Senior kinesiology major
Like many young men, I am obsessed with sports. I can never watch enough ESPN or read enough articles on Bleacher Report. Recently, my focus has been on the U.S. men’s soccer team, which played two World Cup qualifying matches in late March. The United States defeated Costa Rica in Colorado and managed a draw against Mexico on Mexico’s home turf.
The results of these matches filled me with an overwhelming sense of national pride, and at once I began thinking about the state of soccer in the U.S. Considering soccer is the most-played game around the globe, why is there such a disparity between its presence in the U.S. and in the rest of the world?
There are a multitude of possible explanations for Americans’ lack of enthusiasm toward soccer, but I’ll break it down by three major factors: American elitism, tradition and attention spans.
Describing “American elitism” is not an assertion that Americans are all snobs who think themselves better than the rest of the world. But when it comes to sports, Americans are very keen to place traditional “American” sports such as baseball and American football above “foreign” sports such as soccer.
There is nothing wrong with taking pride in something created in your own country. But problems arise when you believe self-creation is innately better than foreign creation. This type of close-mindedness inhibits growth, and in order for soccer to grow in this country, this type of thinking must diminish.
For many people, traditions are important things to honor. Whether that tradition is something as major as attending the Super Bowl on a yearly basis or something as simple as having Dunkin’ Donuts coffee on Sunday mornings, most people enjoy some sort of tradition. For many Americans, autumn Sundays are traditionally reserved for football. Most people fear deviating from their traditions because they fear the unknown. But more often than not, change tends to be a good thing. If Americans as a whole were less apprehensive of change, the popularity of soccer could increase drastically.
As many of our parents can probably attest, people of our generation have embarrassingly short attention spans. Everything is now instantly available thanks to the advent of the Internet, mobile phones and social media. This desire for instant gratification is apparent in the presentation of most American sports. Basketball has built-in television breaks, much like football. These breaks enable us to use the bathroom or grab a cold one during commercial breaks. This type of stop-and-go action is just not something you see in soccer. The action is constant and allows for no breaks in the flow of the game.
Luckily, the walls are beginning to break down slightly. Soccer is gaining more traction with a wider fan base in the United States. But if American elitism, blind adherence to tradition and the inability to focus continue to characterize us Americans, soccer will likely never reach the heights of its sporting counterparts in this country.
Ian Lacy is a junior kinesiology major. He can be reached at ianlacy19@gmail.com.
