To all soccer snobs....

Hmmm ... let me go back and review my own words.

OK, I said, "I played soccer in high schoo. As a result I don't watch soccer."

So as a result, yes, the entire nation hates soccer because I played it in high school. Or possibly because of the way I played in high school.

Douchebag.

 

Again, I'll try this...
MLS is NOT and NEVER HAS BEEN the only soccer shown on television. You want to know the popularity of soccer in America, check the rating of MFL matches shown after they have already been played and many people already know the results. What about those replay matches on FSC or Gol TV?

Everyone wants to point to MLS as the judge of popularity. I know over 100-people that don't touch or give a shit about MLS, yet when Rangers or Celtic are playing, they are paying $10 to enter a bar at 7 am on a Sunday morning.

The sport itself is popular. The popularity is just not centralized.

Name one other sport that has two channels dedicated to it 24-hours a day. On top of this, games are shown on about 5 other networks in the NYC market.

Yes there is a golf channel, but there is only one. There aren't two. The NFL has a network, but only 1.

As to the Beckham jersey... why would he be a popular purchase? He's a big name amongst women and girls. He's hardly the best player in the world. Currently, outside of dead balls, he's almost nonexistent. C. Ronaldo Portugal jerseys were flying off the shelf and a friend's shop. I was informed they were purchased by people that weren't even Portuguese.

Secondly, how many people purchasing LeBron jerseys are really fans of his and not just wearing it because the latest rapper has it in size XXXXXL?

 

Americans' disinterest in a given subject is directly proportional to the length of an SportsJournalists.com thread. Therefore, the longer this thread goes, the less the average American cares about soccer. Can we get some Mariotti references in here?

 

OK, two 24-hour soccer networks, one 24-hour NFL network.

Therefore: Soccer more popular than NFL in the U.S. It's the logical extension of your argument. So there are two 24-hour cable networks feeding a passionate niche. BFD.

I guess we'll be having that Bend It Like Renaldo movie coming out soon. 

What you are doing, Crass, is taking your soccer-centric demimonde and extrapolating it as our reality. And that's the kind of thing that kills soccer's chances of expanding its base. Americans don't like to be nannied to.

And I daresay that the vast majority of people who have LeBron T-shirts follow LeBron. Ooops, I forgot; only soccer fans are knowledgable merchandise buyers.

 

Hey, you guys are good at a lot of things. Soccer just ain't one of 'em.

 

Dear Hondo
Crawl back into your basement until this is over. Then we wont' have to listen to you whine about how soccer is being stuffed down your throat.
Sincerely,
One Billion Soccer Viewers

 

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=439822

If you take the rating for the U.S.-Italy match on ABC (4.4) and combine it with the Univision rating for the match (1.7), you get a 6.1, which makes it the weekend's most-watched daytime event, beating the U.S. Open golf tournament and the NASCAR auto race in Michigan.

Also,
http://worldcup.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=279#more-279
On the English-language side, Crain’s Television Week reported on June 19, the U.S.-Czech game was the highest-rated telecast of any kind on ESPN2 so far this year.

 

Yeah, and Babe Ruth could do everything but punt. We'll take that.

 

Can you please quit throwing "it" in our face all day?

 

If you put the world championship of foosball on during the day in the middle of the summer (when there likely isn't a baseball game and there's no football at all), it would get ratings. Those numbers are more about timing than interest.

 

I just want to point out again that hondo used a poll that says the World Cup is more popular than the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals as proof that people don't like soccer.

And Jones, with all due respect, the last time Canada qualified for the World Cup was when, exactly?

 

1986, and we didn't score a goal.

Although Owen Hargreaves of "England" is from Calgary. Which makes us the greatest soccer nation on Earth, if I might borrow hondo's logic.