Soccer is going to be the next big sport!

In America, we’ve heard this for quite some time. I’d venture to say my entire life. I have memories of watching the 1994 World Cup as a kid. I remember reading all about Alexi Lalas and Cobi Jones in Sports Illustrated for Kids. I then probably proclaimed Buzz Beamer the funniest man alive.

Needless to say, my thinking was a little flawed. Of course, I can blame my youth. Soccer enthusiast who continue to pimp there sport as “the next big thing” are equally flawed. It’s not like we can blame them for trying, though.

Soccer is likely going to get bigger for a combination of reasons. The most prominent reason – as we were taught by Thomas Friedman – is the world is become flat. Communication tools such as the Internet and high definition cable and satellite tv allow for American soccer fans to watch the best soccer players and leagues – such as the Premier League in England and La Liga in Spain – live or via DVR. Another reason is the ever changing demographics of our country. In 2008, the Census reported that the USA was made up of 68% white and 15% Hispanic. 40 years from now, it’s projected that the USA is going to be 46% white and 30% Hispanic. Since it’s common knowledge that soccer is a big sport in most Hispanic countries, it’s safe to assume that more Hispanic people in the USA likely means more soccer fans.

To assume that soccer is going to crawl it’s way past the NHL, MMA, NBA, MLB, and the NFL, though, is absurd. I’m very much a fan of a distance running which is another sport that is somewhat stuck in the bowels of mainstream mediocrity. To me, running is an awesome sport. Almost every race has a unique subplot. No two races are the same. If a race goes out extremely fast, it favors one group of runners. If a race goes out extremely slow, it favors and entirely different group of runners. The favorite to win a given race is almost as likely to blow up and finish 5th. At the same time, it’s not a fluke-y sport where someone undeserving yet super talented athlete just floats along. While there are certainly different degrees of talent, if a given runner doesn’t put in the consistent miles, they aren’t going to be very good. In that aspect, there aren’t many “Eddy Curry”-type athletes in distance running. I’d love for nothing other than long distance running to be a popular sport. It’s a strange sport in the sense that more people actually do run marathons, half-marathons, 10ks, and 5ks than actually pay attention to the sport. Of course, there also is the perception that nobody is good at running except for sickly looking Kenyans.

I don’t go wrong in getting upset that running isn’t any bigger than it is. Try as they may, the “powers that be” can’t will it to be a bigger sport. Short of a once-in-a-lifetime athlete with a ton of personality (think the Tiger Woods of running), I don’t anticipate running ever becoming a top five spectator sport in the United States. It’s completely fine with me.

Soccer fans, on the other hand, can’t understand why their sport – which is so beloved basically everywhere else in the world, can’t seem to make much headway in America. In some ways, they are right. To me, it seems a little crazy that the NFL is the biggest sport in America. We often hear how all of the best athletes in America tend to gravitate towards football. It makes some amount of sense because it is the sport that gets the most attention at all levels. High school football players stereotypically have a fairly high social standing among their peers. Meanwhile, all things NFL dominate the ESPN and network airwaves as far as sports are concerned. From a strictly financial point of view, though, athletes would probably be much better off channeling their athletic prowess into sports that pay more. The top NFL athletes are paid on a similar to scale to the top MLB and NBA athletes. Where the inequity between sports comes in is average length of career and guaranteed contracts. Football, by far, has the shortest average career length for both journeyman athletes AND superstars. While I’m sure there are statistics that show this, just compare draft classes from similar years to see how many guys are still around collecting checks. Comparing the drafts from 1999-2001, some very interesting things are found. In the NFL, only 41 of the 93 players (44%) drafted in the first round are still around. To look further into the names, you’ll find more guys that are viewed as washed up (Michael Vick, LaDainian Tomlinson, Jevon Kearse, Chris Hovan, Michael Bennett, Daunte Culpepper) that you do guys that are still considered stars (Donovan McNabb, Steve Hutchinson, Champ Bailey and Brian Urlacher). During the same time period of the NBA, I find 41 guys still in the league which is a similar percentage. The names on the list, though, are guys that still are considered to be in their prime or at least not completely washed up such as Baron Davis, Lamar Odom, Richard Hamilton, Andre Miller, Shawn Marion, Jason Terry, Corey Maggette, Ron Artest, James Posey, Andrei Kirilenko, Pau Gasol, Jason Richardson, Shane Battier, Joe Johnson, Richard Jefferson, Zach Randolph, Sam Dalembert, Tony Parker, Kenyon Martin, Mike Miller, Jamal Crawford, Joel Pryzbilla, Hedo Turkoglu, Quentin Richardson, Morris Peterson, and DeShawn Stevenson.

Besides the shortest career length, football players also have a markedly shorter life span. While it’s nothing comparable to dead wrestlers, there are enough pro football players that have died strangely early of strange causes (Reggie White, Andre Waters, Walter Payton, Korey Stringer, etc.) and we’re starting to hear about the negative effects of all the repeated blows to the head. The rate of heart disease, suicide, homicide, and especially disability. Alas… this is turning more anti-football than actually about futbol. I’m really just trying to make a point that despite the shortest careers and the worst financial future, football reigns supreme is the USA.

Back to soccer. I can understand why a few people don’t get why America isn’t soccer crazy. Nothing is more maddening than being the only guy on a bandwagon. For example, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why I don’t have a single friend who doesn’t like A Tribe Called Quest. It drove me batty that I couldn’t get anyone to watch “Arrested Development” while it was on tv. Now imagine if you’re a big fan of something that’s popular somewhere, but not where you’re from. I’d imagine if you were a big fan of showtunes and musicals, the Deep South probably wouldn’t be the place for you to live. On the flip side, if you’re big into college football, you’re probably better off living in Alabama, Florida, Texas, or South Carolina than one of the Dakotas. I’m from Minnesota and I’ve lived here all my life. For the life of me, I don’t understand how someone in New York doesn’t go stir crazy. Someone from a more urban area would probably think rural Minnesota just has to be the most boring place on the planet.

I’m getting long winded, but the point I’m meandering towards is we often don’t understand each other. Imagine, though, if you grew up living across the street from Three Rivers Stadium. Every Sunday for the first 33 years of your life, you and your dad had a few pops and sat in the same seats watching Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, Mike Tomlinson, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Jack Lambert, Mean Joe Greene, Lynn Swann, Rod Woodson, Merril Hoge, Greg Lloyd, Levon Kirkland, Jerome Bettis, Hines Ward, Plaxico Burress, Joey Porter, and Ben Roethlisberger. For the past 10 years, you’ve been in the working world and every week has been similar. Monday morning at 6 AM, the alarm clock goes off. After a shower, shave, and breakfast, you hop in the car for a 45-minute commute. The commute is made easier by listening to the local talk radio. During the season, you enjoy the Monday morning quarterbacking along with the preview of the upcoming week’s game. From February thru April, you enjoy the discussion about what the Steelers should do with the number 18 pick. May thru July is talk about free agency and who looks good and who looks bad in mini-camps. For as long as long you can remember, this has been your life. Best of all, you’ve got 10-15 friends that are as diehard as you are and every time you wind up out at a pub, you find yourself talking about Roethlisberger’s suspension or something similar.

The economy goes south and you lose your job. By a wicked twist of fate, you wind up taking a great job, but the one downside (for you – loyal Steelers fan) is that for the next 2-4 years, you’ll have to live in London.

You get to London. All of the sudden, it becomes a challenge to follow the Steelers. When you get in your car in the morning, you don’t hear the local talk radio station. Thanks to modern technology, you’re able to download podcasts of the Pittsburgh sports radio shows, but you’re always a day late. What’s worse, though, is you have to do work just to follow the sport that’s been so simple to follow. The English version of ESPN doesn’t show NFL Live twice a day. Your local cable company doesn’t get the NFL network. Worst of all, though, is you can’t actually watch the games. On week 1, you went to a pub that you researched on the Internet that shows NFL games. In week 2, though, you go to the same pub and the pub is showing soccer instead. You hustle home, but wind up following the game on the Internet. In week 3, the Steeelers are playing Monday Night Football. When you lived in Pittsburgh, there was nothing better than Monday Night Football. Now, though, the game starts at 1 AM and there is no pub open that’s showing the game. You wind up buying your parents a Slingbox and watch the game until 4:30 AM on your 12” laptop computer screen. You show up to work and hope your boss doesn’t notice the enormous bags under your eyes at your 9 AM meeting. What’s worse, though, is everywhere you go, everyone that’s into sports wants to talk about football (off course, it’s the football that you call “soccer”), cricket, rugby, tennis, and golf. For the life of you, you can’t understand why nobody around you cares about the sport you love so dearly. You can’t believe that none of your co-workers has even heard of Franco Harris or Terry Bradshaw.

I’m assuming you get the point. If you came from a soccer crazy country to the United States and you saw nobody care about the sport whatsoever, it would drive you insane. I haven’t been to an international soccer game, but by all accounts, it sounds like an experience the same way going to a U2 concert is an experience or going to Lollapalooza is an experience.

Fifa outsold Madden last year. The most valuable sports franchise in the world isn’t the New York Yankees or Dallas Cowboys – it’s Manchester United. But contrary to everyone’s hopes and dreams, the Pittsburgh Steelers aren’t going to matter to a 30-year old in Manchester, UK anytime soon and Manchester United isn’t going to matter to a 30-year old in Pittsburgh, PA. I’ve really enjoyed the last few weeks of the World Cup and I may even take a plunge into the Premier League for the first time this year (heck – I even bought an old Fifa games for $12 a few weeks ago). US soccer nuts may pin their hopes on Landon Donovan, Jozy Altidore, and whoever the new Freddy Adu is going to be in the next 10 years, but for the foreseeable future, soccer is going to remain a fringe sport here in America. Instead of being upset that it’s not number one, soccer fanatics should embrace the fact that there are more and more casual fans like myself and, more importantly, it’s becoming increasingly easier to follow the best European soccer leagues from afar.