Aneoth wrote:lol......... you must not have any kids..............
My friend's kids and my grandkids all play soccer to the detriment of everything else. Soccer may not hold any sway for the good ole' boys who love American Football, but the kids are growing up and once they do, they will eventually replace us ole' fogies as sports fans. The sport they will be fans of will most likely be Soccer, not American Football.
Unless of course it is baseball once again........

         When I was a kid in the late 70s and early 80s, my youngest brother and all his friends played soccer.  All my friends younger brothers played soccer.  When my friends had kids, and with my own stepkids, they all played soccer growing up.  The prediction was, when that generation came of age soccer would be "huge" in the US. Doesn't matter.  When they get of a certain age, they switch sports to Baseball or Football, or if they are tall enough, Basketball.  Soccer is now and will always be #5 or lower when it comes to professional sports in America.  For the last 25 years I keep hearing how soccer interest is growing, yet all the stats say it's been stagnant in the US.
         Everytime a World Cup or Olympics rolls around, the american soccer association thinks this is the time it will catch the imagination of the American public.  And everytime, there is a really tiny bump in interest, that quickly fades. There are just far too many obstacles to soccer's growth in the US, not the most which is the US play is just not up to world standards; witness the US team getting it's ass handed to them every World Cup trial or Olympics.  Hell, the US Women's won the Olympics a few years ago and that did absolutely nothing for interest in the long run.  One of my best friends played soccer in high school, now coaches soccer in Tennessee.  He's been coaching for 15 years. His girls won seven straight state championships, his boys won several but not in a row, and he still says his best players are transplants that some in from Mexico, Dominican Republic, Europe and elsewhere.
         The other problem is that few people want to sit for several hours to watch a 0-0 tie, or a hardfought 1-0 win.  In the US we are spoiled by the high scoring of sports like basketball and football, and that colors our enjoyment of low scoring sports (look how many people hate a 1-0 baseball game, that could be a thing of of beauty if a pitcher has thrown an incredible game).  Hockey almost lost everything  a few years back, and they've had to change rules that were the core of the sport for decades to eliminate the tie. Plus scoring is also up in hockey, and they did all this to try and get the fan's interest back.  Americans HATE ties; you either are a winner or loser in our eyes!!! I truly think that was one of the number one reasons for Hockey's rules changes. Also Americans aver very, very egotistical; we are not the best in the world in soccer like we are in football, basketball and baseball, so we get pissed when a bunch of foreigners kick the crap out of us!  
    (BTW, despite Olympics loses, the Americans are far superior in Basketball....the artificial formats where superstars are plucked from various teams and basically have a month to practice together is not equal to a Brazilian, European or Chinese team that play together every night for years.  Plus our greatest stars like Kobe, Lebron, etc no longer take the time out to play in the Olympics. Take, say, the Kobe-led LA Lakers or Lebron-led Cleveland Cavaliers and put them on the court against a foreign team, they would probably win every game by 20+ pts)
  So I predict a slight bump when Beckham comes to LA; after everyone's curiousity is satisfied, things go back to normal.  

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:The level of coaching was so poor he would outcoach teams for wins, because their soccer coaches were failed football or wrestling coaches...!  

I think you got to the heart of it right there, Mike.  On top of it, it's damned hard to teach your own kid any skills or strategies for a sport you never played yourself.

sleepyCO wrote:
Mark, I must be getting old---Bosworth played for Seattle, not Denver   ; I don't remember Denver even signing Bosworth as what would now be a free agent, much less drafting him.

Bosworth pulled a huge trick on Denver fans during his rookie season with Seattle.

Bosworth deliberately made some negative comments in order to hype up the rivalry between the Seahawks and the Broncos.  For one, he said that John Elway (who does have a bit of horse face) reminded him of Mr. Ed.
(A famous television horse.)

Well...with all of the hype about Bosworth and his comments, Denver fans were ready to hate him.  And, turns out that there was a compnay selling T-shirts that helped them hate Bosworth.....

Many many thousands of Broncos fans showed up at the Seattle/Denver game wearing orange and blue T-shirts that had slogans like, "Boz Busters" and the word "Boz" in a crossed-out circle.  The grandstands at Mile High Stadium were almost completely orange with those T-shirts.

I understand that the sales of each type of T-shirt ran into the hundreds of thousands in the weeks before the game.  It certainly looked like it on TV....

BUT...turns out it was Bosworth's OWN COMPANY that printed and sold the shirts.  Bosworth made about $10 per Boz Busters T-shirt.

So, the joke was on the Denver fans, who paid Bosworth well over a million dollars to hate him while he laughed his ass off.

The city of Seattle laughed for weeks when Bosworth revealed his plan in a television interview after the game.

Mark

Ah, Womens football. Don't like the game much, but when they swap shirts at the end....
(another one for the old jokes graveyard)

When I say organized sports I mean team sports.

However, there is a general fall-off in participation in all levels of high school sports.  Kids have to work...or they have to take care of their family responsibilities...or they don't have the money to sign up...or a ride home...or a parent who is guiding them to stick with a sport when it turns out to be demanding in some way...or they just don't have anyone encouraging them to sign up.

Soccer may be an exception because it is so predominantly a sport of upper class, white families who's moms often perceive it as more "safe" than other sports.  The students from those families generally have more emotional and financial support than kids from other backgrounds.

I expect team sports in America to be at about the same levels they are now ten years from now...but the erosion is slow and steady.

For an example...consider all of the marketing of "street basketball" in recent years.  Kids who used to turn out for the high school team do not have the time/money/grades/family support...so they play informally on the school's outdoor hoops...so commercials meant to sell to their age group often strike the pretense that "street" ball is somehow where the real action is.

Name an NBA player/thug who made the league from "street" basketball.

This year, my son's football games were against numerous Seattle and Tacoma area varsity teams that fielded only 30 or so players.  The number used to be 60+ for even smaller 4A schools.  

I'm sure the numbers differ by region.

Mark  

MShipley88 wrote:When I say organized sports I mean team sports.

Soccer may be an exception because it is so predominantly a sport of upper class, white families who's moms often perceive it as more "safe" than other sports.  The students from those families generally have more emotional and financial support than kids from other backgrounds.

Mark  

Sure is different over here in Ireland... Soccer is almost exclusively a working class sport. A guy from my grammar school who played for Manchester United and still plays for Northern Ireland was not  allowed time off to play soccer for his local club while he was at school because the only accepted winter sports were Rugby Union or Field Hockey.

Soccer is THE ubiquitous sport. To hear it described as predominantly the sport of the offspring of the upper class in the US is bizarre (and yet I do not doubt the truth of it for a minute).

The difference in class between sports in the UK is quite marked: captaincy of the england cricket team almost demands a Cambridge degree (Flintoff exluded, and Strauss was at Durham), the ex-international and new director of rugby union, Rob Andrew got a first class honours degree at Cambridge. The present coach of Ulster (another old boy of my school) and ex irish international has a law degree from Queens University Belfast.
In contrast a soccer player is derided if he has more than one O level (exam taken at 16).

Of course, soccer players seem to earn several times more than cricketers  or rugby players......

You may have heard the term "soccer mom" in the American media.

It denotes a wealthy white woman who drives her kids to soccer practice in the family mini-van (with anti-lock brakes).  

The cliche' soccer mom is light on intellect and slightly left-leaning in her politics...because the local Democrat is so handsome...and because she heard somewhere that she's supposed to have certain opinions.  ("I mean, everyone knows....")

Of course, as a teacher in one of our state's poorer districts, my definition of "wealthy" includes a number of people who would consider themselves middle class.

The American political left has coined a similar term to describe the blue collar males who typically vote Republican.....

A "NASCAR Dad" is blue collar, lives in the Midwest or South, drives a pickup truck, works hard for a living and is usually right-leaning in his politics.  Whether he's smart or dumb makes no difference because he ain't got time fer pacifists, hippies er whining lefties.  

If the NASCAR Dads were in charge right now, Iraq would either be empty of Americans...or empty of all life.  They know how to deal with people who make problems.

NASCAR Dads like football, possibly baseball...and NASCAR.  They consider soccer to be European...where it ought to stay.

Mark  

sleepyCO wrote:There probably is no equivalent to Title IX in most of the world; be warned if you don't have it---a LOT of men's swimming, track, wrestling, golf, baseball, gymnastics, etc. teams have been dropped, in part or large part because of the insanity that Title IX rulings and policies have  forced on colleges and even high schools.  With a projection of far more women than men in colleges (by percentage), the rulings of Title IX will force more cuts in college men's teams, and yes even high school boys' teams, in almost every sport.  When cheerleading is now considered a "sport" in some colleges and state high schools . . . .

On another subject, I think that one player who came from street ball is Rafer Alston, now with Houston (formerly with Toronto and Miami), aka "Skip to My Lou" from the AND-1 tours; seems also that a fair number of current players at some point did or still do play street ball in the summer leagues like the Rucker league in New York.
Also, remember once that dribbling between your legs, passing behind your back, "no-look" passes, and even the alley-oop dunk were probably considered "street ball" in the days of guys like Bob Cousy, Pete Maravich and even later Magic Johnson among other NBA legends.

For those who don't know, Title IX is the ruling that gives exactly as much public school money to women's "sports" as men sports...despite the fact that 95% of women's sports don't contribute financially to a institution and thus dont' pay back the investment (contrasting a college football team's earnings with any other women's sport is ludicrous, as say the UT football team earns as much as every single women's sport in every single college in Texas added together).  The result has some interesting dynamics....a lot of the marginal women's sports (women's soccer, volleyball, hockey, softball) have been getting more money and thus more popularity; however, marginal men's sports (wrestling, weightlifting, golf, track) are being dropped altogether to make up the difference, and a lot of those interested in these sports are having to move to private schools or universities.  For example, a once "working class" sport like wrestling is becoming more and more stratified as most high schools and colleges can no longer afford to carry it, so only private colleges or very wealthy high school districts carry it any longer.  Also, as a result, men's sports that were once attainable by an "average" person such as gymnastics, tennis and golf, have moved entirely into the upper class and are completely unaffordable to any youngsters who might be interested.
  Interestingly, I think this has had a huge effect on the popularity of Nascar in the american public....Nascar being perceived as the ultimate "blue collar" sporting event.  Look at the waning popularity of such "white collar" sports as tennis (which has pretty much completely dropped off the map) and golf (if not for Tiger, this sport might be dead....our two local golf championships, the Nelson and the Colonial, have horrible attendance and ratings any year Tiger doesn't show up).
   Title IX shows the danger of becoming too dependent on the government teet for money and support...if you want their money, you are going to have to play by their rules.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote: (contrasting a college football team's earnings with any other women's sport is ludicrous, as say
the UT football team earns as much as every single women's sport in every single college in Texas added together). Mike B.

I suspect your estimate here is actually quite conservative.  When one figures in the alumni support and donations that football brings in...with the increased prestige that the national championship brought UT...it could be two to three times the revenue...maybe four...five?