When it comes to sports, I definitely love baseball the best, but I can’t watch games that don’t involve the Yankees without getting bored unless they are playoff games. Of course, I not infrequently will pull over to watch an inning or two of little league. But, for the most part, I concede the limits of baseball as television entertainment. I get far more fired up for a New York Giants game than for anything else, and I can watch any NFL matchup and be entertained. I used to enjoy the NBA but that changed when younger and younger players started joining the league. I lost interest in the NBA in large part because I no longer could follow the best players through three or four years of college ball. I enjoy hockey, but it’s really best in person. Otherwise, I can only manage to watch it if its the playoffs, its the third period (or overtime), and the game is close.
When it comes to the World Cup, I’ve watched nearly every match and I love it. But I’ve never watched a MLS match, and I never watch the English Premier League or any other of the top leagues around the world. What interests me about the World Cup is not just the quality of play, but the stakes. I care because so many other people care. It’s kind of a weird kind of interest, but my love of World Cup soccer simply doesn’t translate to lower stakes matches. In that sense, it’s a bit like the Olympics. I’ll watch all kinds of Olympic competitions because there are medals on the line, but I’d never watch the same competitions in offyears.
More kids play soccer in this country than any other sport, and yet our professional league offers low salaries and has modest ratings. Very few people know the names of any of our star players. It’s a shame that our team couldn’t go further in the Cup because I got the feeling that the country was beginning to warm up to them.
With all the people we have playing the game, I expect that we will compete for the World Cup championship before long, but I don’t know if we’ll ever really embrace football. What do you think?
We have no minor leagues for men’s soccer. Title IX wiped it out at the collegiate level, and MLS just barely makes it. Until we have professional clubs in our smaller cities the way that other countries do, we’ll have no funnel for developing talent past high school. It’s a dead-end street.
Ironically, Title IX is a big reason why we’re dominant in the women’s game.
so, do the soccer scholarships go to football? Is that how it works?
It could be argued that way at a lot of smaller schools. At the big-name Division I schools, though, football is the revenue engine that keeps the other sports afloat, or so they say. I’m sure there’s a more critical view to be argued, but I haven’t thought it through that far, to be honest.
9 gutted college wrestling, too – also a true shame. I have no problem with equality, though, and I’m glad they did it.
As far as football goes, with floating the other sports, believe it. To the best of my knowledge, at least, that is totally true.
I think this is generally a load of shit, all apologies.
Most schools (over 60%) in this country lose money on their football programs, yet they continue to pour money in. These programs are by far the most expensive ones on campus and suck up resources in the form of tuition and higher fees. Small programs are going to get stomped one way or another, and Title IX is just a means of shifting the blame.
There’s around 200 I-A men’s soccer teams with 9.9 scholarships per team.
Figure I-A graduates 1500 soccer players a year. All of MLS is less than 400 roster spots. The number of grads in a given year who’ll even get a sniff at pro career is in the low double digits, with maybe 4-5 who will stay for more than a cup of coffee.
Throwing more bad players at the “system” isn’t a solution to national team development.
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I wasn’t aware of the Title IX controversy …
Title IX hurts men’s soccer
I am glad with the success of US Women’s National Soccer team on the world stage!
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Like many a father, my entrée to soccer was through my children, who participated for several years in Saturday morning community leagues well before the term soccer mom entered the national lexicon. Play more closely resembled rugby in their earlier years when 0-0 ties were the norm, but by the time they moved on to other sports they played pretty well — as well as having gotten a great education in team play, sportsmanship and self discipline. And I came to love the sport, but it can’t hold my interest — nor my now adult kids’ interest — except when the World Cup rolls around.
How soon, if ever, the U.S. will truly compete for a World Cup is an open question. Based on what we’ve seen so far in South Africa, that day is in the distant future. How soon will the U.S. become soccer crazy like most other nations? The very things that make the sport so beautiful dictate the answer:
Never.
Odd thing. That’s precisely the same reason so many Americans claim to not care about soccer. Because so many of those irritating Europeans, Africans, Hispanics and Arabs like it so much, Americans in general seem to be compelled to hold soccer at a higher level of contempt than normally reserved for sports in which our culture has no obvious long-term emotional or patriotic investment. We seem to use it as some type of fodder for stoking our attitude of reflexive American exceptionalism.
I love soccer. I played it competitively in my younger days; long before widely organized youth soccer existed. I’m afraid we are going to have to wait another generation or so, much like we will likely need to wait for many of the looming cultural shifts, before soccer wends its way into the fabric of our daily sports lives. Right now it is perceived by many Americans as representing something that a large segment of our majority population dislikes.
“That’s precisely the same reason so many Americans claim to not care about soccer. “
Yep. In many ways, US soccer-hatred is parallel to Tea Partyism — to American exceptionalism, and nostalgia for “Father Knows Best” -era monoculture.
I’m new to soccer, and my first impression is that the field is too big. The enormous size of the playing area leads to an awful lot of dithering around where nothing in particular is happening. I wonder if it might be a better game if played on a surface about 20% smaller? Baseball has plenty of dead air time as well, so the problem isn’t unique to soccer.
I can understand this impression from a newbie to the sport. But when you get more experienced watching the game, you’ll realize that extra space (compared, say, to the rather too-narrow US football field) is needed for a team to build up an attack, spread out the defense, then move in for a goal.
Not that much standing around really. If that were so, you’d see more players on the field of the out of shape or oversized variety we see in some US sports. Soccer players need to be in shape because they cover so much ground in a game, and must possess both offensive and defensive skills, since they do a bit of both regardless of position.
As for most of Booman’s thoughts on professional sports, I agree. Especially re the NFL — each week of the regular season schedule is something I anticipate watching with interest.
Obviously this is in part because football, given its physically brutal nature, cannot sustain a season loaded with too many games and, unlike maybe the NBA, the NFL hasn’t elected to overload the playoff season with too many teams. Thus each game of the regular season tends to count for more.
MLB? I used to think I was increasingly disinterested because the games were getting too long compared to those I saw in my youth, and because of the performance enhancing drugs scandal that warped the key offensive stats and records. Now I think it’s a bit of all that plus the fact that MLBers are wildly overpaid on average compared to the amount of energy they expend on the field and the actual individual statistics they produce. Used to be that only the great stars were paid top money — and by that I mean an annual amount which could tide the player over for years of no income.
Now, it’s the everyday non-star .250 hitters/just above avg fielders who can nevertheless be offered a $3.2m/yr salary (that’s the average player’s salary today). Something is wrong with that picture. Although I could easily forgive if it were a sport requiring tremendous physical stamina and/or physical punishment. But it’s not. MLB is a game where a player spends roughly 45% of the game (excepting the pitcher and catcher) largely either standing around waiting for action or sitting on the bench waiting to hit.
NFLers are paid about right, or certainly better than yesteryear, given all the physical abuse they take each week. NBAers also are required to be in shape and all 5 players must run the court when they’re out there. Unlike MLB, no one in basketball or football has the luxury of standing around in the playing area chewing and spitting and scratching themselves in peculiar places with no consequences to their team.
Frankly, I think the complaints about the pay that baseball players receive (especially in the context of professional sports generally) are ludicrous. Like most athletes, baseball players are the absolute elite at their particular sport and deserve elite compensation. If there’s a complaint to be made, it’s the disparity in how teams can compensate, but the minor league system does ameliorate this somewhat (the Rays were a good example of a low-budget success, prior to their recent collapse).
Just for consideration, the NFL pays ~58-60% of its revenues to players. MLB pays ~50-55% of its revenues to players. The NBA and NHL have caps fixed to revenue, with 57% and 55.6% of the revenue going to players, respectively.
I think it’s interesting, then, that MLB players – who receive the lowest share of revenue – are overpaid, whereas NFL players – who receive the highest, are paid “correctly”.
I think probably most professional athletes in the US major sports (non-soccer) are vastly overpaid, but that conclusion is not so much sport revenue driven but is more in terms of comparison with the average non-athlete American’s salary and on the basis of the output of energy required for the athlete’s sport and the physical toll exacted for playing that sport, as I suggested above.
MLBers, assuming they just do the bare minimum to take care of their bodies (i.e., a light daily pre-game jog around the outfield and some stretching), can last a long time provided they still produce (a .250 BA seems acceptable these days) or have a skill the team needs. A long time in baseball can mean 15, 20 years or more of being well-compensated each year — and as I noted, with the average salaries in MLB now $3.2m/yr, players in one season can earn much more than the average non-athlete person will earn in a lifetime (or two) of work.
NFLers, iirc, last about 4 yrs on average — the sport uses them brutally and spits them out, and for the most part players don’t have quite the leverage and power to negotiate really good contracts given the closed-knit clubby nature of NFL ownership. I don’t begrudge these pros from getting all they can while playing the most brutal sport this side of boxing.
That said, frankly the entire revenue structure is inflated, imo, starting with the vast sums the tv networks pay to televise games. Nothing much to do about that except for folks to get annoyed enough with inflated salaries — especially in near-Depression times — to stop watching these games. But in the meantime I wouldn’t want MLBers to have to go back to the old days of the reserve clause where players had no real chance to freely negotiate with other teams for a decent salary while the owners ripped them off right and left.
See, I actually am not pro-player in sports union negotiations because the fan always gets screwed. I am not pro-owner either, but I would side with the owners if they said, “I’m willing to pay you a lot more but not so much as to force me to raise ticket or concession prices one dime.” When a Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, or Alex Rodriguez gets paid over $15 million a season, I know that Steinbrenner can afford it, but my ticket prices tripled and a beer and a hot dog now cost over ten bucks. The idea is that the player creates the value and deserves a bigger share of the profits. I agree with that. But the reality has been that the fan can’t afford to take his family to the game. Baseball is supposed to be a working man’s sport. It isn’t anymore, and it’s the players’ fault.
Players, owners, greedy network execs and fans are all at fault here.
The fans apparently show up enough at the park and at home with their remotes to keep the current oversized structure in place, for the moment anyway. People deserve what they get — scandals, high prices, phony stat records, unnecessarily lengthy and late games to accommodate tv schedules, and ridiculously overpaid and underworked MLBers who enjoy getting paid to spit and scratch and occasionally hit and field.
I don’t think you can blame the fans because some fans are loaded and will pay the inflated prices.
Spectators don’t pay money to see energy expenditure. If they did, wrestling (the real kind) and track and field would be the most popular sports in the world.
The value of sport is competition within a given set of rules. It applies to football, it applies to bowling, it applies to everything in between.
That may be true generally about spectators, joel, but as a personal matter of judging whether players are overpaid, I do consider such energy expenditure factors, at least in the current overheated salaries climate. If I feel the players are being overvalued given what relatively little they’re expected to do, if I feel the salary situation has gotten out of hand, as I do, then I’ll vote by not going to games and not watching them on tv.
Ditto with pro golf. Obscenely large winners’ paychecks for a few days walking around on lusciously kept grounds with someone to carry your bags. Though I’m not sure if the avg player makes $3.2m as in MLB, I still choose not to encourage this sort of thing by either attending or watching on teevee.
Again, the value of the athlete is the value of the demand for his or her services. Just like any other worker.
is that you need to stop calling it football.
;]
Europeans used to complain (maybe still do) about the stop and go nature of football. But as I watched the World Cup matches, I began to realize that the incessant back and forth was not really any different than than footballs’ stop and go.
Both sports do have one thing in common: plenty of time for smoke breaks and cooking hamburgers. What is there to com0plain about?
It would be physically nearly impossible for humans to play at a professional level in football and futbol without a chance to catch a breather at times. Of course, you have your “no-huddle” offenses in football, but those guys only have to play when their team has the ball. Soccer players are out there the entire time. And when they go to the bench, they’re done for the day.
I like the fact that in soccer there are no timeouts. Timeouts are practically a God-given right for American players and coaches — as if chiseled in stone in the US Constitution — the way they’re given such a prominent place in our American sports. As are those special corporate rights, the bogus “teevee” timeout.
Of course, soccer, while being a little more perfect and evolved than most sports, does have its flaws. Two exactly, by my count: Players faking fouls, and not having instant tv replay for goal disputes.
Ah-ah. You explained to me the significance of faking fouls, a breather. Makes sense. Thanks.
I agree with Stefan Fatsis’s recent writing on US soccer. Within a generation or so, the US will be serious World Cup title contenders — without soccer ever being as big a passion here as it is in most countries.
The US is a big country with ample resources to sink into sports. It seems to me that Americans do very well internationally at swimming, at downhill skiing, at track and field. Yet you wouldn’t call any of those would you call a popular sport here.
Soccer won’t de-throne baseball or football, but will gain a little market share, and that’ll be enough to get us in the top tier of 8-10 countries who are almost always WC contenders.
I know baseball is all Americany and Apple Pie-ish. And I loved playing it when I was growing up. And I have watched and enjoyed many, many games on the teevee during my lifetime. All in all, I really love the game. So I am loathe to criticize it.
But what is it about baseball and spitting? Count how many times during a nine inning game you get to see some guy spit. It can’t be about the sweating and exertion. The guys spitting the most are the ones sitting on their ass or standing with a bat on their shoulder in the on-deck circle. Guys will spit multiple times, one after the other….when they are doing absolutely nothing. Do these guys continue to spit after the game? Do they spit when they’re home washing the dishes with the wife, or cutting the grass, or helping their kids with their homework? It’s like as soon as they put on the uniform, they are struck with a case of spitting Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.
So WTF is it? Can somebody tell me, please?
They chew tobacco or other substances you can’t swallow – they HAVE to spit it out. They chew because they’re bored out of their minds and need something to do. š
Philadelphia Union, baby! They just played the first game in their new stadium on the riverfront in Chester, and I was very pleasantly surprised by the level of play. It’s not World Cup or the Premiership, that’s for sure, but it is very legitimate soccer and definitely worth watching. I’m actually really excited about having this new team to follow.
Baseball was my first sport, and I spent more of my life following it than any other. Without question, it never hurts to follow a franchise that was as frequently competitive as the Red Sox. I agree that watching teams other than your own (aside from the occasional visit to Safeco field in Seattle) is not very compelling in baseball.
However, for much of my life, the NBA was my biggest passion. I was a huge supporter of Antoine Walker and the infectious enthusiasm that he played with, despite his obvious flaws as a player, and of course Paul Pierce, one of the ugliest but most productive players in the league. I fondly remember the era of basketball that most people consider its nadir (about a decade ago, before the handchecking rules were changed) because the Celtics were so much fun to watch, despite their mediocrity. I grew to dislike that team and its overemphasis on three-pointers, and was elated when Kevin Garnett (my favorite player in any sport, bar none) came into the fold. The big three before Garnett’s injury was a sight to behold and that one season remains my favorite in sports history.
Since that time, my interest in the league declined massively. A large part of that, I’m sure, is the aftermath of winning a title. Some of that was how unlikeable several of the league’s young stars were (Lebron James and Dwight Howard, for example). Despite the fact that the quality of play has really spiked through the roof, this kind of stuff, and the fact that the league is in the process of beatifying the truly loathsome Kobe Bryant, started to turn me away. Making matters worse is the wheeling and dealing of barnacles like “World Wide” William Wesley and Maverick Carter, and the general “insider club” that rules the NBA. What has really strained my relationship with the league is how its commissioner, David Stern, has run things. From the Donaghy-sprung officiating scandal to the relocation of the Sonics, Stern’s arrogance stands astride the league like a Colossus. Bud Selig gets all the heat, but David Stern is bar none the worst commissioner in sports.
As for the footballs, the American form has always been my third favorite (of the US professional sports) and I love the Sunday ritual of the game and everything associated with it. I’ve always been a Patriots fan but I have to admit that I barely even followed the third of their Superbowl seasons (2004) and only started following them closely again when they traded for Randy Moss. As for international football, I’ve been able to get up for every world cup since my year abroad in 2002. Nothing quite matches the experience of watching these games in a country that really cares, although the US is starting to get there.
I wouldn’t disagree that Stern has made some mistakes, and perhaps he’s stayed on too long, but in the overall he’s light years better at what he does — running a professional sports league that is popular and profitable — than the corporate owner-friendly doofus Bud Selig of MLB who sat on his hands and looked the other way as players substance abused their way to phony batting records.
Re Kobe, let there be some more beatifying, if indeed that’s what is going on (actually I thought the NBA was doing that more to St James of LeBron in recent years). Outstanding individual talent who increasingly learned to give up some personal glory for the betterment of the team.
And Kobe is an international man of rare sophistication — speaks Italian, and is a big fan of soccer, and is attending this WC. Not many NBAers are probably at the Cup right now, but hats off to Kobe for his small part in trying to interest Americans in the sport.
I don’t know if that’s parody or not, but if it is, well played.
I was having some fun there, but actually it only involves some exaggeration. Fact is, compared to the average US-born NBAer, Kobe, who speaks fluent Italian and Spanish (iirc) and who grew up in Italy and became a huge soccer fan while living abroad, probably is considered by many American athletes as someone with “sophisticated” Euro tastes and proclivities.
But, hey, if Kevin Garnett or Paul Pierce are also fluent in a foreign language or two, more power to them too.
Kobe’s father played in Europe so he grew up watching football (of the world variety) and claims he studies moves to incorporate into his game. He’s a huge Barca fan.
The game will continue to grow here, albeit slowly. It has a foothold among the 25 and younger folks. The problem is the MLS hasn’t really evolved. Fans here follow European clubs, which means getting up in the early morning hours on weekends or skipping class week-day afternoons.
Soccer won’t really take off here until the U.S. produces a prodigy, somebody who is snatched up and developed by a European club.
That may happen next year or it may take 20 years. With so many kids playing, odds are somebody will emerge and soon.
Appointing a new national club manager may speed up that process. I thought Bradley did a good job at team development, despite some awful player selections in the cup. I still wonder where the U.S. program would be if Jurgen Klinsmann had been picked instead of Bradley in ’07.
It’s amazing how much soccer has grown in the US despite our men’s team not consistently producing a superstar or charismatic player as a face for the game. Landon Donovan — quality solid player, but no superstar and not very colorful.
The tv ratings are up 50% for this year’s Cup over 2006. 15 million (20 if we count Univision viewers, and why shouldn’t we?) watched the US play Ghana. This is all very promising.
Give our team a quality talented striker with a nose for the goal as other WC contenders have, plus maybe a Klinsmann coaching, and we’ve got the makings to take it to the final four and compete with the truly talented championship level teams.
The beauty of the game as it exists is that it nicely complements the established schedules of major U.S. sports, which is why I find it so easily to follow.
Have a club you root for? You’re up at 9 am on Saturday, unless you’re on the West Coast, the games last two hours. When the matches are over, it’s 11 am, it’s out of the way and the day is ahead of you.
That’s a refreshing change from college football games which regularly run 4 hours or baseball games, which are unwatchable for me anymore because they almost never finish in under 3.5 hours any more. I’ll make that commitment to an NFL game of that length but 162 contests that long? No thanks.
Back to the U.S., I hope that whomever breaks out for the national team is a striker. If Jozy Altidore were even a so-so player, the U.S. would still be playing. But he’s not, and so his team isn’t.