As Scott and Evan say, newspapers aren't the best place to find news about sports. The USA Today is the most national newspaper, and its soccer section is quite empty. In addition to websites by TV channels (ESPN, NBC Sports, Fox Sports, CBS Sports), there's other American sports websites, such as Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, Sporting News and Vice Sports. Some have better soccer sections than others.
^^^^^ Na I hear what you say but from afar Football in the US seems to cope it in the neck ...it seems to me from reading and watching some of your media that in the eyes of many within the media and some people as well is .... Football is seen as almost un-American a game played by foreigners.
A combination of that and simple disinterest. Soccer is just not an "important" sport in terms of national coverage and attention here. Small steps, though. It's better than it used to be.
True. But that "many" within the media used to be most within the media and that "some" people used to be many people. We are making progress. It is slow progress, so be sure, but it is progress. As someone who saw with his own eyes what it was like 50 years ago, it's night and day.
The current media story-du-jour is kneeling for the national anthem. I've read it is getting four times the mainstream media coverage of the hurricane aftermath in Puerto Rico. Notably, however, while the NBA, NHL and MLB have been repeatedly alluded to in coverage of a largely Trump-vs.-NFL story, soccer has been virtually unmentioned, despite the fact that the US Soccer Federation adopted recently a policy directly on point in obvious response to Megan Rapinoe having taken a knee last year. This non-coverage is highly suggestive that things are not getting better in terms of media bias against soccer. The salient soccer angle to the latest media obsession is staring them in the face and they're missing it because of their biased blind-spot.
Newsweek did in fact post today the soccer angle to the anthem story: http://www.newsweek.com/us-soccer-bans-kneeling-during-anthem-donald-trump-wants-nfl-671291
Good lord you folks are paranoid. Nobody cares about MLS because it's a closed cut rate League that doesn't move the needle. The big leagues move the needle a lot more.
English is likely not your native language, so apologies for not understanding, but could you clarify what "closed cut rate" means.
And maybe we can also get a definition of "move the needle" that is not a tautology in this context. When a tree falls in the woods and the media ignores it, perhaps that tree doesn't "move the needle." That doesn't make the local birdwatchers who saw the tree fall "paranoid."
Oh the irony of suggesting that English isn't my native tongue when you don't understand what closed cut rate means in reference to the MLS. May god have mercy on the U.S. education system.
You are correct, I don't understand what closed cut rate means with regards to MLS, or any other reference for that matter. Would you care to explain?
Where P & R does not apply... in most leagues if you fail you go down a division and if you do well you go up.... Football world wide punishes failure and rewards excellence... whereas the MLS is a closed shop with a salary cap very much like socialism ,,,, its the ultimate irony in the land of extreme capitalism that sports models are run like socialist countries....
This probably should have been written as "closed, cut rate league". The lack of a comma left @Kappa74 (and me, so its not just a Wazzu thing) thinking "closed cut rate" was one adjective that was new to us.
My default assumption when a P/R nutter talks about MLS is that they're full of shit and have no idea how to successfully operate a league in the United States. But just responding that someone's ideas are shit doesn't lend itself to a dialogue. Playing the fool to figure out base assumptions was what I was going for. Don't ask me why I entertained the thought. Perhaps it was result last night, but it's all so pointless nonetheless. Pro/Rel has zero relevance to the question at hand. Full stop.
I live in the Dallas-Ft.Woth area, and FC Dallas rarely gets a mention on the local broadcast. High School Basketball and Baseball/Softball get a lot more coverage than FC Dallas on the local evening newscasts. I don’t even remember the last time I saw high school soccer featured. College soccer never. I know and understand ratings matter, but they really don’t even give soccer a chance. In my opinion there is a definite bias.
Pro/rel doesn't matter. In the top league, relegation drama drives interest in a handful of games late in the season, and no more. It's not going to make the media suddenly care about the league as a whole. And in the lower leagues... if the media doesn't care about the top league, why would it care about who gets promoted to that league? Also: if not MLS, which leagues are "moving the needle"? Because it's not as if the big European leagues are drawing more US viewers. When Time chooses not to run a Messi cover in the US, it's safe to say Barcelona isn't "moving the needle."
This is a closed cut rate thread. Anyone consider that soccer fans are young? How many people under 35 do you know who read USA Today? How many even know what that is? How many listen to regular OTA radio? How many even watch TV, especially stuff like the local evening news? The young soccer fan is part of the customization generation. When they're getting their soccer content, they go straight to the source. That means increasingly streaming the game from some platform. Highlights on Youtube. Following soccer aps for up to date scores. Listening to podcasts for the "talk" angle. Interactive discussion on social media. Soccer popularity in this country started to grow just as we began to enter the internet age. It's natural that the two became intertwined, unlike the older sports which had decades to fine tune those antiquated rituals like TV, radio and print.
Soccer in the US, MLS's continued existence, and the interest in the national team are where they are today because the internet has allowed a significant of eye balls to see around media curation. Don't expect anything from the media until the media see it as more profitable to talk about soccer than the alternatives. The media may have a blind spot for soccer, but it hasn't had anything happen to make that blind spot go away. It probably never will as soccer fans really don't need the media anymore.
Soccer is not the media's only blind spot. My suggestion is that the media get its eyes checked -- thoroughly and regularly. Forestalling total blindness should be incentive enough.