Quick parent rant

orrrrr, you can realize everyone on the field at a soccer "match" is an untalented dork who doesn't have the ability/skill to play the sports people are interested in.

shit, ask any soccer dork: what would you rather be, an above average soccer player or an average football player?

as bobby hill once said:
"i'd rather play for a losing football team than a winning soccer team, any day."

 

If we really cared what the majority of people wanted to read, A1 would be nothing but obits, every by God day.

 

meat - only a small portion of the people we're writing obits on give a damn about soccer ... living people, not so much.

 

Array your page in such a way that obits are tombstoned next to soccer news.

 

i call bullshit buck. you don't even know if your soccer players can catch the damned ball much less thrive as a receiver.

and, unfortunately, i've watched more soccer than i care to admit. i'd bet you at 10-1 odds, that, if i had a year to train, i could field a world cup winning team picking only from the nfl, no shit, strike that, D-1 college football players.

how many world cup soccer boys you think could start of ohio state or usc?

 

If they could even catch the ball, a substantial if, they'd flop around on the ground for 15 minutes like a trout in distress.

 

How many former college football players do you know who have gone on to professional soccer careers? I can't really think of any.

How many former high-level soccer players have gone on to professional careers in other sports? I can think of one off the top: Steve Nash.

The basis of the argument is athleticism and fitness level. There is usually no argument that high-level players of any sport are athletic, so the crossover there would be natural.

But football players don't have the fitness level of soccer players. Hell, football players get a break after each play. Even the running backs or receivers who gain long yardage on a play get a break. They're not immediately hustling back (on a bigger field, no less) for defense the way soccer midfielders are.

 

so, according to this argument, the best athletes on the face of the earth are cross country and marathon runners? ... other sports nobody gives two shits about.

and, btw, who the hell would want to make $29.99 a game playing pro soccer?

 

Cadet,

So you think I'm an idiot? Thanks for that covering-soccer-101 bit that I'm all too familiar with. Oh well, we sports reporters like to crap on each other, that's fine I guess.

My whole beef with soccer is why the hell play the friggin game when it's possible the two teams playing will end in a 1-1 tie. Well not just darn possible, but likely. Of the 12 schools in my coverage area that have boys and girls soccer, each team had more than 5 ties during the regular season last year. Tie games are not decided by free kicks or extra periods because there are no district implications at stake for non-district games. It's a "warm-up" game, or a schedule builder. That's it. Even the district games, between two rival teams (rivals in basketball, baseball, softball and football), but there's only like 25 people there, and even for the non-district games, the gate doesn't even break $100.

And I'll have you know that I cover soccer as extensively as any other sport that plays 35 regular season games, I'm just not there to cover it, not during the regular season. I go to regular season games when a district title is on the line, and usually that happens between two of my coverage area teams. And it's hard to keep up with it all at a thrice weekly when these friggin soccer nuts play almost every day of the week.

Should a bigger basketball game coincide with the soccer game, I go to the basketball game, provided I can't punish a stringer by making them sit out in 30 degree, rainy weather for 3.5 hours. It's a simple fact that the only people that care about soccer in my coverage area are the few moms and the dads that give a shit, and they are usually very vocal.

And the kicker is, pun intended, high school soccer in my state is b.s. because the best players play rec soccer so they can go on to Clemson or Wake on a scholarship. The best rec players, boys and girls, are generally instructed by their rec coaches not to play high school soccer because they might get hurt unnecessarily.

So with all that in mind, please tell me again how ignorant I am of the community sports scene. Dude, I've done my unscientific sampling on what's more popular, and gate receipts tell the best story, that basketball sells and soccer sucks shit. Almost every athletic director in my coverage area tells me that if they could get rid of soccer at their school, then they'd do it. They say it costs way too much money and is friggin meaningless.

Yet you'll see my soccer round-up section from November to February, after which you'll see game coverage of probably three or four teams, both boys and girls, that wll play for "state championships" and sandwiched in between it all, you'll find a feature story or two.

So I cover soccer, but I bitch about it the entire season and will continue to do so. It friggin sucks.

 

I did not call you an idiot, I said your perspective was ignorant. There is a difference.

 

All I know is this: If the football team has a losing record and you're banging out full-blown coverage of that team week after week and not giving the undefeated soccer, field hockey and cross country teams the same coverage, it pisses people off.
After my run-in with the wrestling coach and parents the previous year, some of them wondered why I didn't go out of my way to cover the team more. I told one of them about the incident that led me to stay away from the team (being cornered by a half-dozen parents telling me what to write, where to put it in the paper, and the coach giving me a hard time for not making the team the lead story every week, giving basketball and hockey more coverage, etc. AND THIS HAPPENED AT A MEET THAT I COVERED IN PERSON WHEN I WAS UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO BE THERE. I COULD HAVE COVERED SOMETHING ELSE OR STAYED HOME AND IT WOULDN'T HAVE MATTERED ONE BIT TO MY BOSS.)
The parent's response: "If may defend them, they were proud of the team and their kids and wanted them to get more recognition and teams that had accomplished much less, such as basketball, routinely received more coverage."
OK, but you're still going to see Elvis or Jesus at that team's meets before you'll see me.

 

nobody gives a fuck what one of those 19 parents think who religiously attend those soccer games. the other (fill in blank) thousand readers would rather read about the winless football team than the athletically challenged soccer team.