One of the best things about being on a site like Monks is that it allows me to meet and interact people from thousands of miles away, and learn about their cultures without having to actually go there (I'm very lazy, you see...) A vast majority of the non-North American Monkers happen to come from Great Britain, a place that I would love to visit, but have never had the chance to see.
Which makes me wonder sometimes: Why the hell do these bloody blokes love soccer so much? In the U.S.-centric society that I live in, soccer is an afterthought in the sporting landscape, a fun activity for little girls and mildly athletic men who are either too short to play basketball, too small to play football, or too uncoordinated to hit a curveball.
Then, I think to myself: Wait a minute, soccer is the most popular sport in like 95% of the world's countries. So, the question becomes, "What the hell is wrong with us?"
Well, I guess the first thing you can do is look back to the origins of the games we love (and seemingly nobody else does). I will focus on baseball for this.
Baseball was "invented" back in the mid-1800's. There are many different beliefs as to when baseball actually came into existence, but let's just say the mid-1800's for simplicity's sake. It may be hard to believe, considering the PC world we live in, but America actually began as a nation based on rebellion and non-conformity. We didn't want to do what everybody else did. We wanted to be free to make our own laws, worship our own gods, and play the games we wanted to play. Keep in mind that when baseball was invented, we were only about 75 years removed from gaining our independence.
So, we took a game that is as simple as simple can be (soccer) and totally shunned it. It was part of our way of sticking it to Europe. We wanted a game that totally flipped the idea of ball-playing upside-down. We wanted a game where you score when you DON'T have the ball. We wanted a game that had lots of different rules and objectives (hit the ball, round the bases, avoid getting tagged, steal bases, etc.), rather than the simple "kick the ball, try to score, keep the other guy from scoring" strategy of soccer. The same reason why most of the word loves soccer (its non-stop nature and the paradox of a game whose rules are so simple, yet gameplay is so complex) was why we shunned soccer for baseball.
We wanted a game that was difficult to follow. We wanted a game where a spectator could sit back and think about what's going on during breaks in the action. Basically, we just wanted an identity of our own. We had our own identity politically, now we needed one in the sporting arena.
The desire to develop new and innovative sports is the reason why the U.S. keeps falling further and further behind in the "traditional" sports. It's the reason why pretty much no other country besides Canada plays "American rules" football. It's why the U.S. dominated basketball for the vast majority of its existence. It's why we tend to dominate the "new" Olympic sports like snowboarding, while the ski team suffers through another disappointing Olympic trip. Whereas other countries take pride in becoming the best in a long history of a given sport, we take pride in developing the best new sports.
The next thing to consider is why soccer has never seemed to succeed in the U.S., despite numerous attempts to try to expand its fanbase here in the states.
Well, first off, we are a proud people. We can look upon sports like baseball, football, and basketball and say, "These are OUR sports. We invented them, and everybody else who plays them is simply playing OUR game." With so much exposure to "American" sports, why waste time with a game that nobody else cares about?
Then, of course, there is the herd mentality. If you follow football, you know that every Monday, you can seek out your friends and/or co-workers and discuss the action of the day before. You know that people keep track of what's going on during the baseball season. You don't want to be the weird guy who busts into the middle of a sports conversation with a comment about soccer that goes over everybody else's head. Talking football and baseball is the safe route, because you know everybody else is willing to talk about it.
It's pretty interesting if you really think about it. We reject a sport like soccer not only because we want to be different from other places, but also because we want to conform to the society around us.
Then, there is the fact that no American soccer player has ever gained the "larger-than-life" status that other American sports have benefited from.
In baseball there was the legendary Babe Ruth, who was one of the most captivating American personalities in the early 20th century. Baseball was a fairly popular game before the Babe came along, but he took the game to new heights, and despite a few minor bumps in the road, the sport has never looked back.
Shortly after its inception, the basketball world was graced with the presence of Wilt Chamberlain. He was so big, so coordinated for a man his size, and such a hit with the ladies (Most of us have heard about his supposed conquest of 20,000 women over the course of his lifetime. An exaggeration for sure, but he's probably been around the block many more times than you or I).
Then, when basketball hit a lull in the 70s and early 80's, Michael Jordan burst on the scene. Charismatic, talented, entrepreneurial, good-looking, competitive, etc. He was such an intriguing figure, both on and off the court, that it was impossible to not follow the NBA while he was around.
Football is a little bit different. Football began as a college game, and people generally attached themselves to their alma mater, or perhaps an area school. So, rather than having that one player who captivated the nation, it was a school: Notre Dame.
Althought football did not benefit from having one defining superstar personality, it did have that one captivating factor in Notre Dame football.
Some people may scoff at this point, but I point them to this: 10 years ago, golf was slowly disappearing off the U.S. sporting radar. It was a game for rich old white men, and nobody else. It was elitist, and most importantly, it was boring. Then, one man changed it all. Tiger Woods. All of a sudden, golf was hip, and people in their 20's spend their Sunday afternoons watching the Masters to see if Tiger can pull of a late comeback, or if Phil Mickelson will hold him off. Were it not for Tiger, golf would still be suffering from waning interest.
Here are a few other examples:
*The Williams sisters and Anna Kournikova (I realize she's Russian, but trust me, she's just as popular with American men as she is with Russian men) leading a resurgence in women's tennis
*Lance Armstrong causing Americans to care at least somewhat about the Tour de France
*John MacEnroe and Jimmy Connors carrying men's tennis in the 1980's
*Jeff Gordon brought national attention to NASCAR, and then the unfortunate death of Dale Earnhardt really pushed NASCAR into the national spotlight.
All it takes is one guy. Maybe it will be Freddy Adu. Maybe somebody playing in college right now. Maybe somebody in MLS will prove to be charismatic enough to give the sport some national attention.
Soccer's really not that bad of a sport, really. Despite the lack of scoring, the action is constant, and the near-scores are almost as exciting as goals themselves. Plus, it's easy to follow, and the rules are simple so anybody can pick it up (as opposed to baseball and football, which are ridiculously hard to follow for newcomers). But, unless it can fight through America's prejudices and develop one big star to capture the national media's attention, soccer will remain a second-tier (or perhaps lower) sport in the U.S.
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