THE YOUNG FOOTBALL OF USA

Soccer in other countries is the closest thing I can compare to southern college football. The passion. The singular nature of the sport. Living in the south for so many years, I can tell you that people care about the other professional sports, but there is only one allegiance that matters, and that's to your college football team. It's not about the names, it's not about the particular plays of the game. It's about the rivalries. In a rivalry game, you don't care if it's the ugliest win ever...you just want to win. Success is measured by how you do in those games. In both sports, the people in the stands are part of the team. After every touchdown in a college football game the band plays and the entire stands sing in unison. In soccer, the crowd sings in unison at every game. After every game, the players interact with the fans. In soccer, they make their entrance with a child, it's symbolic of the next generation of players that will come after them. They are all one team. The players are just extensions of the people, doing what they can't with their God-given natural ability and hard work. Soccer and American college football would have thousands of people if their teams never won a game. South Carolina a few years ago sold out every game, 80,000 people, to see their team lose every game. The sport is part of it, but the bond you have with other fans is why you love it with these two sports.

Soccer isn't made for TV. It's another reason I think it will never catch on in our country. It's a pure 90 minutes of non-stop poetry. It's not built to have commercials put in to appease advertisers. A great soccer player is great even if his team's not. He is one that people admire simply for his brilliance. It's like watching someone's mind work except you are seeing them do it with their feet. An American sports player is only hailed as great if he is a champion. In American football, Dan Marino was an unbelievable quarterback, but wasn't considered the best because the team around him was sub-par. He could throw 5 touchdowns a game, but it didn't matter if his defense gave up 6. He had no control over it. If he had a great defense and would have won a few superbowls, he'd probably be considered the best ever. He held all the records at the time he retired. He did everything he could possibly do at his position to help win the game, but at the end, he's just considered, "one of the top quarterbacks." He held every record. That meant that he played the position better than any other player. No one in soccer would ever say that the best goaltender who allowed the least amount of goals and made the best stops wasn't the best simply because his team couldn't score.