Funny that Rome bashes soccer because of scoring, fan violence, and diving. But he forgets that: Baseball - has been tainted with players on steroids, and has incredibly slow action Basketball - had a big scandal with ref. fixing games Football - probably has worse steroid problem and had Michael Vick betting on cock fighting.
I wouldn't be surprised to see that Rome is paid to bash soccer by the owners of MLB, NFL and NBA teams because they fear soccer's growing popularity.
First of all idiot, not all MLB, NFL, and NBA owners own MLS soccer teams. Another thing Moron, it's called hedging your bet. If soccer grows and expands you are already in the game and not out of it.
So wait a minute ... Lamar Hunt owned three MLS teams because he was "hedging his bet" for the day soccer eclipsed the NFL? Is that also why AEG -- which has a hockey team -- owned more than half of MLS? Maybe you can answer this question, then: Why wouldn't Anschutz and Hunt just let MLS fold instead of sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into it? That's "hedging"?
I take it as well that you also believe the lie that they are losing millions of dollars just to bring poor little ole you soccer. Ha Ha Ha now if you believe that well then I really dont know what to say to you. They make money with whatever they do. Every last single one of them. So please dont feed me that line of corporate bs about the gratitude that we need to bestown on our billionaire friends for allowing us to have soccer here.
At my school this guy came from ESPN and talk to us about it. Then in the end he asked for suggestions, so i said show more soccer.
Gospel, no. Completely wrong, not always. If MLS had been making tons of money in 2002, they wouldn't have been down to three investors. And back to the original point -- having interacted with some of these people, I can assure you that MLS doesn't scare MLB, NFL and NBA guys. I have it on good authority that former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue is a soccer guy.
Listen to bring the tone down a little and not turn this into something bigger than what it really should be. I'm not talking about soccer taking over any of the big sports tomorrow, but I do feel that it will do so within 20 years. It could move up to 3rd place or maybe even 2nd. The faster that the league gets to a more mature level in terms of amount of teams, rivalries and national footprint then the league will start to poise itself to move up the ladder.
That's possible -- I wouldn't bet on it, but it's not outlandish to say it could happen. I just don't see any of the big sports conspiring with sympathetic shock-jocks to keep soccer down. What I DO see often are people in (and out of) the media who are very, very comfortable with the sports they know who don't want to hear about soccer, and they're able to feed into and off of American cultural bias toward a "foreign" sport. It is indeed a sign of progress that people care enough to bash the sport. You don't hear them going after lacrosse (yet?) or anything else like that. They'll go after hockey on occasion, depending on where you live. (In New York, probably not.) So you may be right in the sense that some people feel threatened. But I doubt the owners are among them, though I wouldn't be surprised if some owners are amateur soccer-bashers in their own right. Anschutz and Hunt, though, truly love(d) the game. So do Glazer's kids.
Was there Jim Rome-esque soccer bashing before the '94 World Cup and the advent of MLS? I don't know, I was too young at the time. But if there was a comparable level of animosity before soccer started growing in the US, then we can't point to soccer bashing as symptomatic of the sport's increasing popularity.
I think that's right. And the general ignorance about the game was higher in the late 70's. I attended Cosmos games then. But starting in the late 90's I think FSC had a huge impact on exposing the average American sports fan to the world game of football, especially the English variety. That said the folks at ESPN in general still have a HUGE way to go.
I think that you hit it on the head. Some people might feel threathen. Another feeling that I have been getting lately is that certain Americans feel that soccer is UNAMERICAN and therefor bash it. Have you come across this sentiment?