who cares about attendance when you can sell luxury boxes, advertising, and get tax breaks from the municipality
her articles come off as defensive to me. scared that more people are embracing football. then again, i think most of the bashers write because of that.
Nah, I think most of them truly are just plain old irritated by it. They really do think they dislike the sport's basic traits, its game play, its players, its fans, etc. However, much like the classic movie storyline in which the two characters who really get on each other's nerves are the ones who invariably fall deeply in love, they someday will find themselves giving in and embracing soccer in a big, big way.
This is the worst one I have seen in a long time... Inside Columbia Magazine, August 2010, by John Littell
I couldn't care less what the guy thinks about soccer, but I absolutely can't stand the sort of writing style and voice on display in the piece. The unrelenting onslaught of metaphors, the forced Swiftian tone, the verbal vomit that's supposed to look like a rich imagination at work... it's exhausting. It's not funny. It's not imaginative. It's not engaging. It's just exhausting. "A second offense calls for a fine of $2,000 and death by stoning, which is hardly an inducement for smart, talented players and probably why scores are low to nonexistent." "The audience consisted of loose women who were soon rendered unconscious due to terminal boredom and abandoned their unchaste ways in the hope of never being subjected to such torture again." "Soccer makes televised golf seem like a Steven Spielberg/James Cameron double feature." This stuff is painful to read after a couple of paragraphs.
On the grand morning of October 22, 1957 one of my junior high school teachers informed the class that within 10 years soccer would be the number one sport in the United States. During the winter of 1964 a guy in my college dorm informed me that within 10 years soccer would be the number one sport in the United States. 1971, a pale looking fellow on a television panel show announced that within 10 years soccer would be the number one sport in the United States. We travel in time to 1988 and a chap wearing red short pants at a local picnic proclaimed that within 10 years soccer would be the number one sport in the United States. The years advance, it is 1997, a right winger on an AOL political message boards states that within 10 years soccer would be the number one sport in the United States. Last Wednesday someone called a sports talk radio show and said that within 10 years soccer would be the number one sport in the United States. (The host yawned and hung up). And so it goes. But it's a free country, have fun. Gotta run - it's a long drive, deep to left field, it is going, going gone!
dude relax. . As soon as I found out he is in his 60s, (i..e age of guys like frank deford, every newspaper editor from the 1970s and 1980s, ) I realized: no problem. Comments like this are a badge of honor for them. He still thinks boxing and horse racing are major sports.
I'm proud to see some one steal the quote that I put in every available comment box for soccer bashing articles from 2003-2008.
but bro, when i reach my 60s, there is nothing I will look forward to more than spending my free time going to message boards about sports I don't like and telling those meople that I don't like their sport. sounds like a lot of fun.
Instead you'll be on BigBaseball explaining how baseball blew its chances with a younger generation with poor leadership, marketing, and cheating and sank into oblivion as the demographics became less favorable for it to warrant big time sponsors.
The thing about "soccer bashers" is that most of them really don't care that much, they're just yanking chains. They know that they don't really have much say in whether or not the sport will grow here, and over-sensitive soccer fans should realize that as well. One "soccer basher" I know is Daniel Tosh, the comedian who hosts "Tosh.0" on Comedy Central. He's a football fan and from time to time he mocks soccer; once he even did a short monologue on how wimpy and boring the sport is. Thing is--my son, who loves soccer more than any other sport, plays both club and school soccer, wears replica soccer jerseys all the time, dreams of playing college and pro soccer (not a realistic dream, admittedly, but 12 year old boys don't need to be sensible just yet)--is a huge fan of Tosh's show and watches every episode, sometimes more than once. He knows that Tosh derides his favorite sport, and I don't think he really cares. It certainly doesn't make him feel ashamed or weird about it. The point of my little anecdote--these things really don't matter that much. The "soccer bashers" exist, true, but over-sensitive soccer fans need to quit worrying that our favorite sport can't handle some derision and hard knocks. The people who hate it will hate it; the people who love it will love it. Most people are in between, and they're not going to be swayed one way or the other becaue Jim Rome isn't enamored with it just yet.
I love Tosh.0 ... and Jim Rome. And I think their soccer bashing is funny because it's expected and doesn't go over the top (most of the time). The soccer bashing I don't like is the one where it's meant almost as an insult rather than a joke (fine line, I know) and says more about the person.
i don't click those links just on principle - could be a malware site. But looks like someone reported him for spam.
It's everyday at this sports station I listen too, when they go to sports news they talk about NFL,MLB,NHL, etc.. and then they go and now news for soccer fans, then sorry we are out of time.
So here I am listening to ESPN Radio after the Jets-Colts game and Amy Lawrence had to say a dumb comment about soccer, saying that NFL will always rule in the States even though soccer is king in the rest of the world...yadda, yadda. Like why even take a shot at soccer when she was soooo excited about the two wildcard games last night?
The worst part is that she spent all of summer 2010 trying to convince people that the World Cup is relevant and worth their time, and now she has to deride soccer in order to make the NFL (which probably won't have games next fall) seem important. This ESPN mouthpiece needs to find another way to get me to care about Matt Hasselback.
I heard that too and was completely bemused by it. I see where she was going with it that US football is the heartbeat for this country that world football is all over the world. She just sounded like a 12 yr old at a Justin Bieber/beiber? (who cares) concert so when she said it she sounded like a doofus. It was funny sounding, and not really a bashing, so let it go.