Coming from a Canadian perspective, I think that NFL football has become the de facto American sport, and hockey has become the de facto Canadian sport…

…because the average family in these two countries can afford to have their kids play these two sports that require such expensive equipment and playing field.

Expensive equipment and playing field = artificial sport settings where players can knock the hell out of each other and rarely break any bones.

Knocking the hell out of each other = entertainment for the average North American.

For the record, I like and have played nearly all team sports except volleyball. I hate volleyball.

Of course, I know there’s cultural and political and historical reasons as well, but my post would get way too long, so I’ll keep it to my simple economic argument.

I still question whether the world’s game is going to catch on here. I was once one of those millions that played the game of soccer, but I did so under protest like many other of the kids on my team. We wanted to play football, but our parents felt it was too expensive and too dangerous.

Now, I would not have an issue if the game of soccer actually caught here, but it is still a sport that is “gaining steam” even though a large part of the population has immigrated here from south of the border where soccer is a religion and the sport has had several youth movements. The sport should be bigger here by now, but it is not.

Could part of the problem be this very conflict? The most popular sport here right now is football, so by fighting with that population is the sport of soccer hindering its ascension in the saturated sports world in the U.S.? Do American soccer fans even then want the sport to catch on? Some are open to all sports but some more seem to really love the fact that the sport is not part of the mainstream.

Of course, another problem could be that we have so many sports options here that simply fitting the game into our sports schedule could be an issue. It does not help that the biggest games in the sport of soccer are played once every four years. So, there is a major push in that World Cup year and then the sport slowly dissipates from the collective sports consciousness amidst a sea of Super Bowls, World Series, NBA Finals, March Madness, what ever NASCAR’s big thing is, etc.

Now I will most likely watch some of this summer’s Cup simply because unbridled excitement is infectious (in that way I can get into almost any sport in the moment), but I will immediately put the sport to the side as I live life, work hard, and look forward to the next big thing in sports as a means of escapism.

For me watching american football is like watching two chess players that kick each other’s ass at every other move. I’ll never really understand chess, or american football.

When I see some movie that has characters playing american football for fun, it’s always shockingly bad, like they’re all acting, faking the play, like in that other american absurdity: “professional” wrestling.

Don’t get me started on that one …

I think this may be the reason for any tension between the sports. American Football is American. There is no other country in the world that enjoys this sport as much as America, not even close. So when people criticise American Football, its like they are criticising America.

I believe that if the sport was as global as football, then it will lose its american-ness, and there will be less tension.

Packers >>>>> Bears

haha

alessio proves my point ;)

Baseball. I rest my case. That is a bad sport.

I’m both a soccer and American football fan, though soccer > football by a long ways. Both sports could learn from each other though, like, how to make 60 minutes be 60 minutes, not 4 1/2 hours with advertisements every other second. And soccer could wake up and allow video replay…though not in the manner the NFL does it.

Geaux Saints!!