Steve Rushin - Soccer Nazi

I think the sentence about 'incuriosity about the rest of the world' is pretty dead on.

FOR THE MOST PART, Americans are woefully underinformed when it comes to world news. They don't seem to care what's going on elsewhere in the world. I'm going to start an informal poll on this right now.

Then read the rest of this thread.

 

That must be the southern spelling. Here in the west, it's Kaitlin. Apparently, these girls are produced in droves.

 

Alleyallen, that's where you're getting lost in this. Nobody with half a brain is telling you you're flawed because you don't like soccer (as mentioned before, Steve Rushin married Rebecca Lobo and had a child with her, therefore, he OBVIOUSLY doesn't even half a half a brain). I hate baseball - HATE it. But I'm not going to tell someone they're missing out if they don't watch soccer. I enjoy the fact that I get to see people do things with the soccer ball that 99.9 percent of humans can't do.

 

Actually, that was precisely Rushin's point in the article, and it's the point constantly made by a lot of soccer fans on this board.

 

If you have a 12-course meal and then someone offers you a 16-ounce steak, will you gobble up this yummy hunk of meat?

"No thanks, my stomach is full," you likely will say.

Well, MY sports plate happens to be FULL . . . and there is no room for soccer. Sorry.

I follow men's and women's tennis religiously. I follow college football, the NFL, the NBA, major league baseball, college basketball, even a little golf (I can name more LPGA players than NHL players).

Does the average Paraguayan soccer fanatic follow as many sports as I do?

I seriously doubt it.

His sports plate is NOT full. He has room to take in and enjoy soccer.

I don't.

Sorry.

 

Again, that's Rushin's point - he's proven by his actions to be a neanderthal.  Besides, he writes for SI, which is caught up in its own little battle with ESPN to see who can bastardize sports more.

But I've never once on this board read something where a member has criticized another for not liking soccer.  Honestly, I wonder if you're being a bit defensive and reading too much into some comments.

 

how about this plan re: world cup --

if you like it, shut the fuck up. no one cares what you think.

if you don't like it, shut the fuck up. no one cares what you think.

 

Check out the first page of this thread:

 

My guess on ESPN is that they have to commit to spending boatloads of money to show games on ESPN Deportes, so why not go all the way - especially since it gives you live sports during the day (which is way better than a rerun of Around the Horn).

But here's the thing - sweeping generalizations on both sides are a waste of time.

What's the population in the U.S. - pret'near 300 million? That's enough people to have dedicated fan bases of various sizes for pretty much every sport on the planet.

So those who hate soccer, and try to bring the entire country into their "argument" against it - forget it. There are millions who like soccer, or rugby, or even the WNBA. So don't lump them with yourselves!

 

I think the thing that frustrates soccer fans is that many American non-fans say they don't like it because it's boring. You can certainly make the case that it is, but you could make the same case about baseball or golf, for instance, yet many of the same people who won't give soccer the time of day love those sports. That's why soccer fans feel there must be something else at work here -- an absence of curiosity about the rest of the world, as someone mentioned, a bias against anything non-American, a lack of true understanding about the game. So if it seems that soccer fans are denigrating American sports fans for not liking soccer more, it's partly because our lack of interest in the game is illogical, given its popularity around the world and our passion for other sports. If you say, "I tried it and I just don't like it," that's certainly your right, but if you like a 2-1 baseball game where everybody grounds out to short, or watching the Masters where there's absolutely no "action," it's hard to figure why you would find soccer to be boring. And by "you" I mean "me" because I'm not a soccer fan.

 

I think you're reading too much into it.

When someone says soccer is "boring", they are really just saying "it doesn't interest me."

If something doesn't interest you --- whether it's soccer or physics or Shakespeare or art history --- you will find it "boring."

"Boring" is just a lazy cop-out word people use.