Helping America Love Soccer

By Jim Bennett
Daily Review Atlas

Let’s face it: Soccer is a flop here. The pastime the rest of the world lives for is about as popular with Americans as Helen Thomas is with the Jewish Anti-Defamation League.

The Yankee yawn of indifference toward soccer mystifies all other nations. The typical European, Asian or Latin American sports enthusiast behaves as if the World Cup consists of one team curing cancer while the other team captures and exhibits a live Sasquatch. Yet if you were to judge the game based on the apathetic response it receives stateside, you’d think it was just some guys kicking a ball around.

What accounts for this domestic disinterest? The prevailing wisdom asserts that our collective psychological marketplace for amusements is finite; since baseball, basketball and football have filled up most of the space available for sports, there is very little room left for soccer. I don’t buy that. The popularity of “Jersey Shore” and “Glee” categorically proves that we, as a people, have no cultural gag-reflex when it comes to what we’re willing to consume as entertainment.

Another theory holds that soccer’s pace makes it too boring for attention-deficient Americans. Nah. One of our fastest growing spectator sports is three hours of watching a clump of cars circling a track.

Recently, though, I heard the least-credible theory of all. Some wit declared that soccer is a non-starter here because violent hooliganism abroad has left us with a bad impression of fútbol.
Well, that’s just crazy-talk! Who loves sports-related riots more than the people of this great republic?

Fans in the USA don’t even need a heartbreaking loss or a bad call to trigger mayhem; a joyous victory for the home team is every bit as likely to release the Kraken. The Lakers’ championship win this month touched off celebratory rioting in L.A. that was as bad as, well, the rioting after the Lakers’ championship win last year.

Celebrating a big win by making the hometown play Tina to their Ike has become tradition among U.S. sports mobs. Tigers votaries gave Motown the arson-and-rioting equivalent of an atomic wedgie after Detroit claimed the Commissioner’s Trophy in ’84. Following the Broncos’ Super Bowl XXXII win, Denver fans made the Mile-High City look like it had just been shot by the Death Star. And six years ago, as Red Sox supporters enjoyed the kind of triumph they hadn’t seen since the great World Series victory of 1918, they rejoiced by subjecting Beantown to the kind of destruction it hadn’t seen since the Great Boston Molasses Tragedy of 1919.

Which is not to say, of course, that a loss can’t stir things up too. Remember those mischievous imps from Michigan State University who, in 1999, registered their displeasure with the Spartans’ Final Four defeat by reducing the entire Lower Peninsula to a smoldering heap of post-apocalyptic rubble? Granted, they didn’t rack up double-digit and triple-digit body counts like the Brits in Belgium back in ’85 or the 2001 African riots, but those loveable MSU scamps did beat up a Taco Bell.

Truthfully, I have no idea why soccer is so unpopular here. I know nothing about sports. For most of my life, there hasn’t been a single game that I enjoyed playing, let alone watching.

Recently, however, something amazing happened: I am now hopelessly and obsessively in love with a sport! I’m referring to that noblest of all diversions, bowling. And if that can happen to me, then coaxing this country into an infatuation with soccer will be a snap.

In fact, it’s literally as easy as the press of a button.

You see, not long ago I reluctantly went to a bowling alley with a friend, and as I was preparing to seethe, cringe and loathe, I noticed a little white button on the scorekeeper’s table.

“What’s that for?” I asked, pointing.

“Oh, this?” my friend said. He pressed it.

Approximately twenty seconds later a woman with a notepad approached him. They had a brief conversation and she left. Ten minutes later she returned, carrying a tray that held Jell-O, curly fries, corn dogs and Pepsi.

I was sold. In that instant, I became a ten-pin zealot forever.

So, if they’re serious about popularizing soccer in the USA, it begins and ends with installing those magical waitress-summoning buttons in every seat at every arena in the country. Do this, and mark my words: Overnight, the American people will be saying to soccer what I now say to bowling:

“You had me at Jell-O.”

Jim Bennett is the pastor of Rozetta Baptist Church in rural Henderson County.

Copyright 2010 Daily Review Atlas. Some rights reserved

“‘Dear Jimmy’ – A New Advice Column” By Jim Bennett

            One of the benefits of writing this column is the mail I receive from readers.  I’ve been surprised, however, by a recent spate of missives from folks seeking my counsel in their personal affairs.  After all, I’m not an advice columnist.
            Or am I?  
            As I see it, there are really just three requirements for an advice column:  (1) Space in a newspaper.  Check!  (2) Questions from people seeking guidance.  Check!  (3) A self-righteous, didactic crackpot to answer those questions.  Check and double check!  Let’s light this candle!
 
            Dear Jimmy,
            I’m a 38-year-old man.  While I was at the SciFi Expo last year, I met the Padmé to my Anakin.  But recently, she made the jump to hyperspace and is hinting hard about marriage.  The thought of moving out of the Jedi Temple (Mom’s basement) gives me tummy bubbles.  The walls of this relationship are closing in like the garbage compactor in a Death Star detention block.  Help!  –Jittery Jedi
 
            Dear Jittery,
            Help you I can, yes.  A sewing room in her basement your mother desires, but in her way your bed with Ewok sheets is.  Always in motion is the future.  Of doing your laundry, tired is she.  Adulthood and marriage, fear them not, and a momma’s boy, be no longer.  Choice of you by girl I will understand never, but die alone you will, with action figures as only companions, if this one chance you miss.
                    
Dear Jimmy,
            Please settle an ongoing dispute my wife and I are having over the upbringing of our only child.   We both love our son “Roger” very much, but we have vastly differing ideas about how he should be raised.  I want him to try out for football and engage in other manly pursuits like mixed martial arts cage matches, ding-dong-ditch, the Sun Dance ritual, and belching the alphabet.  My wife, however, is adamant that Roger must spend all his free time doing nothing but scherenschnitte, collecting Hummel figurines, and perfecting his Trout Almondine recipe for the state fair.  He recently refused to watch “True Grit” with me because the Bravo Network was airing a “Project Runway” marathon.  His classmates have started calling him “Baron Dainty Von Prancengiggle.”  Now, I don’t know what that means, but I’m certain it’s not a compliment.  I’m scared.  Am I too late to raise him into swarthy, high-fiving, NASCAR manhood?  Is there anything I can do?   –Desperate Dad
 
Dear Desperate,
            You’re too late.  There’s nothing you can do.  Sorry.
 
Dear Jimmy,
            After a whirlwind courtship, I recently became engaged to the man of my dreams.  The problem is that my parents despise him.  Whenever I try to emphasize my fiancé’s good qualities, they only point out his flaws.  For example, when I describe him as a courageous man of action, Dad mocks him for his fear of flying.  When I praise him for serving our country as a member of a crack commando unit, my mother condemns him for being sent to prison by a military court.  “But it was for a crime he didn’t commit!” I’ll say, only to have Daddy immediately remind me, for the millionth time, how my future husband and his three friends promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground, how they’re still wanted by the government, how they survive as soldiers of fortune, blah, blah, blah… 
            All the conflict is stressing me out, and my fiancé is growing tired of all this jibba-jabba.  How can I persuade my folks to give this marriage their blessing? –Wanna-Be Mrs. T
 
Dear Wanna-Be,
            Simply arrange to have your parents abducted by a band of ruthless Bolivian drug smugglers (check Craigslist.com) or a bizarre mind-control cult (check Scientology.org) and instruct the kidnappers to hold Mom and Dad hostage in a heavily-guarded desert bunker.  Then have your fiancé and his friends infiltrate the compound by posing as renegade arms dealers with military-grade weaponry for sale.  After the enigmatic, sinister leader of the cult/cartel sees through the ruse, his army of henchmen will chase your Mr. Right and his three confederates to an abandoned mine nearby.  Once barricaded inside, they can use a rusted mining cart, some pipes, and a crate full of discarded dynamite to construct a crude tank.  Blasting their way back into the villains’ lair, they free your parents and bring them home.  Having won your parents’ blessing, you and their now-beloved son-in-law-to-be jump in the van and go get on the bridal registry at Pier 1 Imports.  Your mother prepares a baked custard with a layer of caramelized sugar on the bottom to give to her rescuers as a thank you gift.  This is sure to delight their cigar-chomping leader; he loves it when a flan comes together.
            Next week’s column:  Jim’s Graceland diary!