You Herd Me!: I'll Say It If Nobody Else Will (27 page)

There’s long been an argument in journalism: Do we give them what they
want
or what they
need
? The problem with the question is obvious: Who decides? It shouldn’t surprise anyone that those who consider journalism a calling are often—you guessed it—journalists. I can think of several professions, from the Peace Corps to law enforcement to teaching to health care to the military and the clergy, that are more inspiring and selfless.

No doubt journalism plays a vital role in our society. That’s one of the reasons I decided to pursue it. Keeping an eye on powerful corporations, politicians, and government entities is integral to a strong democracy. Nobody ever said it wasn’t, but who ever said we want or need twenty-four inches of news type to dissect a city council meeting or a zoning issue? The inability of newspapers to attract large audiences for paid online content means the information was never as relevant as they might have suspected. Meanwhile,
USA Today
—the ultimate in news pith—is a fixture of the culture.

It should be noted, as many old-media types lament the brevity of modern news dissemination, that NPR—with its depth of thought and witty analysis—is the most listened-to radio network in the country. There are still many long-form, old-school programs thriving on network and cable television. There’s
Frontline
and
The
Charlie Rose Show
and
60 Minutes
. Would that be possible in a country full of nitwits?

We’ve seen an absolute explosion in analysis/opinion pieces. They’ve gone a long way toward replacing straight news reporting. Everyone has an opinion, and it’s the consumer’s job to figure out which ones are reliable and educated and which are not. Choose wisely and you get perspective along with your nuts and bolts. Why is that a bad thing?

When my stockbroker informs me of a trend, I simultaneously seek other opinions. I want a broad range of opinions, whether it’s from a financial analyst or a barista. I’ll figure out which ones are valuable and which aren’t. So why can’t a reporter, in the midst of reporting a breaking story, be able to voice an opinion on it?

The bottom line: you have been empowered. You have become your own gatekeeper, and this is a threatening development to many in the old media.

You may not always be right, but you’re speaking loudly and clearly and with one voice. On the whole, your track record for making the right choice is awfully good.

I trust you, because I’m one of you.

Failure is such an intrinsic part of the business world that it’s almost become a badge of honor. At the very least it’s an understood and accepted rest stop on the bumpy and competitive road to success. Nobody hits it out of the park on the first swing—not even the most mythical figures.

Bill Gates’s first company was not Microsoft. It was Traf-O-Data, which went Belly-O-Up. Henry David Sanders, aka Colonel Sanders, had his secret recipe rejected 1,009 times, which makes you wonder how it ever remained so damned secret.

Failure becomes just another chapter in the legend, a momentary but necessary battle with adversity that can be used as motivation or instruction to avoid pitfalls in the next venture. There are examples everywhere. Facebook is one of America’s most revered companies, but would you believe it owes some of its success to a spectacular failure? Before it became a favorite target of late-night comedians, Myspace.com was a similar social-networking site. Facebook became a staple of society—and Myspace was relegated to the tech dustbin—because it made one simple yet important change to the formula by permitting only designated “friends” to have access to your information. This eliminated Myspace.com’s primary weakness and removed the “creeper” factor. Sometimes a revolution is only a slight tweak removed from failure.

This brief history lesson is intended for anybody who might doubt the future of soccer in America. Despite the sport’s previous missteps, you will be proven wrong. Really, really wrong—as wrong as those 1,009 doubters who rejected the Colonel.

Soccer is here to stay. Count on it.

How can I be so sure? How can I predict the sustainability
of a sport that so many football-loving, Bud-drinking folks in the heartland consider boring, stupid, and anti-American?

You’ve heard it before. Soccer’s cult leaders have predicted a soccer revolution in this country several times. It was going to happen in the ’70s, when youth leagues sprouted and kids by the thousands started chasing the ball around on Saturday mornings.

When I was a kid we were force-fed the idea that Kyle Rote Jr. was America’s great soccer hope. This was the best we had to offer? Damn, talk about making it tough to love soccer. No wonder there was such a reflexive backlash against the game.

Rote was nobody’s idea of a transcendent figure. He was wooden in all phases of the game—on the pitch and in his personality. He looked like a football player who took up soccer late in life, and he seemed as natural with a ball on his foot as Paris Hilton at a homeless shelter.

Rote didn’t make the soccer evangelists lose their religion, though. Every decade brought a new proclamation. It was either the World Cup or Freddy Adu or someone or something else, but The Great Soccer Revolution was always around the corner.

You could be forgiven if, by the fourth or fifth time, you stopped listening.

This time is different, and here’s why:

For a sport to occupy a spot in our national psyche, it has to develop a deep connection with its fan base. This can’t be done overnight. It can’t be done on the backs of one or two great players. It can’t be done solely on the power of media attention or the words of the bug-eyed zealots.

It has to strike somewhere beneath the surface for it to connect with people, to get them to invite it in and let it stay awhile. It has to be visceral, and right now we are entering an era where soccer has developed a visceral connection with the American sports fan.

There are four main reasons soccer is carving out a permanent piece of the American sports pie:

These four visceral connections with the sport ensure that it’s going to increase in popularity. It’s not going to be a capital
-R
Revolution. It’s never going to overtake any of the major sports. And it hasn’t exploded on the scene the way the zealots and cult leaders told you it would. Instead, it gradually but persistently wedged itself into the national sports psyche through a series of cultural and sociological shifts.

In the ’80, ’90s, and 2000s, the experience was limited to playing the sport. Once the game was over, the experience was over.

You’d come home and resume normal programming.

The old soccer experience used to be like going on a date and not talking until the next date.
See you in three weeks
. There was no texting/Twitter/Facebook. Soccer in the ’80s was like communications in the ’40s: limited and sporadic. You might love it, but it’s hard to fall in love with anything if you don’t have a deep and consistent connection.

Now soccer is a much bigger part of a deeper and more consistent conversation. How do cultural barriers get knocked down? From the ground up. How does McDonald’s make customers for life? Get them hooked on Happy Meals at a young age.

The TV/video game/merchandising is soccer’s texting/Twitter/Facebook. It’s a revolution in a minor key.

Soccer has forged a gateway into the lives of teenage boys. Young people—and especially American young people—are the most voracious consumers of technology. They’ve grown up with it, and it has created a certain amount of impatience.
I want it, and I want it now
.

They’re the caffeinated generation.

What does soccer provide them? Continuous play, forty-five-minute halves, over in two hours. Baseball is a far bigger commitment: three, three-and-a-half hours.

Soccer’s resonance grows with every connection.

I’m not the only one seeing this. When every network is
simultaneously competing for a property, it’s a pretty good indication that it’s offering something of value. The people making those decisions aren’t guessing—they have the demographics and projections on their side, and they’re seeing these growing connections. They get it.

Soccer has limitations, no question about it. It lacks that jingoistic quality that we as American sports fans love. We didn’t invent it, so it’s not woven into our DNA. Soccer isn’t
ours
the way football, baseball, and basketball are
ours
. It doesn’t have the high school and college connection that make football and basketball feel so uniquely
ours
, or the history of baseball.

Sports fans are like everyone else: protective and provincial and a little bit scared of something that feels like it comes from a different culture. Forty percent of Americans never move more than twenty miles from where they were born. Soccer takes a more open, exploratory mind than most of those people possess.

Remember: I’m not predicting soccer will overtake the NFL. We’ll never gamble on Arsenal or the L.A. Galaxy the way we gamble on the Steelers and Cowboys.

But it’s here, it’s real, and it’s not going anywhere.

To me, it’s kind of like margaritas: an occasional, and welcome, change of pace. It’s not an everyday thing, which means I’m not watching the inferior domestic leagues like the MLS, but the English Premier League or the World Cup? Yes, please. And judging by the ratings of ESPN’s World Cup coverage, I’m not alone.

Many of the criticisms of soccer always sounded just a little unfair. They were reflexive rather than well considered. If you didn’t know any better, you might even think the critics were making cultural statements rather than athletic ones.

Take the whole “flopping” thing. The red-blooded American sports fan recoils every time he sees some skinny Spanish guy
brush past a defender and fall to the ground like he’s been tasered by airport security.

Excuse me, but have you watched the NBA in the past decade? That’s the same NBA that had to institute a policy of heavy fines for players who flop. It became such an issue in the NBA that the league deemed it a threat to the integrity of the sport. Tough, nonsoccer guys like Dwyane Wade and Tyson Chandler throw themselves to the floor with impunity if they’re so much as bumped in the late moments of a crucial game. And yet, they’re worshipped as heroes while the soccer players are ridiculed.

And, of course, there’s never enough scoring or action in soccer.
It’s boring
. Somehow soccer is boring but a late-season Padres game—with all the energy of a soybean harvest—is a sacred part of the national pastime? And I hate to break it to every beer-swilling football-and-NASCAR fan, but the average NFL game has somewhere between twelve and sixteen minutes of action, and half of every big NASCAR race seems to roll past on a yellow caution flag. So let’s not pretend every minute of every American-made sport is a testosterone-laced beehive of activity.

Here’s another thing about soccer: it’s got demographics on its side. The “Browning of America” is a huge boon to soccer. The Hispanic population is becoming a larger and larger segment of our population, and soccer is in its cultural bloodstream. Soccer is their NFL.

It kills me when people treat soccer like it’s an infestation. We’re a country of excess. The Kardashians are okay but soccer is un-American? People get territorial. We can’t even call it football like the rest of the world because we have our own football, so that stuff they play with their feet is soccer.

Again, it won’t be the NFL, but it’s not going anywhere, either.

Over the past few decades, Soccer Guy has stepped away from
the pulpit. He no longer needs to evangelize because he’s no longer defensive. He sees the traction his sport has gained and he knows it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. He doesn’t feel the constant, nagging need to defend his sport.