World Cup on ESPN
The title of this post may be a little misleading. Because it's not a post on the World Cup, or on ESPN. See, I said that it might be misleading.
But I just noticed that they are discussing the World Cup on ESPN. And that raised the question, why?
Before TMcD fires off an angry rejoinder, let me assure you that I'm not going to dis soccer.
Then where is this increasingly maddening post going?
Watching ESPN coverage of the World Cup is strange because, generally speaking, ESPN viewers are not interested in soccer. Or, more precisely, they are not as interested in soccer as they are in NFL football, college football, Major League baseball, NBA basketball, college basketball, golf (PGA and WPGA), the NHL, the WNBA, NASCAR, bass fishing, deep-sea fishing, the "College World Series," and pro bowling. All of those sports-leagues receive extensive coverage on ESPN or its offshoots. But I don't think that there's a soccer show on ESPN generally. And the reason there's not is that Americans, or Americans who watch ESPN, like different sports. It's a matter of taste.
Now TMcD is ready to argue. Because he will want to argue (?) the merits of various sports compared to others. Baseball is a superior game to [American-style] football, and so on. Maybe TMcD thinks soccer is better than baseball. I'm not sure whether he's want to do so, but I'm a betting man.
To my mind, this is simply a question of taste, and one's taste in sports has mostly to do with which sports your family and community followed closely. Sports is almost exclusively a question of local custom--except, in the case of soccer, the local custom is pretty widespread.
The interesting point is that we human beings seem prone to taking local customs and reifying them into universal truths. This is what is happening, I think, in the marriage debate in the United States today. Folks on one side of the debate take a particular version of the family and then argue that that is the only form that the family can take. As Rebecca points out, that's not the case at all, nor has it been.
Things like family and sport are shot-through with contingency.
But it doesn't appear that any amount of chance can help this hapless U.S. squad. The Czechs beat them soundly, 3-0.
posted by Number Three @ 2:44 PM
2 Comments:
To be fair, the Americans actually played a pretty good game against an extremely talented Czech squad. Even my English football expert, with whom we watched the game, stressed that the play was MUCH more even than the score.
It's also interesting to note that the Czech v. US game had the two highest-ranked teams playing of any first-round matchup.
Most Americans probably don't realize that FIFA rates the US squad fifth out of all the teams in the World Cup this year. Now, most European football fans don't put too much stock into this rating (the US's international matches are, overall, against weaker opponents than European teams' international matches), but it's interesting to me that the English football fans certainly don't think the Americans are a joke.
It's sad then, that most Americans still think football (soccer) is a joke. Over here, the entire world has stopped for the month. Every single game is on non-subscription TV, and there's literally no one outside or on the roads when an important game is being played.
I think that there's a Bills show on the "Ocho," once a week.
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