Much Gamboling With Meager Payoff Soccer’S Boring Third-Rate Sport For Third-Rate Powers.

Fri., June 26, 1998

By D.F. Oliveria daveo@spokesman.com (509) 319-0354

So, the United States lost to Iraq in the World Cup. Big deal. It’s not as though the U.S. nine (or 11, or however many are on a side) was playing a sport that matters.

What’s that you say? It was Iran that beat us? Iran, Iraq, Cameroon - what difference does it make? If the sport was important here, billionaire Ted Turner would form a team that couldn’t be beaten by a third-rate country. “Mother Earth’s Team” sounds more impressive than “America’s Team,” the grandiose title Turner gave his Atlanta Braves. But Turner knows a lemon when he sees one. Thirty-seven billion people worldwide might tune in the current World Cup to take their minds off whichever of the Apocalypse horsemen is riding in their country: war, famine, pestilence, death. Americans have better things to do. Better games to play and follow. Baseball, football and basketball come to mind. Even ultimate Frisbee and men’s ice skating are more entertaining.

Why do you think countries start wars over soccer matches? Why do you think thugs from England travel all the way to Italy to break heads? They’re bored to death, that’s why.

Americans are people of action - not nuance. We demand scoring, handsome stars, thrilling wins, crushing defeats - and an occasional batter charging the mound. Ninety minutes of tedium played by small guys with big legs in day-glo polyester uniforms may thrill Pakistan’s masses but it won’t wean Joe Sixpack from “Monday Night Football.”

Soccer teaches the wrong values. In the May 4 issue of National Review, Stephen Moore explains why it’s a game for bureaucrats, socialists and overbearing mothers: “Soccer is the Marxist concept of the labor theory of value applied to sports - which may explain why socialist nations dominate in the World Cup. The purpose of a capitalist economy is to produce the maximum output for the least amount of exertion. Soccer requires huge volumes of effort but produces no output.” Moore goes on to warn that soccer is draining America of the next generation of talent in games that really matter. Youngsters forced into this hyperactive drudgery by politically correct parents looking for a size- and gender-neutral activity won’t learn to hit a curveball. Or sink a free throw. Or even pick up a 10-pin spare.

The Babe must be turning in his grave.

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