who would argue nothing is more important)
And I hate to tell you this, Telemark, but most people outside the US and Japan have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Baseball. I doubt many Non-US/Japanese people could name a single player at all, besides Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, neither of whom are still playing (or alive, sadly).
And as for drawing a line in my mind as to what was important enough- see my earlier post. Sports, Celebrity Gossip, and plugs for other shows (or blatant commercials) aren’t important enough to make the cut for TV news, IMO. If it’s a slow news day, play a music video from a local band (provided they don’t suck, which most of them unfortunately do). Just don’t devote several minutes of otherwise productive airtime to what is essentially a game, and not a very good one at that (any type of Rugby, especially).
If you only knew how many papers by English as an Additional Language speakers I had to read this year about Cuba’s Roberto Clemente, you wouldn’t make a statement like that. 
Nitpick: Roberto Clemente was Puerto Rican.
Yep. The book synopsis I checked for the spelling of his name said Cuba, but wikipedia says you’re right. Either way, he wasn’t an American nor were the kids who wrote about him born in the US.
Again, it IS on American TV news, but not the national news. Sports are too localized to do so.
And really, I don’t consider Good Morning America “news”, per se. More “infotainment”.
Clemente was an American-Puerto Rico is an American territory. That and he’s almost a God here in Pittsburgh.
In addition to the U.S. and Japan, baseball is also popular in Canada, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, Taiwan and South Korea.
Are there really no other major league players other than Ruth and DiMaggio who are known where baseball isn’t popular? What about Barry Bonds? Willie Mays? Hank Aaron? Yogi Berra? Lou Gehrig? Mickey Mantle?
I know that if you watch GMA or Today here, they’ll have local news breaks where they’ll talk about local sports teams. They also talk about sports on the local news shows. Really outside of ESPN, you will hardly see any sports on national networks unless it’s something big happening like the horse who broke his leg recently in the Preakness. CNN used to have a thirty minute highlight show, but they don’t even have that anymore. I think sports and news are considered different things here, sports is considered entertainment by the news people, and unless something happens like a death or a scandal, they don’t consider it news.
And I never claimed otherwise. Perhaps it wasn’t clear but that was hyperbole. Certainly there are extremely few folks inside the US who could name Cricket, Soccer, or Rugby players. I would never claim otherwise, nor would I suggest there is anything wrong with that.
For a huge portion of the population where I live, the Red Sox are the most important reason to watch the nightly news. During the playoffs, the Sox are often the lead story because that’s what people want to see and hear about. The fact is, for most folks around here, baseball is news. In fall and winter, the Patriots (football) is news. Same with the Bruins (hockey) and Celtics (basketball).
News is what people what to know about.
This may be a big part of the difference right here. Here, I believe most cities of at least medium size have at least one TV station with a news department that does several local news broadcasts a day (typically a half hour each in early morning, midday, early evening, and late night), either right after/before a national news broadcast, or incorporating reports or clips from the network. These local news shows will typically include a fairly substantial sports segment, focusing on all the pro teams in the area, any important national games or happenings, and sometimes college and/or high school sports.
As a spectator sport, at the professional level, soccer is pretty much a non-entity in the US. But plenty of kids play it (hence the phenomenon of the “soccer mom”), and it’s popular at some high schools and colleges (especially smaller schools who like the fact that it’s cheaper than [American] football).
Who?
Yogi Berra??? I’m afraid who ask who’s named after whom- the baseball player or the cartoon character that’s smarter than your average bear, Booboo!
Didn’t Lou Gehrig have some kind of disease?
The rest of them are, to me at least, complete unknowns. You could fit the total coverage of Major League baseball in the mainstream media here into a matchbox- without taking the matches out first.
Similarly, I’m sure most people in the US couldn’t name a rugby player besides Jonah Lomu. It goes both ways.