From the New York Times archives: Soccer has always been unpopular
It’s tough being a soccer fan in the U.S. We’re told that our game is for wimps and that it will never be popular here. I think we have a tendency to believe that this is a recent phenomenon. But, in 1915, the New York Times published an article entitled, “Why Soccer Game Is Not Popular.”
The reason for the piece was to report on the results of an NCAA survey. The NCAA collected data from colleges about the (un)popularity of the game and the reasons stated in the article are some of the very sames criticisms of the game today: it isn’t scientific enough; it is for poor people; there’s too much running. The subhead even refers to the game as “too tame.”
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[...] Why soccer wasn’t popular in the US back in 1915 (ThroughBall) [...]
Golf is too tame.
“Not scientific enough”? What would be higher on that scale? Billiards? Pole vaulting? Curling? I’m not mocking these other activities (too much), but I’m just trying to wrap my head around what makes a game “scientific”.
“It’s not scientific enough” seems like the would-be participant’s equivalent to “it’s not you, it’s me”.
Also, after reading the rest of the article: tame compared to baseball? For real? True, I have never discovered what is uniquely interesting about baseball, but with all of the time between every single pitch, during which players have ample opportunity to spit their chaw juices and adjust their cups, baseball might only be less tame than golf (good call there, Shane) or bowling.
Was baseball different in 1915?
What makes this article interesting to me is that it was a couple of decades before television — the device that made American football the U.S. sports juggernaut that it is today. So, even before the “it doesn’t translate well to TV” excuse, it seems that Americans weren’t ready to adapt their tastes to soccer.
Perhaps there’s nothing more to it all than an impulse to cling to anything distinctively American. I mean, can we really expect soccer to survive in a country where the metric system can’t?
Stupid, complicated metric system. I hate tenths…
“It’s not scientific enough” seems like the would-be participant’s equivalent to “it’s not you, it’s me”.
If you can’t draw up plays and you can’t spend time in between each of those plays dissecting why those plays didn’t work, it isn’t scientific, I guess.
Was baseball different in 1915?
The uniforms were better-looking.
Yes, baseball was different in 1915. Players beat each other up much more often. Which makes it no different from, say, your average Serie A tilt.
I DVRd the Minnesota-Green Bay game last Sunday (unfortunately, I’m a Viking fan). Using the speed search to forward through replays and commercials, I watched the game in 45 minutes. All action? Not hardly.
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