Sunday, June 22, 2014

On Soccer in the United States

Freakonomics recently had a podcast on why Soccer is not more popular in the United States:

http://freakonomics.com/2014/06/12/why-america-doesnt-love-soccer-yet-a-new-freakonomics-radio-podcast/

They did brush on how Title IX has helped women's soccer.  But they missed the implications for Title IX and men's soccer.  Title IX not only killed college wrestling (one of the few college sports that has weight classes and does not automatically favor tall people), but it will block men's soccer at a college level until and unless you can find a different sport to kill for soccer to take its place.

Not that such a thing will not happen.  Sports do get killed and replaced in colleges.  The student government at CSULA ended football and the next student government did not bring it back (so it stayed dead).  They anticipated that soccer would replace football (and it did).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cal_State_Los_Angeles_Golden_Eagles#Football

But displacement is not as likely as it could be, either in college programs or public spaces.

Anyway, I found myself thinking about sports and world culture vs. American culture and related things.