Submitted by Karl Toth, May 11, 2007 21:37

Soccer is the most popular sport in the world only because most of the world is poor, and it doesn't take much to play soccer besides a dirt field and a roundish object of some sort. American sports on the other hand require an enormous investment in equipment and years of training in order to master. No body in the third world follows american football because all of the rules and pads seem foreign to them and few if any could understand the complex formations of offensive lineman and position players. In fact most americans don't appreciate it either, other than when somebody gets tackled or does a flip into the endzone. Americans simply don't have the patience to watch grown men jog back and forth for an hour and accomplish nothing. Soccer is already very popular on the amateur level, as is ping pong. It is a sport that is seen more as a youth activity for physical and social development and this is considered appropriate for women and young boys but not for the professional athlete. There are professional womens sports, just as there are professional soccer teams, but these are not taken seriously by anyone unless they themselves are directly involved in the sport. Most fans who buy tickets to MLS games have sons who play youth soccer. And most fans who buy tickets to the WNBA have daughters who play youth basketball. As far as the Average working american is concerned, if they are going to pay to see a sporting event they want to see something blow up... thus the interest in NASCAR which is about as mindless of a sport as you can imagine. Also americans are very insular and don't really take the time to think about the rest of the world. the majority of americans spend there whole life in one city or state, very few of them even travel to Canada or Mexico and countries like Britan and Australia may as well be distant states whom we have never visited but whom we recognize as somehow being part of ourselves. The rest of the world doesn't exist except in movies and on TV.

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