World Cup Mania

I'm curious.

Did people flip out over the 2011 women's World Cup?

Or 2007?

Or 2003?

I don't remember them doing so. I remember people flipping out in 1999.

But I don't remember "watch parties" and the like four years ago, even though the United States reached the final that time, too, and damned near won the thing.

Is soccer on the move in America?

 

Eh, 13.5M watched in 2011, 17M watched yesterday, which is probably attritutable to the game being on network and at a better time. The 2011 game started early in the day and this one was prime time in most of the country. As for the parties and all that, it was a holiday weekend this time too.

There has probably been some natural growth, but a lot of it sounds situational. I don't think your obsession with the hipsters' love of futbol is going to find a lot of meaning either way from those stats.

 

All (OK, not all) of my Facebook friends changed their profile pictures from the rainbow to the WWC logo.

 

I'm surprised the rating was that high yesterday, as I think a lot of milennials probably got together to watch it at their neighborhood corner high-end bourbon bar.

 

Yes, it is moving up from Mexico with the rapists, seamstresses and landscappers. Must. Build. Wall.

 

I will say this: Were I a young athlete inclined to commit domestic violence, I would probably take a long look at the futbol. For some reason, the people who tend to drink special coffee and eat special cheese also tend to support the futbol, and with that comes ignoring the off-the-field foibles of, say, a hypothetical key team member being a domestic abuser.

 

It is nice to have a soccer troll in Boom's stead.

 

I'm just saying there were probably a lot of sparsely attended poetry slams last night.

 

I wrote this on the World Cup thread a while back, but it seemed like last year's men's Cup generated a lot more buzz to me than the women's tournament. A lot more.

Maybe that's because the men's field is larger and more competitive, fewer 8-0 blowouts and the like. Which unless you're a true soccer zealot, how would you know that going into the tournament anyway?

The men's tournament seemed like a month long party where every day people were paying attention and watching closely.

This year's women's version seemed more like a blip on the sporting radar, until, really the final and only because the US was in it. Even the semis didn't feel like the topic of conversation, despite having very recognizable countries involved (my niece called it the WW II World Cup).

Maybe I'm wrong here, but that's sure how it felt from my vantage point.

 

So you're saying a men's sport is more popular than a women's sport?

That sounds kind of crazy. I don't know. We'll have to evaluate that going forward.

 

I saw a lot of first names being used to plead with U.S. players on Facebook yesterday while I watched the rain delay at Daytona.

 

How many people would have watched if the U.S. wasn't in the final, especially at parties? That 17 mil number would have been way down.

As a country, we love when we can rally around our teams in big events.

Soccer in the States is what it is -- a sport with a small but loyal following that everyone else falls in love with in World Cup years. Just like Olympic sports.