The World Cup has started, and from ESPN's front page, you'd think it was the talk of the country.
Um....well.........not really, but thanks for trying.
As a further indicator the ESPN is no longer a true sports news outlet, and is merely doing whatever it can possibly do to further its own network aims, it is super-hyping all the upcoming games. Which, incidentally, are all on ESPN and its assorted 2nd-tier and 3rd-tier channels. Ditto for CBS Sportsline, which has a partnership with Univision to show a bunch of World Cup games.
As an official, I live in the sports world, every day. The people I work with generally eat, sleep, and breathe sports. They talk about sports all the time. I've talked about the conference realignment stuff, and about baseball, and about basketball (even though they did most of the talking there), and even some about car racing. No one has mentioned soccer, though, not even in passing. In fact, I would argue that the best sports news venues are the ones such as Fox Sports and Sporting News, which continue to provide a very balanced spread of stories across the entire American sports landscape.
Soccer might be growing in the US, though I would argue this is largely because of the burgeoning immigrant (legal and otherwise) population we have here, rather than because Americans are taking new interest in the sport. I would argue that "American exceptionalism" also extends into sports; we have plenty of our own, thank you very much, and don't really need any of yours. In fact, I saw one of the most ludicrous things I've ever read, in an article from (IIRC) the Washington Post regarding America's bid to host another World Cup in a few years: "America needs the World Cup a lot more than the World Cup needs America." What a foolish thing to say, considering America doesn't really "need" the World Cup at all.
Don't try to make this out to be more than it really is, people. I would be interested to hear from anyone on this...are you really that interested? Is it worth taking valuable front-page space from American sports for something that maybe 20% of Americans care about? Or do you see it the same way I do, just another blip that means more to the rest of the world than it does to us?
1 comment:
In my neck of the woods, yes, soccer is a huge deal. A lot of World Cup buzz among FB friends and Twitter peeps.
Partly, as you mentioned, because of the huge hispanic majority in Houston. And because of the port and the oil/gas industry we have people here from all over the world, many of them soccer fans. And there's always the hipster culture, which is pro-soccer as well. We are rife with hipsters inside the loop. And we have a MLS soccer team.
But I can't imagine most people in the US care about World Cup. I don't. Which is why I was warned by my husband not to disrupt the dvr tonight and tomorrow as it records World Cup action. He's a fan.
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