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This has nothing to do with it. Basketball is huge in this country and players take dives ALL THE TIME. Ever watch a basketball player try to sell a charging foul?
This has nothing to do with it. Basketball is huge in this country and players take dives ALL THE TIME. Ever watch a basketball player try to sell a charging foul?
It happens in Hockey too.
I think the only reason American Football doesn't have any divers is because all the players get injured for real before they get a chance to dive, anyway.
Man, I always hate these threads because they are whiny in nature. I mean, why don't we just have a cartoon character named Soccer that jumps up and down and shreiks, "Please, please, pleeeeeasssseeeeee like me. The rest of the world likes me. Why wonnnnnn't you?"
I've never seen a sport where the fanbase has a greater sense of insecurity than soccer fans, because they're always needing Americans to like it, as if they were some pimply face geek begging the head cheerleader for a date to the high school dance.
Look, I don't hate soccer. I watch it during the World Cup. After the final, I turn off the television and don't even think about it again for another 3.5 years. Why? Because look at this feast that awaits me:
1) Football. College and Pro. It's fast. It's hard-hitting. And it entails endless layers of strategy. And, guess what? The teams are from my own state and city, not from Bulgaria or, at best, some MLS city such as Columbus, Ohio, where the teams are filled with guys who have umlauts in their names. Plus there are marching bands. And cheerleaders. And mascots.
2) Baseball. A game so seriously cool, that Latin America, China, and Japan play it, too. Yet you don't hear us begging the people of Switzerland or the Sudan to like baseball.
3) Hockey. The Canadians came up with this one, so it's pretty certain that we'll like sports that came from somewhere else. Plus they fight in this one. Hockey players will lose a couple of incisors and keep on playing, while soccer players clutch their shins and collapse to the pitch.
4) Golf. Imported from Scotland. See, we like that one, too. Plus it gives us a way to escape our families for five hours every weekend.
5) Basketball. Yeah, that's a pretty great sport also. Another great American export. Plus, during halftimes in soccer, you never get to see a man in gorilla suit jump on trampoline and shove a basketball into a basket. Good stuff.
6) Lacrosse. Now, that's a cool American-made game. Not only do you wear football gear, but you can hit each other with big sticks. I think it's going to catch on a lot sooner than soccer. Where I live, youth lacrosse now gets more kids than soccer.
7) NASCAR. Personally, I'd rather have my leg gnawed off by wolverines than attend a NASCAR event. But you can't deny that people like to watch guys making left-hand turns at 200 mph and occasionally ramming into the wall at high rates of speed. Plus soccer doesn't have the spectacle of grown drunken women standing atop RVs in the infield and hoisting their t-shirts to show what's underneath.
8) Tennis. I have to admit that I thought this was a Streisand kind of sport for a long, long time. But then I watched the Wimbledon Final between Federer and Nadal. There were no ties in that one either. There was no wimpified tie breaker goal kick. These guys just played an endless, grueling duel to the death until one guy won and the other one slinked back to his hotel to dispiritedly nail his supermodel girlfriend. I apologize to all tennis fans for being so misinformed up until that point.
So, to be perfectly frank, we have enough sports occupying our time right now, and all of those sports can't end in a tie. We Americans hate ties. The way we see it, somebody should win and somebody should lose. In that sense, we would have loved the Roman coliseums. This business of permitting tie games smacks of overweening namby-pamby fairness akin to Marxism. If soccer players are the fabulous athletes that their fans say they are, let them run around a few more minutes until one team scores one more goal. But a tie game? Pshaw.
Now, that being said, I think there are some other sports we'd like.
1) Rugby. Now that's a cool sport. Trample the weak, hurdle the dead.
2) Australian Rules football. Outstanding fun. Plus the referees look a lot more sophisticated than our guys who wear zebra stripes. I think we Americans would like that one, too.
3) Cricket. You know, it's like baseball but with cooler clothes. The downside is that the matches take forever. They have lunch breaks and can even last days. We're Americans. We're in a hurry. Can you move things along, please?
There's no historical or cultural reference point for Americans when it comes to soccer. I wasn't alive during the glory days of Wilt, Muhammad Ali, Joe D, and Broadway Joe, yet I know so much about those guys because I grew up around uncles and other older guys who talked about them. I don't think we'll ever reach the point where you walk into a Harlem barbershop and grown men are arguing whether Maradona was better than Pele. Without that cultural connection, I don't think soccer will ever really "catch" in the United States.
Look, I don't hate soccer. I watch it during the World Cup. After the final, I turn off the television and don't even think about it again for another 3.5 years.
No offense, but you seem like one of those sports fans that has been zombified by the American sports media. Ya, know...the "I only like soccer when ESPN tels me to" crowd. And, how exactly are soccer fans insecure and "need" Americans to like it? That is complete elitist b.s. The world fanbase of soccer makes all those cute little niche sports you mentioned below look completely insignificant.
Basketball is extremely flawed... Any sport where scoring occurs every 15 seconds, where you see the same type of scoring happen over and over and over again in the exact same way is not exciting in the least. Plus, if you barely touch someone in that sport they call a cute little foul.
You bash soccer for lack of scoring by comparing it to the NFL which is pure idiocy. The average NFL game is 3 hrs and 20 minutes. The average soccer game is barely over 2 hours. So, cut off the scoring of a NFL game with maybe 10 or so minutes left in the 3rd quarter and you have the equivalent of scoring in soccer. NFL scores at the beginning of the 3rd quarter are often 10-7, 14-0, 3-0, 21-10 (in a "high scoring" game). Which is the EXACT same as 1-1, 2-0, 0-0, 3-1 of soccer scoring at the end of a game. I feel like any 3rd grader could figure something like this out...easily.
Then again, maybe they should make a goal in soccer worth 7 points to appeal to idiots. On second thought...
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