After all of the hullabaloo, who here still thinks soccer/futbol is an absolute bore?

I think that baseball game's score was at least 4 to 3 which in theory would be a game record score if it was soccer. At least baseball will never have the excitement of the typical high scoring game of 0 to 0.

Is that 4 to 3 fans left awake at the end?

I bet that would be a record.

In all seriousness, it's probably a cultural thing.

Your sports seem to be all based around television and advertising slots, as far as I can see. The two main reasons that Football will never make it in the US is that..
1. The TV Channels would never tolerate 45 minutes of uninterrupted sport. A whole 45 minutes without an ad break,

and..
2 The American audiences have been raised on short bursts of sport followed by trumpet majors, dancing girls and peanut vendors for a few minutes, before another short burst of sport.
It is therefore my contention that you no longer have the attention span.


Put one of your padded giants from any NFL team onto a rugby pitch, take away his corset, padding, helmet and knickerbockers, and he'd be gasping a submission after the first continuous 40 minutes of play.
They're fit to a certain extent, can hit hard but not probably any harder thsn a rugby player, and they can run around and block people for a period of ten seconds.....but that's about it.
The excitement of an NFL game goes into schoolgirl squealy overdrive when a team gains a whole 20 yards.
In football, the ball can go to one end and back in a matter of seconds, and this can be kept up for the majority of the game in quite a few instances.

I know it's very hard to keep up with, after watching NFL, but if you gear your brain up to speed you could then see what the rest of the world gets so worked up about.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to go to a major baseball or NFL game, but I would be going there for the spectacle and novelty, rather than the quality and pace of the competition on the pitch.

Oddly enough, In US some of us do have that concentration; however, major and sports networks have corrupted and/or co-opted the broadcast process.
Another is many of us watch with the ability to stop and start in real-time or nearrl-time due to advances in technology.

You guys have got a real perhaps-US marketable sport in Rugby that approaches and perhaps surpasses American Gridiron football. that's some kind of action.

Or Test Cricket!

That's not test cricket, Tico.

They're wearing pyjamas!

Shudder.

I still agree with myself here: http://able2know.org/topic/158529-1#post-4282349
Where's FB or Tico or George or ? to whip up a fantasy game when we need one.

I'm too ignernt about it all to start one up.


Oh, I'll add, that Tobias Jones book on Italy (see my sig line) has a smackaroo chapter about the beautiful game and a lot about the bad stuff that is part of it there.

Rags and I once talked about starting one from ignorance, but we're both otherwise occupied now even if we knew how to start a fantasy game.

Replace cats with <sport you like that someone else doesn't>



I always think a baseball lover who disses cricket is hilarious. And an NFL fan that can sit through 2 hours for at best 15 minutes of movement off his or her nut. Then there's golf. eeeww.

à chacun son

Bloody good comparison, Lordy . Put em up against the All Blacks.!
And don't knock test cricket (not played in colored pyjamas). The current series in Oz is riveting, although Lordy may not agree!

I stand corrected. Put them in proper attire, and you have test cricket?

Huzzah!

I do understand baseball, and enjoy watching a game. I have no clue about cricket, and find it unwatchable.

I love soccer, and I am very much looking forward to the upcoming World Cup. Would very much like an A2K fantasy World Cup.

Grudgingly, I do agree with you, margo. We had our little moment in the sunshine earlier on in the year, but I think our lads have tuned in too much to the one day stuff, and can't play a full test properly, half the time.
Too bloody gung ho with the bat.

People have tried to blame it on the aussie sledging but that doesn't wear with me, as our 'barmy army' must send your fielders mad having to listen to that all day every day, so it works both ways.

We have to stop being like the virgin groom on his honeymoon and going at it hammer and tongs, and learn to do it nice and slow again like it should be, until we eff you properly.

It's all got a little bit handbags really. Not proper cricket behaviour at all.


Keep calm and bring on the cucumber sandwiches.

(Can anyone help translate what the good Lord is saying here?)

I was going to ask the same thing.

It's hardly a defense of soccer to say that baseball is equally boring. That just means that you think soccer and baseball are both boring.

Do they do mild sarcasm in the windy city?

Tico, I was chatting with Margo, a fellow cricket enthusiast.

I would also feel like a cow chewing the cud if I eavesdropped two Americans talking baseball.

Margo understood it perfectly, and even if she didn't, she'd wait until both of us had sobered up and then privately ask what the hell I was going on about.

Yes. Do they do it where you come from?

Yes, but the difference is that we actually understand and recognise it.

You use that word "understand." I do not think it means what you think it means.

Margo is sitting here in Germany, where they don't play cricket, chortling away! The first message on my phone when I landed here was the cricket results.