Why don't we like Soccer in America?

The FIFA World Cup is a huge deal.  Wikipedia says worldwide the sport of soccer brings in $400B every year.  Despite this, the sport is still not widely accepted in the US.  I hear about the games happening, but I could not care less about the results.  But for most of the world, this is the biggest sporting event of the year unless its a Summer Olympics year.

But why don't we like soccer?  Its a very physically demanding sport, as demanding and competitive as our football or baseball or basketball.  Even with that, it still has not become a mainstream sport in the US.  I understand why sports like fencing (which is my favorite sport of course) and cricket are not popular in the US.  Those two probably are not the best examples, because cricket is a lot like baseball from what I understand.  But Fencing is a understandably side-lined due to its archaic nature and even internationally it is not a big sport.

So what other reasons are there to dislike soccer?  I assumed the term soccer originated here since everywhere else calls it football and we already have a football.  It actually started in England as an abbreviation for "association."  But I digress.  It may seem like a strange reason, but I think it has to do with the number of goals earned per time spent.  Look at hockey.  It is another sport which is present in the US, but is not what I would call a mainstream sport.  Both sports are very similar in many respects.  There is a goalie and teams move back and forth between the goals attempting to score points.  Both typically have small scores.

This, I think is the root cause of why Americans are not excited by soccer.  I have no scientific evidence, but perhaps we do not like hockey or soccer as much as football, baseball or basketball because of the number of scores the teams of each sport score.  Sometimes baseball and football are low-scoring, but you will NEVER see a 21 to 10 score in a soccer game.  This is not terribly uncommon in baseball.  Football sometimes has low scores also, but again, scoring 50 points in football is not uncommon.

So this sport of soccer, while competitive, rough and exciting, is not widely accepted in our country.  The point I am making is that Americans are more likely to enjoy sports where scoring is often and expected. We expect instant and continual gratification. Also, baseball, football and basketball all go into overtime when there is a tie.  In soccer, you can tie and the game can be declared a draw.  I do not know all the rules for soccer, but I understand there can be a situation where a tie is broken, but it does not have to happen.  The rules I read say "a tie may end the game or an overtime may occur."  In baseball, games definitely can go on 10 extra innings if necessary to break that tie.

My hypothesis is that soccer cannot become a widely accepted American sport because we perceive it as not exciting due to the lack of goals.  Personally, watching hockey or soccer is like watching paint dry.  Back and forth back and forth almost goals but rarely a score.  I have never watched a soccer game, but I am trying to figure out why.  Ive seen baseball, football, tennis, hockey, fencing, volleyball, cricket, etc etc. We need this immediate gratification and ongoing scoring to be excited.  Sports are not about the competition or the game to us.  No matter how much we love the game of football, would you be stoked about a football game if a tie just ended the game?  Overtime is more exciting than the actual game!  We are about winning and losing and scoring big points.  What do you think?

A whole new world...

A new fantastic point of view! Noone to tell us no, or where OK OK OK. Just kidding. I am mostly writing about recent wow news today.  Hopefully enough interesting things will happen that I wont have to mention WoW too much in the future.

But seriously I found a guild to raid with on World of Warcraft. We only do 10 man content on main raid nights (though I imagine others run pug 25s). They are a laid back bunch of guys who have been playing together for a while. They invited me to their 10 man run last week and we did really really well. We made it to 9/12 heroic 10 man ICC in the first two nights and cleared Lich King, earning me "the Kingslayer" title on my second toon.

For about 3 months previous to this I had been raiding 25 mans with an old guild Exhumed, back on Argent Dawn. Schedule conflicts and my general lack of interest in 25 mans and Mage cut that short unfortunately. Good luck to them though, they are a good group. With the cataclysm changes to raiding only months away (wishful thinking eh), I really wanted to get into a group that I can grow with in the next expansion.

With that, as my new banner suggests: I am playing a new toon. By new I mean a character which until now I havent raided a whole lot with. I did a little Ulduar hard modes about a year ago, but after that this was my main pvp character earning rival in season 6 with very little experience (about 2150 in 2v2 after about a month after hitting 80) and even worse gear.

So right now I am plugging away at that ICC10 Frostwyrm. Very excited at the possibility of raiding with a solid group of 10 people.

Onto RL news: The house is going well. Jackie, I and her grandparents painted the living room. Its half green and half yellow. Not unlike a nice plate of peas and corn (good old dad taught me this delicious combo). They are not bright vibrant colors, but more mellow which I think is good for this room. This color scheme I believe will be emulated throughout the household. The bathrooms were already painted yellow and the guest-room green.

Work is going well. I wont get into too much of what I do (its confidential). But I help people with their problems. Its actually pretty rewarding (albeit sometimes mundane) when I can genuinely put someone's mind at ease with my expertise and knowledge. The worst part is when I know there is nothing I can do to help and the person on the other end just thinks I am the worst person in the world. I wish I could tell them:"It really gives me no satisfaction to be telling you this" but my psychology background and general knowledge tells me that would only fire them up more.

In other news: BP is still struggling with this Gulf of Mexico oil spill. I fear it will be one of the most devastating environmental catastrophes the world will ever see. Hopefully BP will turn this thing around and prevent it from happening again.

I try to watch the happening around the world at CNN, and it really keeps you informed on how BAD the weather is. Last year seemed like a HUGE year for earthquakes, but maybe its just because I didnt hear about the year before? That is actually exactly the case. This USGS table shows that there were more high rated earthquakes, but FAR less overall.

Thats all for now, thanks for reading. The word of the day is: parsimonious.

Updating

I almost forgot I had this blog! I recently purchased a house so my time has been mostly focussed on work, house, jackie and Wow. In that order? Maybe. So what I am thinking is I want to start posting again. Will follow up with more in the coming weeks. I will update the banner and perhaps attempt some intelligent posting. Who knows!