U.S. Will Continue to Shut Out Soccer

I know a few people who suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder or ADD. One way to cope with the affliction is breaking things into increments throughout the day.

Rather than attempting to read half a book, ADD sufferers should instead shoot for 10 pages before moving on to something else.

I bring this up because the United States, as a nation, suffers from ADD, which is exactly why soccer could never supplant the big three of football, baseball, and basketball in popularity.

Americans want to love soccer, we really do. It offers great international competition. Fans around the world are intensely passionate, although some of the strange traditions such as trampling each other to death or lighting fires inside the stadium can only be appreciated by Oakland Raider fans.

It’s the woeful lack of scoring that is not conducive to American culture. Even the popularity of baseball waned prior to the steroid-era. As soon as juiced-up players turned ballparks into pinball machines, the fans came flocking back.

The excruciatingly long lapses of time between goals can make one start to fantasize about yard markers and quarterbacks on the beautiful green field. We use sports as an escape from thinking about unpleasant things, such as bills or work.

Watching a bunch of guys kicking a ball around with nothing really getting accomplished for long periods of time enables our mind to wander back to bills and work.

After decades of watching bone-shattering hits on the football field or rim-ratting dunks on the basketball court, it is unrealistic to expect the average American sports fan to get excited about a slide tackle.

Even in the inexplicable event America's premier young athletes decided to look past the glory, riches, dates with cheerleaders and numerous other accolades, the "big three" sports offer and decided to play soccer, it would merely put us on par with the rest of the world.

Sure, athletes of LaDainian Tomlinson's or LeBron James' caliber would certainly make the U.S. a force in international soccer competition, but just like track and field, where America also dominates, our interest would last as long as the World Cup before returning to the big three.

Another factor working against soccer in the U.S. is the history. Sure, soccer has been around forever, but grandfathers in this country tell their grandchildren stories about guys like Ted Williams or Jim Brown, not Pele.

The time to establish a major sport in this country was the early-to mid-20th century. Unfortunately for the most popular international sport, soccer missed the boat to America.