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The Rest of Summer Will Be Quieter, But Much Duller

Three games are left in the World Cup. To my surprise, I find myself thinking I'll miss it.

Mankind's most popular sports event is worthy of its popularity. It has been the mixture of passion, excellence, incompetence, human grandeur, human folly, and all-around human loopiness that makes for superior sporting entertainment. I will miss all of it; the Brit commentators, the bungling officials, the moments of wrenching drama, the vuvuzelas, the whole schmear. The experience of being parts of crowds of regular folks (well, residents of Cambridge anyhow) rooting for the national team in a sport many of them weren't too familiar with is what I'll remember, and miss, most of all.

The World Cup's appeal is simple. 1. Americans are as patriotic/nationalistic as all other people, and enjoy rooting for national sports teams. 2. The dullest US fan knows that the Cup is a certified Big Deal in the rest of the world, and if there's one thing your average American likes, it's a Big Deal, a Big anything, really. 3. People like LIVE sports on TV, and the Cup had none of the tape delays by which NBC seeks to kill the Olympic movement.

My pleasure in the Cup does NOT mean I am now a devout soccer fan, will watch MLS games on TV, let alone in person, or any of those other pipe dreams held by the hard core soccer audience in this country. It does mean I will pay somewhat more attention to soccer in the next four years. Not much more, but more. Maybe I'll watch more Premier Leagues games on Saturday mornings this season. Maybe I'll choose to watch a US qualifying match of a Saturday night in 2013 instead of the WAC football game of the week on ESPN 9.

Multiply me by 50 million or so, and I think one can foresee soccer's US destiny. It will never become a mainstream US big money spectator sport. But it has escaped the fringe, and is moving steadily towards a respectable middle class life within the American sporting system.

Put it this way. US soccer will not suffer the fate of Olympic sports such as track and field and swimming, where we create national heroes for three weeks every four years, then forget about the athletes and their sport for another years. Soccer's in the mix. It is self-sustaining now. If you're as old as I am, and can remember (and my God, have written about) the efforts to jump start soccer as a sport in this country in the 1960s and 1970s, the preceding two sentences are among the most amazing facts of your sports fan life.

posted by Michael Gee @ 9:02 AM