Open Mic: American Soccer: Why We Will Never Be a Powerhouse.

I guess there's some debate about why Americans never have good soccer teams. 

This is pretty easy to see if your an American.  We all know the money is in the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Even the NHL, which takes a side seat to these three main sports attractions of Americans, gets better ratings sometimes. 

I'm sure that if America really wanted to we could dominate, but it's just not where the money is, and you don't get the results like the three main sports. 

The NFL, which is the greatest revenue in America, is our sport—we created it, it's ours, it's our main thing we can identify with, knowing that no one comes close to challenging us. It's a true American novelty that no one else has a grasp. 

America is a rich nation and smart.  Two things you need in American football.  The game planning of the NFL is the most complex in, I believe, all of sports.  With soccer you hardly score and it doesn't take much strategy. In fact, compared to the NFL, soccer is just throwing out the ball and letting them go. 

As I've heard one time, all our American soccer guys are usually the ones in high school that weren't able to compete in football, basketball or baseball, so they took the route the lesser athletes did and play soccer. 

Basically, it was the guys who couldn't make the cut that had to settle for soccer or something else.  Just look at our average American soccer player—they're like 5'8" and 140. 

Can you imagine if our taller, more athletic athletes from the NFL or basketbal  had grown up with a soccer ball?  We would have guys averaging around 6'1" and 190 who run 4.3s—and that's the average.

Others around 6'4" like Randy Moss would just leap over people with the header. First you couldn't catch him, then you couldn't leap with him, and that's just one guy—there's a lot more where that came from. 

Let's face it, until soccer grabs much more appeal, and money, our best athletes will never lean toward it.  The NFL is now America's pastime and we created it, and nobody else knows about it.  I mean, for the first time we're playing regular season NFL games in Europe, and we've been around how long?

It's a promotion that hasn't happened since the dawn of the merger. 

While we're on soccer, there is one rule that I believe would start to make it more appealing, and I've heard a couple people who try to say it wouldn't work, but I know a great way it could.  Look at this, I'm not even a soccer lover and I can even figure it out. 

It's the offsides stuff.  I say get rid of it.  If you can't figure out how to play D then you deserve to get beat and scored upon.  I mean so many times I see a good play and they call offsides and it's so minuscule that it erases some good action. 

Americans don't like boring action, they want to see the fast break, up-tempo scoring. That's why we love NFL, MLB, and NBA—lots of scoring and different scenarios. 

I get so tired of these traditionalists with soccer. It's like evolve already you apes.