Many American sports fans think the World Cup is too boring. But the drama and athletic skill are unparalleled -- and there aren't so many stupid commercials, either.
During this time of intense sport-on-sport action -- alongside the World Cup, both the NBA and NHL have just finished their respective finals -- there's bound to be debate about soccer in America. Dave Eggers likes it. Marc Fisher hates it (kind of). As someone who has spent his life an avid fan of American sports -- I grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and you can guess what they do to you there if you question the value of football -- it has always seemed ludicrous to me to hear people's diatribes against soccer as a lesser sport, due to either too much foot-use, too much fake-screaming, or too much not-American.
From the soccer dilettante's point of view, the World Cup is incredible. The level of skill on display is so high it's confusing. Watching Brazil's Ronaldinho spin, spin, and cut while keeping control of the ball and avoiding Croatian attackers made me want to contract bronchitis and miss the next three weeks of work. A few days ago, England's John Terry stopped a potential goal against his team using a defensive bicycle kick after his goalie became otherwise occupied -- the man twisted and floated to save his team, and he most certainly sensed the ball instead of seeing it. It is hard to do these things, and it's therefore exciting to watch them.
This very general concept is the foundation for sports-watching, and requires little defense. But above and beyond the skill and the fun of the game, after a full week of play I've decided there's a larger reason that, forced to choose, I'm throwing in with soccer (at least until NFL training camp arrives, when all of my principled positions will dissolve as I suckle at the teat of daily injury reports and depth-chart changes): no stoppages.
I've long suspected that my love of sports is generated, ultimately, by the same psychological engine that drives my love of stories, and storytelling: movies, novels, anecdotes, whatever. There's a beginning, middle, and end. There is the countdown, the friction, and even Raymond Carver's much-lauded sense of "menace," especially if Ron Artest is involved. There's the unity of time and place, and there are the players, the characters with their weird individual backgrounds and their own personal approaches to the game. Donald Driver used to live in a U-Haul truck; Shawn Marion dunks savagely and also happens to have a jump shot that looks like a preschool girl's; Mike Commodore has a giant red afro clumped down underneath that helmet; Roger Clemens puts Icy Hot on his groin to motivate himself. Narrative magic.
There are also aberrations in probability so unthinkable they are accurately termed miracles, but could very easily slide beneath the rubric of quality dramatic tension as well, since they all make good sense after the fact. It was simply not possible for the USA to upset the USSR at the 1980 Winter Olympics, and Al Michaels helped us to understand the meaning. It was also not possible for Adam Vinatieri to make a 45-yard field goal against the Raiders in a white-out, and still, there it was. Even little Sarah Hughes nailing her triple lutz at the 2002 Olympics was difficult to swallow from a statistical point of view, but it also came true. And what more do we ask out of our fiction than it be capable of surprising us? Catching us off guard? Helping us to believe something that, if delivered in one or two sentences, is simply unbelievable? Would you really believe me if I told you that one of the most violent and vicious novels I've ever read, Blood Meridian, is also kind of uplifting? Or that To the Lighthouse, in which almost nothing happens, is exciting? Surprise, surprise.
In this context game-as-story, then, FIFA soccer is a breath of fresh air, particularly compared to the NFL and the NBA. Why? Because networks can't take commercial breaks in soccer, and therefore can't ruin everything.
Anyone who has watched sports over the last 10 or 15 years knows exactly what I'm talking about. Commercial time, as well as the total number of commercial breaks, are both completely out of control in American sports, particularly late in games, when timeouts are frequent and audience enthusiasm is high. The simple existence of such a thing as a timeout makes this possible, whereas in soccer, except for injuries and naked people running around on the field, action is pretty much continuous.
As the bidding wars for the TV rights to major sports in the U.S. have exploded in recent decades, the need for more commercials has subsequently increased as well. While the popularity of the NFL is at an all-time high, internationally as well as nationally, networks are still having trouble making enough money to justify the multi-billion dollar contracts they sign to acquire the rights to particular packages of games. ABC, which played a major role in bringing football to mainstream America through Monday Night Football, has recently had to step aside, citing unsustainable contract prices for the Monday game and declining ad payoffs.
One nefarious result of this trend is my new fear of tight games in the NBA, as well as a fear of touchdowns in the NFL -- things that should otherwise bring joy and enthusiasm. During close basketball games, teams are often forced to intentionally foul other players to stop the clock, especially in the closing 30 seconds. This can result in the "last" 15 seconds of a basketball game lasting closer to 15 minutes -- feel free to ask any sports-hating spouse about this annoying paradox, especially when it's time to go somewhere. From the story-lover's point of view, it wouldn't be so bad to stop so often if I were not also forced to leave the world of the game after every single timeout as well, and to consider the merits of Burt Reynolds' newest Man Law as I bite my fingernails and daydream about being Dwyane Wade.
If we were allowed to watch the huddles and watch the replays and consider, for the one-thousandth time, the implications of a loss right along with the commentators, I could deal. It would be akin to those moments in reading, when you lean the book on your chest to think over a sentence or fret, privately, as a shocking moment rolls over you. But the economics of American sports demand otherwise, and therefore we are forced to bear witness as television producers high-five each other after forcing a 30-second commercial into 37 seconds of stopped play. One gets the sense that they have an unlimited supply, or at least several tetrabytes, of cruddy ads to cram down our throats if only given the opportunity -- if only the game stops enough times to let them do it. The players don't care; they're tired and want to rest. The result is the same as the result of commercial breaks during Law & Order: good story, slightly broken.
Soccer has loose morals. At least it seems that way, watching players run around and dribble the ball -- while they themselves are out of bounds, or trying to figure out how, exactly, the referees are calculating the extra few minutes slapped onto the end of a soccer game to make up for any interruptions or lost time. But despite the casual and sometimes even subjective enforcement of rules, they don't stop. They don't ever stop. They keep running, all the time. Athletically, this is mind-boggling, but the few times I've turned on games with plans to only watch a couple minutes, I've ended up watching to the end. It's impossible to walk away because goals are so precious and there are no dead windows of time. No Applebee's. No rotating wall to hide a fridge. No WaMu checking account. No Fast and the Furious previews. In other words, as John Gardner liked to say, I'm caught up in the dream of the story, and I don't have to wake up for anything.
