Need More TV Sports? Try Soccer.

For too long soccer has taken a back seat in the hearts and minds of Americans. Baseball, basketball, football and hockey all have their seasons and passionate followers.  Even golf, NASCAR and bull riding get their share of time on national television. Soccer is that thing our kids play on weekends or that thing we pay attention to for a few weeks every time a World Cup rolls around. But, if you break it down, soccer might make a worthy addition to your weekend sports routine.

I’ll Be Brief. And So Will Soccer

If you’re sitting down to watch a football game, you know you’ll be there from noon until 3.  Or 3:30. Basketball? set aside over 2 hours; unless there are a lot of fouls, then set aside more. Baseball? hope your entire afternoon is free. Soccer? One 45 minute half, a 15 minute break, then another 45 minutes. You’re over and done in less than 2 hours.

But It Can Consume All Of Your Time

All sports have their season.  Football has the Fall, basketball, Winter. And, of course, let’s not forget the Boys of Summer. If you’re looking for sheer length of season, however, soccer has them all beat. Take one English team, Manchester United, for example. They played in the English League season-opening exhibition match, the Community Shield, on August 8, 2010. They will also play in the final of the Champions League, a tournament that pits the best from the various European leagues against each other, on May 28, 2011. That’s nearly ten uninterrupted months of soccer! And, if this were a World Cup year, we’d get another month of soccer in June and July. You can have your off season trade rumors and speculation, I’ll take more actual time watching the matches, thank you.

A Day In The Life

It’s a typical Sunday in early November, you’re up with the kids at 7, maybe go to church, or brunch, or just spend the morning reading the paper. You know the Bears are on at noon, maybe you’ll watch the Packers at 3:30, and, ooh, the Sunday night matchup is a rematch of the AFC title game. That’s a pretty good day, watching 3 football games.

Now, if you’re a soccer fan with the right channels, you can easily watch twice as many games that day. You could start with a match from England, usually starting around 6:30 a.m. The end of that match will typically overlap with the beginning of a match from Italy that starts at 8. Afternoon matches in England usually line up with a 10am start here, and then it’s off to Spain. For some reason, they play late in Spain, so that gives you a 1 p.m. match followed by a 3. Remember, only two hours per match! And you can wrap up your football (that’s what everyone else calls it) feast back on this side of the globe, with a match from either Mexico or the MLS. That’s Major League Soccer, the American league.

So, the next time you’re flipping around the channels waiting for your game of choice to start, swing past ESPN2, Fox Soccer Channel or GolTV. Watch the speed and accuracy of the passes, the way a ball kicked from half a field away will seem to stop dead on a players foot; pay attention to the movement of the players, those with the ball and without, as they try to find space away from their opponents. It’s the ‘almosts’ and the ‘nearlys’ -when you see what the players were trying to do but couldn’t quite get there- that make it that more exhilarating when a goal is eventually scored.

And if my words weren’t enough to convince you to give soccer a chance, than maybe a quick video of the best player in the world scoring against his fiercest rivals might do the trick.