Excellent post I saw elsewhere in response to an american poster re. the supposed unfairness in football and why it will never be fully accepted in the US
Begin
Actually, the football world should rejoice in the non-acceptance by
the general US public.
We have it so good right now here in the US.
I can see every game (the DVR is a truly wonderful thing) unlike when I
first moved here, and it is still relatively unspoiled unlike the
"home" sports. 2 of those sports had their eternally long
"championships" over the last 2 weeks, I barely noticed.
Mass US acceptance of Football would just ruin it for commercial
reasons. Think "Champions plus runners-up league" style commercial
influence and quadruple it.
See, in US sports, the biggest factors are: "How many games can we have
?" and "How many commercials can we fit in ?" The whole set up of all
the major sports in the US have been changed by TV.
Playoffs are expanded to include teams sometimes who have lost as many
games as they have won
Rules are changed to make the games have more breaks ("2-minute
warning", "7th Inning stretch", etc)
TV timeouts making 40 minute games about 3 hours. American Football for
example is a 60 minute game, with 30 minutes of action stretched out to
3 and a half hours. Talk about time-wasting, it's full of it, 45-second
play clocks being taken down to the last second before every play, I've
been to live games, it's mostly a bunch of guys standing around doing
nothing interrupted with some occasional action. unlimited
substitutions, different players on offense vs. defense. The governing
body actually has rules on how high the socks should be and ensuring
the players don't actually celebrate scores. And the
officiating.........makes Soccer referees look infallible, and that's
WITH instant replay available to them and about 5 of them on the field
!
Baseball - What a sham. Biggest story is steroids. Games move so slowly
they need entertainment (people in silly costumes running around the
track once in a while) to make it palatable to the paying consumer.
Again, it's about how many commercials and beers can be sold. If
they're not on strike that is. The baseball fan who decries soccer for
being low scoring will be the first to call a 1-0 game a "classic".
Classic. Officiating is again terrible, every umpire has their own
mythical strike zone. A viewer has no way of knowing if a ball is a
strike or not, the relevant area is ONLY in the umpire's head, and he
changes is at necessary depending on the star power of th eplayer. Yes,
american sports are sure into fair play.............
Basketball - Played by mostly genetic freaks. The only game where a
team who is down is TOLD to deliberately foul. Yes, fair play again.
Unlimited substitutions, timeouts on a whim. Poor officiating. Belly
flops when a big guy hits a little guy (sound familiar ? )
Oh, and let's not even get started on the hypocritical money-making
sham that is the NCAA.............fair play my ass..........
No, things are fine the way they are with Soccer. Let's NOT try and get
mass US acceptance, let's NOT have rule changes to include more TV
stoppages, and a 128-team World cup every 6 months.
