I expected to see 20 threads on how upset y'all would be that the WUSA semi-final was preempted... ESPN IS SATAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
no big, got to see the end of it, but the game wasnt high on my priority ist anyway. this is the mls boards, not wusa.
Pre-empted for what? One of these stupid Little League games ESPN is showing ad nauseam. I think they're showing 35 of them this year. Unbelieveable.
Yeah, that pesky little thing that gets THREE TIMES THE RATINGS OF MLS and cost Disney a pretty penny.
There's an article about this Little League travesty on the front page of today's New York Times. Read it. The little shits are being exploited. Then go kiss Disney's ass in Macy's window.
Exploited? I haven't read the article yet...I will once I post....but, how exactly are they being exploited?? because they get to go play in this great tournament in a fantastic facility in front of thousands of fans and a tv crew??? The last sentence makes no sense at all to me.....not much to say.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/18/sports/baseball/18LITT.html Here's the link. You have to register, but I think using "bigsoccer" as the log in and the password works (leave off the " ", of course). Anyway, here's a quote from the article: ------------------------------- "One second, the kid is crying, he's devastated about losing," said Harold Reynolds, the ESPN and ABC announcer. "Within a half-hour, he's asking his friends who's going to the ice cream party or the swimming pool. The adults hold on to it, not the kids." Children booting a ground ball on national television may frighten parents, but many of the Little Leaguers will take the tradeoff. "The best thing about here is playing on TV," said Mike Julian, an 11-year-old from the team representing Wilmington, Del. "You make a good play, there's a chance you can get on `SportsCenter.' " Asked about the potential down side of celebrity, he said he hoped not to cry if his team lost a close game. "But if you do cry on TV," Julian said, "it just shows how bad you wanted to win." ------------------------- So I think the kids would prefer to be seen crying on ESPN2 than be called "little $hits" by you, riverplate.
And to the ratings issue: "The World Series game last season between Harlem and Worcester, Mass., drew a 3.0 rating — the highest-rated Little League game in ESPN's history. About 2.5 million households watched." That is a little bit better than MLS....
This is a perfect example of taking something nobody gives a rat's ass about and making it an "event." Who the hell ever gave a damn about the Little League World Series? I remember when it was lucky to get two paragraphs in the papers the day after the finals. Now, thanks to Disney, the thing is a big ****ing deal. If Disney and ESPN can make a killing on this bullcrap, they should be able to market soccer into a success.
Granted they are showing more of the games now (they are showing more world cup games now too) but, this has been an end of summer event on telelvsion for YEARS........I remember watching it on ABC 20 years ago and hoping to christ that the US teams would finally lay a beating on those damn kids from Taiwan (THEY HAD TO BE OVERAGE!!!) I don't think this is an example of them forcing it on people and making it a hit....more like giving them more of what was already succesful. I personally don't agree with showing all of the regional games but, they have to fill the dead air of summer with something.
I can remember watching it on ABC THIRTY years ago, about a couple weeks after my own LLWS dream ended in Milan, Illinois, with me standing on third base representing the tying run in the bottom of the 8th (extra innings) after driving in three runs with the only triple I ever hit in my life and watching helplessly as two guys struck out and one guy grounded weakly to the first baseman to give the title to a team from somewhere in the Quad Cities... It's not like I'm holding on to all this, incidently. And it's not like ESPN manufactured interest in this event. I don't understand it myself (if it's your kid or your town, maybe...), but it obviously works for other people.
Yeah, MLS. Maybe they can build an audience for it by showing it. Right now, we have catch-22. They hardly ever show it, then claim nobody watches.
They show it every single Saturday during the summer........hopefully, in a few years the ratings will increase because of it.....
I think they should be televising youth soccer tournaments instead of Little League Baseball, but other than that I don't have a problem with showing kids playing sports on television.
I read the article (it was good; what's the big deal?), and all I can say is you have a lot of freakin nerve. If soccer permeated the very fabric of the nation as baseball does, THEN you might see the Dallas Cup (hasn't it been shown at least once already?), or the USYSA tourny on TV. What you fail to realize, is that hardly anybody outside the US soccer community gives a rat's ass about soccer, while most of the USA, and a lot of the world, does care about Little League baseball. You don't like baseball, as is your right. But getting all pissy because your precious little soccer game gets pre-empted by something that to Americans is nearly as big as the World Cup, is rather immature on your part. No wonder Jim Rome and the rest make so much fun of soccer "fans." As for your assinine little remark ("the little s@#%$"), how would you feel if somebody was talking about your kid that way? If it was my kid you were talking about, you'd be eating your steak with a straw for a long time. People like you are a big reason soccer doesn't attract more fans in this country. And I don't care wheere you came from, it's high time you realize there are at least four other sports that get higher billing in the good ol' US of A, and with attitudes like yours, they always will.
Re: Re: No complaining? The U19 Boys USYSA National Cup was on ESPN2 annually through most of the mid and late 90s, then it disappeared.
I have a little trouble taking seriously people who blow a gasket over two weeks of Little League coverage, then say ESPN never shows MLS when it's on close to 30 straight weeks, plus all the other occasional soccer games that the network shows. Sometimes, you see what you want to see. And when you can't see that weekly coverage garnering a .2 takes a back seat to an EVENT with three-decades of television history (I remember the years when it was all US because the Taiwainese were so good) that triples that or more in ratings, you got enough issues to fill a Barnes and Noble.
Nearly 30 weeks means nearly 30 games in a league that plays a total of, what, 150? That would mean that ESPN shows nearly 20% of all the league's matches. Hell, you can't even watch 20% of the NFL's games on any one channel without shelling out big bucks for a satellite/digital PPV package. Sorry, guys, but when you complain about getting nearly 1/5th of a league's games on a channel, and then complain that the channel isn't doing its share to support the league, you're really just pimp slapping your own credibility.
What's with all the baseball apologists on here? I don't give a s**t about history. Soccer is a better sport than baseball. If there is a choice between showing baseball and soccer, they should show soccer. If people want to see children play sports, they should show children playing soccer before they show them playing baseball. Soccer just has more appeal. It's because people would rather spend their extra money on "sports with a history" like baseball over the summer that they choose not to go to MLS games. Without baseball, soccer would be flourishing even more in this country. I don't see why Jim Rome should criticize anyone who attempts to promote their favorite sports over others. It's what he does everyday already.
Hmmm...perhaps because some people like baseball? Is it such an incredible mental task to like more than one thing at the same time? I believe that means that you're doomed to repeat it. Says you. Millions of Americans disagree. Unfortunately, the TV networks are what we call "businesses," which exist to make "money" for their "shareholders," so that the executives don't get their asses "fired" and end up having to switch to "Safeway Select" brand hookers and cocaine. One sure-fire way to make money in TV is to show programming that people actually want to watch. Try to keep up. I think there just may also be an element of people wanting to spend money on sports they like. Call me nuts here. And if pigs could fly, it'd be harder to get a job as air traffic controller. What's your point? Look at it this way. If baseball went on strike for the rest of the year starting tonight, is there any inherent reason to believe that fans would flock to MLS games? If I were a baseball fan with no particular attachment to soccer, I'd be at least as likely under those circumstances to start following pre-season football or go to more movies or buy baseball video games or play rec-league softball or go to the opera or read books or drink 'till I heave or spend time with my family or just save money so that I could go to baseball games when the strike is over. People, by and large, don't follow baseball because they have an insatiable need that only spectator sports can fill--they go because watching baseball is fun for them. If they can't spend money on baseball, they'll spend their money on something else which is fun for them.
I think Godot22 summed it up very well. In answer to your comment about soccer flourishing without baseball, soccer had its chance to be in in the NFL's place back in the early 1900's. Tackle football was almost banned because its violent play was getting people killed. Meanwhile, the US soccer people were engaged in a civil war that severely retarded the sport's progress. The first version of the American Soccer League had crowds in the 20-30,000 range a lot of times, and could be at this moment the "official" football game here in the US. But while they were fighting, the tackle folks cleaned up their act, and the colleges who had gone with it, stuck with it, and soccer was thus relegated to semi-pro ranks, Eastern prep schools, and immigrant areas. Soccer's failure is not at the hands of baseball. In fact, baseball owners were an integral part of forming what became the NASL. They wanted to fill their stadia when their teams were on road trips, and soccer fit the bill. NFL owners like Lamar Hunt and Jack Kent Cooke did the same thing (Lamar Hunt owns a football team? Who'd a thunk it?!?!) These people you hate so much lost millions of dollars trying to make soccer work, and some are still doing so. You're barking up the wrong tree, Scooby. Soccer will make it or lose it on it's own merit, and all the little conspiracy theories and other garbage that the groupies and "soccer geeks" throw out will only serve to hurt the game, and drive potential fans away. If you want to know why soccer isn't making it here, don't blame the other sports, such as baseball or football; go look in the mirror. Soccer will survive in spite of you, not because of you.