Soccer and its Popularity in the U.S.
It is well known that soccer or, “football” as it is referred to in many other countries, is not as popular a sport in the U.S. as in the rest of the world. Although many debate on whether it is as big in the U.S. or not but the fact of the matter is that it just simply isn’t the main sport like in other countries. According to Professor Ivan Waddington from the University of Chester in the UK and Dr. Martin Roderick of Durham University on http://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/research-projects/soccermarkets-in-the-u-s/soccer-exceptionalism-in-america/#sthash.iEgvzxlQ.dpuf , in each society there is a limited amount of “space” for sports, and once that designated space is filled by one sport there is little room for other sports. This “space” is already filled by our own American football. American football has taken over even baseball which was dubbed America’s pastime. Although there are many more reasons why soccer isn’t popular in the U.S. the main reason is that the U.S. already has a major sport that takes up most of the attention: American football.
America has a view of itself that it is the sportiest nation in the world as stated in “Soccer in a Football World”, “To many Americans the United States is the greatest sports nation on earth. To many elsewhere it is merely the most insular. (Wangerin 22 (nook))”. America tends to try and make its own brackets for other countries sports, like Hockey, for instance. It has done this with every sport including soccer but unlike the rest has not been widely accepted as a major sport. Football, Baseball, and Basketball make up the big three sports in the U.S. which leaves little room for sports such as hockey, lacrosse, and of course soccer. America tends to “push out” some sports by random chance it seems. And it changes older sports to fit its needs and its rules. Take the English sport of cricket for example. Until the Mid-19th century Cricket was the most popular sport in...