USA! USA! Draw on these Brits!, Durham, N.C., 2010
Without fail every four years, on the eve of the World Cup kick-off, major media outlets will repeatably ask the question, “Will the U.S. care about soccer this time around?” It’s an unfortunate line of questioning with fairly predictable outcomes; no, we prefer baseball because we invented it, or yes, we do care, just look at the huge participation of youth soccer leagues. Will it be big in the way of other major league sports? Probably not, simply because of the over-saturation of other sports in this country. For instance, currently the NBA finals are competing with the World Cup in a big way. A better approach might be to just write about the sport like any other. Avoid over-stating the fact that the rest of the world really, really cares about it more than we do while also respecting the validity of the game by talking about the specifics of a team’s strategy or the players themselves – even if they have pony tails and prefer techno to classic rock. It’s safe to say the World Cup fever was in full bloom for at least 90 minutes at Bull McCabe’s in Durham this past Saturday as the U.S. played England to a 1-1 draw.
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