Dear american football...

[IthacaMatt]

i'm saying football gets action because people like football more

Sure. I'm fine with that. Football is clearly the most popular sport in America. People like it, not just gamblers. I never said soccer would challenge for the #1 spot in America's list of favorite sports, but I think in time it's getting closer to being a major sport in this country.

 

[SU2NASA]

Well, just for the hell of it, DVR the upcoming semifinals for yourself and watch them in between golf and tennis and baseball, just for a change of pace. The two semifinals are futbol at its best - Brazil versus Germany, and Argentina (with Lionel Messi) versus The Netherlands, with Arjen Robben and Robin Van Persie.

Brazil is missing their star player, young Neymar, who has a broken bone in his back. Germany is a team full of skillful players, not just metronomes. If you see the sport played at the highest level, it's really a great experience. I hope you give it a shot. You might enjoy it.

I've been to the World Cup, I've tried to follow EPL for the sake of a woman, and I've been to MLS games.

I understand why the sport is so popular around the world - you can play anywhere and it's rudimentary to learn the basics of. You don't need a net, or a bat and ball, and you don't even need much room or many players to get a game.

But from being one of those people that has watched plenty of soccer, understands the game, and still finds it boring as sin, it's like watching futility in action. The offsides rule may be the most absurd rule in all of sports. The diving is out of control. The lack of scoring and large amount of ties make the game unfulfilling.

I've seen it played at its highest level and I'd still rather watch reruns of the Fresh Prince of Bel-air on TBS than a World Cup game. Don't assume I don't know the game just because I have no use for it.

 

[SU2NASA]

fantasy football is like family guy. i hate it and people try way hard to convince me that i really would like it if i gave it a chance.

i like watching teams that exist. i don't understand watching teams that exist to derive some weird score for a team that doesn't exist

As a Lions fan, fantasy football is the only redeeming quality to most of my fall Sundays.

 

[Scooch]

I understand why the sport is so popular around the world - you can play anywhere and it's rudimentary to learn the basics of. You don't need a net, or a bat and ball, and you don't even need much room or many players to get a game.

I've always felt that soccer is so wildly popular around the world because it is, in sport, the perfect symbolic representation of the lives of the majority of the 7 billion people on our planet.

A game of long stretches of futility and frustration, with the occasional moment of excitement around something that doesn't really pan out. Throughtout you deal with an omnipresent authority that often makes baffling, unfair decisions. And the side with the most money almost always wins in the end.

Soccer = Life

 

[cuseinchina]

I was going to bring this up yesterday when people started quoting Univision numbers. The real argument and we could probably close this thread is "Is soccer becoming more popular among American white males?" We know the univision numbers are way up. That has to do with the influx of Hispanics in America. But are more white males watching this game than before. Very few over the age of 30.

We know based on the last Presidential election that white males are now the minority in this country. White males are fans of Football, Baseball, NASCAR, Basketball and Hockey (maybe not in that order but probably pretty close). Soccer might rank sixth, but even then does it get better rankings than golf. I can't speak of white females and how many of them are jumping on the bandwagon, but if it wasn't for the influx of hispanics, the World Cup numbers would only show a slight bump. I would love to see some stats that prove otherwise but for now I'm still going to believe what others have argued as well.

Contrary to some people's popular belief, the Core four will still be the Core four. Now once advertising dollars start shifting away from targeting American white males and towards hispanics, then we can have another conversation regarding where soccer ranks.

Black american males. Does anyone want to guess how many of them are jumping on the soccer bandwagon. I just don't see that happening in large numbers.

Why is that the 'real argument'? you are basically saying that the advertising industry ignores the young and the Spanish speaking - which means you don't follow the advertising industry very closely.

 

[KaiserUEO]

Would that be a straight draft or a snake?

dont think i dont know where you are going with this.

well done.

couchburn

 

[Millhouse]

i wonder how much youtube has done for soccer's popularity

when i was a kid playing soccer in the 80s, we didn't even know what was possible. one of my friends had some tape of goals that we wore out and we were under the impression that kevin keegan was the best player in history. that's the guy that was on the tape, it was all we knew.

maybe now people have more of a stomach for a lot of the tedium because they've seen the goals. you have to be interested enough in the first place to search but it's way easier now to realize that there are big payoffs to watching these games.

that's another area where MLB is behind with their walls around their highlights.

 

[KaiserUEO]

i wonder how much youtube has done for soccer's popularity

when i was a kid playing soccer in the 80s, we didn't even know what was possible. one of my friends had some tape of goals that we wore out and we were under the impression that kevin keegan was the best player in history. that's the guy that was on the tape, it was all we knew.

maybe now people have more of a stomach for a lot of the tedium because they've seen the goals. you have to be interested enough in the first place to search but it's way easier now to realize that there are big payoffs to watching these games.

that's another area where MLB is behind with their walls around their highlights.

im not sure what youtube could do.

as kids we had Sylvester Freakin Stallone leading Pele and a bunch of allied prisoners of war against the mean german national team on HBO 9x a day.

they couldve escaped but instead they went back and beat the basterds!!!

if Stallone couldnt get soccer into the mainstream, nothing can.

 

[jekelish]

That reference to Victory just made me realize that, amazingly, the movie that's done the most for soccer's popularity is Bend it Like Beckham.

I'm guessing 90% of Americans had never even heard of Beckham before that movie, and after it came out, he was the savior of the MLS (and while it looked bad at the time, I think his coming over to MLS really was a tremendous positive, and fully worth it for the league).

 

[billsin01]

Sure. I'm fine with that. Football is clearly the most popular sport in America. People like it, not just gamblers. I never said soccer would challenge for the #1 spot in America's list of favorite sports, but I think in time it's getting closer to being a major sport in this country.

I think this is a perfectly reasonable point and pretty easily defensible argument. I think what's happened in this thread (not you speifically) is that we've seen soccer fans making claims that aren't as easy to substantiate. Increased media exposure should rightfully expose a much larger audience to soccer and it could potentially be a fifth major sport at some point.

I just take issue with how quickly that would happen and how likely it is without the US being the home of the world's best soccer. I know people get furious with the idea that the MLS is like AA to MLB but I would argue that at least the vast majority of the people believe the EPL is the far better league at this point (I'd also argue AA baseball is fascinating given how many legit prospects are at that level, but I digress). If that's not true, fine, I wouldn't know. But if it is true, then it's a big hurdle to cross b/c I don't think a whole country is going to suddenly adopt an EPL team and start following them rabidly or dive in head first with the MLS if they don't believe it's the world's best pro soccer league.

But yeah, with ESPN behind it, there's no reason soccer can't grow significantly.

 

[jekelish]

I think this is a perfectly reasonable point and pretty easily defensible argument. I think what's happened in this thread (not you speifically) is that we've seen soccer fans making claims that aren't as easy to substantiate. Increased media exposure should rightfully expose a much larger audience to soccer and it could potentially be a fifth major sport at some point.

I just take issue with how quickly that would happen and how likely it is without the US being the home of the world's best soccer. I know people get furious with the idea that the MLS is like AA to MLB but I would argue that at least the vast majority of the people believe the EPL is the far better league at this point (I'd also argue AA baseball is fascinating given how many legit prospects are at that level, but I digress). If that's not true, fine, I wouldn't know. But if it is true, then it's a big hurdle to cross b/c I don't think a whole country is going to suddenly adopt an EPL team and start following them rabidly or dive in head first with the MLS if they don't believe it's the world's best pro soccer league.

But yeah, with ESPN behind it, there's no reason soccer can't grow significantly.

I don't disagree with much of what you say. EPL is clearly the MLB in this comparison, but MLS is not AA. MLS has grown to the point where it is legitimately on the AAA level if you're comparing it to EPL, I think. Back when it was actually first launched, MLS was single A ball at best. That's the main point I've been trying to drive here - the growth and increased quality has been absolutely tremendous in MLS.

 

[billsin01]

I don't disagree with much of what you say. EPL is clearly the MLB in this comparison, but MLS is not AA. MLS has grown to the point where it is legitimately on the AAA level if you're comparing it to EPL, I think. Back when it was actually first launched, MLS was single A ball at best. That's the main point I've been trying to drive here - the growth and increased quality has been absolutely tremendous in MLS.

Yeah, I use AA largely b/c I view it as a separator league -- that's where the pretenders are weeded out and the cream rises to the top. But it's semantics, AAA is fine too. I just think the MLS needs to be even with the EPL or surpass it to gain overwhelming popularity in the US. But what do I know? I do like that soccer is 2 hours long. I just hate that off-sides rule. It will never make sense to me (not how it works, but why it exists, at least in it's current form).

 

[DeGrozz]

I'll give you credit for the one-liner at the end. Incredible joke. Great delivery, fresh premise. Awesome.

But honestly instead of giving me homework can you just explain it to me -- are those two awful lower division EPL teams or something? I'm not pretending to know. My point is simply that it was my impression the best soccer is played in Europe. Please enlighten me otherwise.

I think you have to think about it like this. In European soccer, the sport is very much a case of the haves and the have nots. When you talk about the best soccer in the world being played in Europe, I think that you are correct, but only for the teams that are at the top of their leagues. Once you look at the teams at the bottom half of the EPL, you will see that the style and quality of the game isn't absurdly beyond that of the game in the US.

You can call it 'Double-A' ball all you want (and no matter how much you say you love double-A ball, it really sounds like a backhanded compliment), but if you had ever watched a game at the bottom of the EPL, then I don't think you'd really think that there is an absurd difference between the two leagues. When you get even lower like the British Championship/second division (Triple-A ball?), you'd have a hard time arguing that there is a ton of difference between the game and the MLS.

If you wanted to say that there is an absurd gap between BM/RM/Barca/MCFC/etc and the MLS, then yeah, you'd be absolutely correct, but in the last 3-5 years, the MLS has really increased the quality of its play. They have recently started opening up development academies to emulate the European game, which is only gonna continue to increase the quality.

But in your analogy, I'd probably compare the quality of the MLS to the bottom of the EPL (in good years) through the top 2/3s of the British Championship. There are some teams that can be argued as outliers (personally, I think the 2010 LA Galaxy team was awesome, and the Earthquakes this year are Barkley-style turribull, especially after watching them vs. Chivas this week). I'd guess most teams probably sit between the top half of the Championship and right below the 3 or 4 teams fighting for promotion.

Obviously you can't truly compare the teams without them playing, there are a lot of fans that are truly MLS fan-boys that think most teams would be lower half of the EPL quality, and there are European purists that think the MLS is closer to "single-A" ball than the EPL, but that's my opinion and I feel like I've watched enough of the game to have at least a pretty informed opinion on the matter.

 

[BlazeOrange]

Another thing working against baseball is that it takes a lot of kids to play a sandlot game (which I used to do as a young kid), and kids are not all outside after school with nothing to do these days. Times have changed. Apart from hoops, kids generally don't play sports at all unless it's an organized activity.

We went to visit my parents for the holiday weekend. When we got there, the neighbor kids were out back playing soccer. My two kids, including my daughter who plays on three soccer teams, went to join them. At that point, they immediately switched to kickball because they finally had enough players to do it.

This anecdote proves nothing, but it was nice to see some kids playing a pickup game of any kind.

I do think that organized sports has impacted unorganized games for kids though, as there just isn't the appeal to get a neighborhood game going in a sport that they already practice a couple times a week, then have a "real" game or two on other days. Or times available where a large enough group can get together to do anything.

 

[IthacaMatt]

Yeah, I use AA largely b/c I view it as a separator league -- that's where the pretenders are weeded out and the cream rises to the top. But it's semantics, AAA is fine too. I just think the MLS needs to be even with the EPL or surpass it to gain overwhelming popularity in the US. But what do I know? I do like that soccer is 2 hours long. I just hate that off-sides rule. It will never make sense to me (not how it works, but why it exists, at least in it's current form).

I saw a listing recently, rating each country's top soccer league. MLS came in 7th best, behind the Big 4 in Europe, Brazil and Mexico, but just ahead of Argentina, Holland and Portugal. You might argue a bit about the ratings but that's clearly AAA when comparing it to baseball.

 

[Scooch]

Yeah, I use AA largely b/c I view it as a separator league -- that's where the pretenders are weeded out and the cream rises to the top. But it's semantics, AAA is fine too. I just think the MLS needs to be even with the EPL or surpass it to gain overwhelming popularity in the US. But what do I know? I do like that soccer is 2 hours long. I just hate that off-sides rule. It will never make sense to me (not how it works, but why it exists, at least in it's current form).

Maybe.

I mean, college football all isn't as "good" as the NFL, but it's still the 2nd most popular league in the US.

I'm not sure that MLS needs to be the best soccer league on Earth for it to be more popular tomorrow than it is today. Soccer is so unlike every other sport anyway, in the way it's organized globally, it's history really makes it tough to compare with things like MLB and the NBA.

 

[IthacaMatt]

I think you have to think about it like this. In European soccer, the sport is very much a case of the haves and the have nots. When you talk about the best soccer in the world being played in Europe, I think that you are correct, but only for the teams that are at the top of their leagues. Once you look at the teams at the bottom half of the EPL, you will see that the style and quality of the game isn't absurdly beyond that of the game in the US.

You can call it 'Double-A' ball all you want (and no matter how much you say you love double-A ball, it really sounds like a backhanded compliment), but if you had ever watched a game at the bottom of the EPL, then I don't think you'd really think that there is an absurd difference between the two leagues. When you get even lower like the British Championship/second division (Triple-A ball?), you'd have a hard time arguing that there is a ton of difference between the game and the MLS.

If you wanted to say that there is an absurd gap between BM/RM/Barca/MCFC/etc and the MLS, then yeah, you'd be absolutely correct, but in the last 3-5 years, the MLS has really increased the quality of its play. They have recently started opening up development academies to emulate the European game, which is only gonna continue to increase the quality.

But in your analogy, I'd probably compare the quality of the MLS to the bottom of the EPL (in good years) through the top 2/3s of the British Championship. There are some teams that can be argued as outliers (personally, I think the 2010 LA Galaxy team was awesome, and the Earthquakes this year are Barkley-style turribull, especially after watching them vs. Chivas this week). I'd guess most teams probably sit between the top half of the Championship and right below the 3 or 4 teams fighting for promotion.

Obviously you can't truly compare the teams without them playing, there are a lot of fans that are truly MLS fan-boys that think most teams would be lower half of the EPL quality, and there are European purists that think the MLS is closer to "single-A" ball than the EPL, but that's my opinion and I feel like I've watched enough of the game to have at least a pretty informed opinion on the matter.

Good post. I think people in the know, so to speak, know the quality of MLS. For instance, when Didier Drogba left Chelsea and went to play in China for a year, he was asked by the Chinese media if how he thought the Chinese league compared to America's league. Drogba didn't hesitate in saying the quality of competition in the MLS is much better than in China, even though that's where he was moving to, and that's the press he was speaking to at the time.

I think the last 2 World Cups have changed British perception of American soccer, too. First, beating England out for the top of our group in 2010 really stung them, when they thought they were SO much better than us. And then this time around, most people in England thought the USA would be 3 games and out, and yet England was one of the very first teams eliminated this year, and we again advanced, this time out of the Group of Death of this year's tournament.

Clint Dempsey and Landon Donovan showed English audiences that US players can compete in the Premier League. It was really too bad that Jozy bombed again. We need more US players to excel in these elite leagues.

 

[cliftonparksufan]

Why is that the 'real argument'? you are basically saying that the advertising industry ignores the young and the Spanish speaking - which means you don't follow the advertising industry very closely.

No, that's not what I am arguing. Here is an interesting article from the other day that talks about how the "big" gains are on Univision. All that proves is that our countries population shift is turning more Hispanic and this we have already known from the last election. I haven't watched enough World Cup to see what commercials are being run and who they are targeting but if I was an advertiser it's only common sense that it is the Hispanics and the younger white males that are watching. So I guess no one is wrong in all 18 pages in this thread. The World Cup is much more popular than in 2010 in the USA. No question about it. However it is the influx in the population of Hispanics that is driving the ratings up. Not the White Males, not the White Females, not the Black males and not the Black females. Univision is kicking the crap out of ESPN head to head.

Anyways here are some of the quotes from this article:
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/20...hes-close-to-74-million-total-viewers/279693/

During the quarterfinal match between France vs. Germany (12:00 p.m.-2:00 p.m. ET), Univision was the highest rated broadcast station among:

• Total Viewers and Adults 18-49 Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix and Sacramento
• Adults 18-34 in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco and Phoenix

Univision stations outdelivered the same match on ESPN2 among:

· Total Viewers in Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Dallas

· Adults 18-49 and Adults 18-34 in Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Dallas and Phoenix

In fact, the Univision station in Miami had more than three times the audience of ESPN 2 among Total Viewers and Adults 18-34 and more than four times ESPN2’s audience among Adults 18-49.

During the quarterfinal match between Brazil vs. Colombia (4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m. ET), Univision was the highest rated broadcast station among:

• Total Viewers, Adults 18-49 and Adults 18-34 in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix and Sacramento

Univision stations outdelivered the same match on ESPN2 among:

· Total Viewers and Adults 18-49 in Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, Dallas and Phoenix

• Adults 18-34 in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Dallas and Phoenix

In fact, the Univision station in Miami had more than twice the audience of ESPN2 among Total Viewers, Adults 18-49 and Adults 18-34; and in Houston, the Univision station had more than twice ESPN2’s audience among Adults 18-49 and Adults 18-34.

DIGITAL HIGHLIGHTS:

• 20 for 20: Twenty days into the 2014 World Cup, Univision Digital has recorded its top twenty most trafficked days ever.
• The Brazil vs. Colombia and France vs. Germany matches are the most mobile driven live streams of the 2014 World Cup so far, 89% of the Brazil vs. Colombia live streams and 86% of the France vs. Germany live streams came from the Univision Deportes app.
• The Univision Deportes app continues to rank among the top five free sports apps since the 2014 World Cup launch, in both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

 

[KaiserUEO]

Fine, once again ill be that guy...

Get out your arrows you liberal PC freaks...

All that # means about Univision is too many people in the United States of America don't speak or understand the Fn language that the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution or the the Bill of Rights was written in.

Score one for the owners and Capitalism, but damn...

 

[cuseinchina]

No, that's not what I am arguing. Here is an interesting article from the other day that talks about how the "big" gains are on Univision. All that proves is that our countries population shift is turning more Hispanic and this we have already known from the last election. I haven't watched enough World Cup to see what commercials are being run and who they are targeting but if I was an advertiser it's only common sense that it is the Hispanics and the younger white males that are watching. So I guess no one is wrong in all 18 pages in this thread. The World Cup is much more popular than in 2010 in the USA. No question about it. However it is the influx in the population of Hispanics that is driving the ratings up. Not the White Males, not the White Females, not the Black males and not the Black females. Univision is kicking the crap out of ESPN head to head.

Anyways here are some of the quotes from this article:
http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/20...hes-close-to-74-million-total-viewers/279693/

Ok - so Hispanic people like soccer and like to watch it with Spanish commentators instead of lame ESPN coverage - no shock there. Also no shock that this growing demographic is helping to drive the growth in soccer's popularity. I'm not sure what that has to do with advertising spend since young Hispanics are one of the best demographics out there. Hispanic media ad market share is growing faster than the growth rate of the Hispanic population, while overall ad spend is trailing population growth. Banks, credit card issuers, food companies and the automakers are dramatically ramping up their spend on the Hispanic population - double digit growth for several years now.

Also your contention that white males aren't warming up to this is I think wrong anecdotally and statistically. To use your example, ESPN (white people sports tv per your comment) saw a 20-30% jump in viewership over 2010 depending on match time. And anecdotally, all of my friends in their 30's got really into it this year and I don't remember many of my friends caring the last time around.

 

[billsin01]

Maybe.

I mean, college football all isn't as "good" as the NFL, but it's still the 2nd most popular league in the US.

I'm not sure that MLS needs to be the best soccer league on Earth for it to be more popular tomorrow than it is today. Soccer is so unlike every other sport anyway, in the way it's organized globally, it's history really makes it tough to compare with things like MLB and the NBA.

I like the post but I'm not sure I agree. A couple points that I think make this a different discussion:

1) we're discussing, at least in large part in this thread, MLS displacing MLB, nBA and NHL. The original poster even suggested the nfl should be on alert. Even if you throw the nfl out, we're not simply discussing a viable, popular, profitable league -- we're discussing the second most popular sport in the US. That would have to be a pretty high quality league.

2) college sports are obviously not as 'good', I agree. But hoops and football are made up almost exclusively of American 'kids' and have their own histories. Most people are fans b/c they feel a part of a university either by proximity or b/c they went to school there. And the universities themselves are uniquely American.

To me those make college sports a different discussion.

 

[billsin01]

I saw a listing recently, rating each country's top soccer league. MLS came in 7th best, behind the Big 4 in Europe, Brazil and Mexico, but just ahead of Argentina, Holland and Portugal. You might argue a bit about the ratings but that's clearly AAA when comparing it to baseball.

Yeah maybe AAA is better. Point is I'm not inherently trying to say te league blows. I do think they need some PR help though if it really is that competitive already. I wouldn't say I'm alone in thinking the MLS is light years away from the best European leagues.

 

[billsin01]

I think you have to think about it like this. In European soccer, the sport is very much a case of the haves and the have nots. When you talk about the best soccer in the world being played in Europe, I think that you are correct, but only for the teams that are at the top of their leagues. Once you look at the teams at the bottom half of the EPL, you will see that the style and quality of the game isn't absurdly beyond that of the game in the US.

You can call it 'Double-A' ball all you want (and no matter how much you say you love double-A ball, it really sounds like a backhanded compliment), but if you had ever watched a game at the bottom of the EPL, then I don't think you'd really think that there is an absurd difference between the two leagues. When you get even lower like the British Championship/second division (Triple-A ball?), you'd have a hard time arguing that there is a ton of difference between the game and the MLS.

If you wanted to say that there is an absurd gap between BM/RM/Barca/MCFC/etc and the MLS, then yeah, you'd be absolutely correct, but in the last 3-5 years, the MLS has really increased the quality of its play. They have recently started opening up development academies to emulate the European game, which is only gonna continue to increase the quality.

But in your analogy, I'd probably compare the quality of the MLS to the bottom of the EPL (in good years) through the top 2/3s of the British Championship. There are some teams that can be argued as outliers (personally, I think the 2010 LA Galaxy team was awesome, and the Earthquakes this year are Barkley-style turribull, especially after watching them vs. Chivas this week). I'd guess most teams probably sit between the top half of the Championship and right below the 3 or 4 teams fighting for promotion.

Obviously you can't truly compare the teams without them playing, there are a lot of fans that are truly MLS fan-boys that think most teams would be lower half of the EPL quality, and there are European purists that think the MLS is closer to "single-A" ball than the EPL, but that's my opinion and I feel like I've watched enough of the game to have at least a pretty informed opinion on the matter.

Interesting post. I can honestly say I never would have guessed it was that close particularly based (albeit with an untrained eye) on watching Germany and Belgium destroy us. It'll be interesting to see what happens. And no I certainly didn't intend AA as a compliment -- I literally just felt it was a fair representation in terms of being a talented league with talented players and teams but nowhere near the level of the mlb teams.

 

[rrlbees]

watching Germany and Belgium destroy us.

Defense and goalie play are both part of the game.

 

[billsin01]

Defense and goalie play are both part of the game.

We played defense?