Writer's Block: Goal!

[ricepapercrane]

Huh.  I believe it has caught on in some areas.  "The World's Game" is coming to Seattle in 2009, and DC United was pretty popular in DC as well.

However, while I love soccer, it doesn't have the appeal to Americans that other sports do because of the style of the game.  The personality of America is to like games that seem like the last legal form

Comments

[scearley]

baseball, basketball...
And as to the "civilian warfare" angle, I only have two words: football hooligans.

Soccer hasn't caught on in the us because it tolerates tie games, almost to the point of encouraging them.

Hockey merely allows them, with rules set up to football ties are so rare that there's only been two this past decade. Ties are impossible in baseball and basketball.

[yechezkiel]

The reason soccer hasn't caught on is because by the time it was brought to the US in force, there were too-many homegrown sports that had captured American time, imagination, and dollars.

It doesn't have the elegance of baseball, or the strategic beauty of football, or the frenetic pacing of basketball, so it's hard to see what it does add to the US. Except for a game that is very egalitarian and non-skill-based, so therefore perfect for youth leagues... which is exactly where it thrives.

[ricepapercrane]

Non-skill-based? Oh lord. There's lots of skill to being a good soccer player.

[yechezkiel]

I played soccer for a good 10 years.

The point is, the barrier to entry isn't as high as it is in football or baseball. And basketball is slightly more difficult.

[flwyd]

I think a big part is the game's time structure. The big four American sports all have regular breaks suitable for commercials. Soccer gets one long break between two forty-five minute periods. So the viewer would get 45 minutes of TV, can go make a sandwich at halftime, and then watch another 45 minutes (plus penalty time) without interruption. PBS aside, the only time Americans get to watch broadcast TV for over 20 minutes without interruption is political debates, and those happen very rarely.

So soccer is a popular game to play, but not a particularly popular game to follow.

[scearley]

Football and baseball and hockey were all insanely popular in this country before advertised media.

[hattrickflyer]

"Soccer will never be popular in American because when Jerry Rice burns the defender, he's called offsides