Im sorry to break it to you buddy, but 95% of the people who were watching SC were thinking the exact same thing... "SOCCER?!?!" ESPN is just giving people what they want to see. So until people in the US start changing their perspective toward SOCCER?!?! ESPN will not and should not cover it.
Too bad MSG is not over the country like ESPN II , they do a great job on Soccer, and the Metrostars.
Re: Re: ESPN Insults MLS/USSF on SportsCenter ... I'm furious [Insert a picture of George Costanza eating a Snickers bar with knife and fork here]
Re: Re: to my Soccer Loving Brethren I am looking at the ratings from the World Cup right now. They look decent to me, even better considering the timeslot. Please don't give me any of the nationalism BS. I'm as much of a patriot one could be but I would not wake up at 3 AM to watch the Tour De France if I was not a fan of Cycling. If ESPN only bashed MLS I would probably understand (hope I'm not giving any of the ESPN worshipers an idea to forward to thier Pope) even though it still would not be fair but they insult ALL of the soccer fans.
You know what would suck? If ESPN hunted all of us USSF fans and put us in in steel chairs and made us watch SportsCenter 24/7 until we like the damn show. I doubt it will happened but its just a thought.
Definitely one of the more random thread bumps you'll see. It is a fun read through though, and a reminder how much SportsCenter has fallen off as a cultural institution over the past couple decades that we were desperate to garner legitimacy from
They finally took it seriously from the 2010 to 2014 World Cups, mainly because ESPN had the rights to those two tournaments, as well as every single home WCQ in the 2014 cycle, plus the Azteca Hex match. I remember LD's exclusion from the plane to Brazil was a massive story and led off SportsCenter. However, once that tournament ended and Fox picked up World Cup rights, you could definitely tell they took a step back. Not quite the level of apathy that existed back when this thread was first posted, but clearly they weren't as invested, figuratively and literally, in covering US soccer. Luckily, it's 2026, and people get their sports news from podcasts and social media now, so it's not as important to be on SC anymore, especially as popular sports talk figures like McAfee and the Barstool guys continue to hype up the team and the World Cup.
ESPN killed the SportsCenter star. It used to be about lots and lots of highlights, even in sports they didn't carry. Now, if you don't play on an ESPN platform, good luck being on. Plus, sportscenter is much more about production and too much discussion.
OP might have overreacted. I also caught a SportsCenter top ten in 2003 when they showed a McBride goal during his Everton loan. They made it look cool, and fun fact that was the first time I ever heard of Everton. Previously in the early 2000s the only Euro soccer I watched was the occasional Champions League match, mostly Real Madrid.
People don't get their sports highlights or news from ESPN any longer. Or even consume sports on ESPN to the degree we used to. There are other avenues for all of that. That's why both ESPN and Fox Sports went heavily into "talking heads." Everything became another version of PTI. But even those types of programs are going to be dodos soon, as people can consume those types of shows in other formats. Those networks have been trying to align with popular podcasters in an attempt to stay relevant. It's kind of like MTV's music channels being killed at the end of the year. People stopped consuming their music thru MTV years and years ago. THis was a fun thread to resurrect. There were a lot of posters from this time frame that I'd forgotten!!! Yes, we used to talk endlessly about how to get more soccer highlights and shows on major networks and basic cable.
I remember Balboa's bicycle kick for the Rapids being a Top 10 Play of the Week on Sportscenter back in 99 or so.
Soccer in the USA got the last laugh over Sportscenter in the end. All of Sportscenter's cheap shots, taunts, and mockery of Soccer now basically nullified.