That's mainly because American and Canadian Football are derivatives of rugby.
AHC: Make Soccer the most popular sport in the USA
- Thread starter sirjackalot
- Start date
They are similar but I think the sports are far different than each other. Its also important to note that for most of America's sporting history, the nations love affair was baseball. It only took root recently with the NFL. Its pretty visible that the NFL-AFL merger put the NFL into first, but if soccer took root in the 1880's, it might be able to have a niche in the sporting scene, similar to the NHL in OTL.
Baseball had a strong tradition at the turn of the century. Its popularity exploded with radio, as every play can be described as a series of one dimensional moves easily understood by any fan with a knowledge of the sport. Football sat in the back seat in terms of professional popularity. But American football grew for a different reason. It was a collegiate sport. Its season, September through November, followed by championships at the turn of the year, follows the collegiate schedule. When the NFL came along, it followed that same schedule. Today, colleges play 12 games per season and the pros play 16. Fortysome years ago it was 11 and 14. Football's rise to the top began in the sixties, when television showed us the field in a way that was not done justice by radio play by play.
So, snuff out American football and you create a niche for soccer (and will be called football everywhere). Professionally, it might be on par with NBA and NHL, second only to baseball. Today's professional American soccer teams might play a 34 game schedule from March through September, mostly weekend events during the baseball season. So a multi-sport stadium might host baseball and soccer games on alternating weekends, while baseball takes the Monday through Friday schedule. Kansas City could not ask for more with its dual-stadium Truman Sports Complex. In this ATL, the soccer Kansas City Chiefs (recycle NFL name in ATL) will fill a 78,000-seat stadium.
But there is one more gap. The collegiate schedule. Soccer seasons are too long for a complete season to fit into a schedule that takes summer off. You might create a split season: a spring session, March through May; followed by a "major" session, September through November. It would take different traditions, but could you pack 65,000-seat stadiums in a split season? In a world where OTL football is unknown, maybe. But do two 12-game collegiate schedules get the recognition to feed a lucrative draft for pro teams that play all summer?
So, snuff out American football and you create a niche for soccer (and will be called football everywhere). Professionally, it might be on par with NBA and NHL, second only to baseball. Today's professional American soccer teams might play a 34 game schedule from March through September, mostly weekend events during the baseball season. So a multi-sport stadium might host baseball and soccer games on alternating weekends, while baseball takes the Monday through Friday schedule. Kansas City could not ask for more with its dual-stadium Truman Sports Complex. In this ATL, the soccer Kansas City Chiefs (recycle NFL name in ATL) will fill a 78,000-seat stadium.
But there is one more gap. The collegiate schedule. Soccer seasons are too long for a complete season to fit into a schedule that takes summer off. You might create a split season: a spring session, March through May; followed by a "major" session, September through November. It would take different traditions, but could you pack 65,000-seat stadiums in a split season? In a world where OTL football is unknown, maybe. But do two 12-game collegiate schedules get the recognition to feed a lucrative draft for pro teams that play all summer?
Last edited:
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Yes, I think baseball is a great radio sport, whereas maybe football does out-compete baseball on TV.
And I think it was very damaging to the sport when the Braves announced a move from Boston to Milwaukee in 1953 (and later moved to Atlanta), and the former St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore and became the Orioles for the ‘54 season,
and esp. especially the Dodgers and Giants moving out of New York City to the West Coast in 1958.
All with baseball starting new expansion teams anyway in 1961.
But then again, the Boston Braves were drawing a lot fewer fans than the Red Sox.
https://books.google.com/books?id=U...nepage&q=braves boston milwaukee 1953&f=false
Last edited:
You know why soccer never catches on here? Because you can't get rich at it, and you can't get covered in glory for it.
Some poor kid from rural America or the ghetto can pick up a football or a basketball, and maybe earn a ticket to a college education and a better life, and best case, earn millions playing pro.
Soccer? College scholarships are damned new in the sport at most universities. Pro? Outside a few imported superstars, I make more as a reporter than the average MLS player.
You could be a generational talent for soccer in America, and your average American sports parents will still pressure you to pick up a more popular sport.
Hey, maybe you can't get rich, maybe you can earn glory and fame? Not so much - the US didn't even QUALIFY for the last World Cup. When we do, we usually never make it past the first or second round.
The one thing Americans will not tolerate in their sports is loser.
You want soccer to catch on? Have the US win a couple World Cups early on, contend for a few others, and make a good showing at various other tournaments and the Olympics. Hell, have us play the Soviets a few times in the Cold War, or have us beat the Germans in Berlin 1936. Give us something to thump our chests and cheer about, and you make play in the US more popular and more commercially viable.
Again, America isn't gonna cheer for a bunch of perennial losers and Europe's sloppy second to score 1 goal over 90 mins and collect poverty wages to play the sport.
Some poor kid from rural America or the ghetto can pick up a football or a basketball, and maybe earn a ticket to a college education and a better life, and best case, earn millions playing pro.
Soccer? College scholarships are damned new in the sport at most universities. Pro? Outside a few imported superstars, I make more as a reporter than the average MLS player.
You could be a generational talent for soccer in America, and your average American sports parents will still pressure you to pick up a more popular sport.
Hey, maybe you can't get rich, maybe you can earn glory and fame? Not so much - the US didn't even QUALIFY for the last World Cup. When we do, we usually never make it past the first or second round.
The one thing Americans will not tolerate in their sports is loser.
You want soccer to catch on? Have the US win a couple World Cups early on, contend for a few others, and make a good showing at various other tournaments and the Olympics. Hell, have us play the Soviets a few times in the Cold War, or have us beat the Germans in Berlin 1936. Give us something to thump our chests and cheer about, and you make play in the US more popular and more commercially viable.
Again, America isn't gonna cheer for a bunch of perennial losers and Europe's sloppy second to score 1 goal over 90 mins and collect poverty wages to play the sport.
Last edited:
The trouble was that Philadelphia, Boston and St. Louis really could support only one team. As for New York, the Dodgers left because they could not acquire land for parking and for two NY teams to leave was indeed damaging. Say the moves come earlier, before WW2. Browns to Baltimore. Had the Braves moved to Kansas City, they would never have moved again and there would be a rivalry with the Cardinals. The sport would not have been subject to Senator Symington's political threat in 1968.
MatthewB
Banned
I believe soccer is the most popular sport in the USA. More kids play organized soccer than baseball, basketball and football.
mattep74
Kicked
Why play in the Winter then? Play it duing the summer months like Swden? And yes, it gets Cold in Sweden and Norway and Russia. But there have been champions League games in the Winter
That’s the OTL solution, but most of the world plays from September to May. I guess one answer is to develop more indoor soccer stadiums or soccer-capable stadiums that can retract their roofs. Given that retractable roofs weren’t really a thing until SkyDome in 1989, I think indoor soccer-capable stadiums are the solution, at least as second homes during the winter.
That's because it is a kids' sport in many places. It doesn't require elaborate protective gear. The injury potential is low. It stresses agility rather than size or brute strength. And it is popular all over the world, except here. The challenge of this thread is to make professional soccer popular in the US. A good start is to eliminate OTL American football for its injury potential.
Without OTL football, you change the collegiate and high school schedules. OK, you can stretch soccer into November, then basketball takes over. In a world where American football is unknown, different traditions would have to evolve. The traditional "bowl" games in soccer would be held at the end of November, not between Christmas and New Year's Day.
You have an ATL where American sporting interests have been re-allocated.
Enclosed stadiums of this size were unknown until the Astrodome opened in 1965. So, moving warm-weather sports into the winter would be a very recent tradition. The Dome in St. Louis today needs a team:
The other thing that might do it is butterflying out the Great Depression and the Soccer Wars of the late 20s where it's a pissing match between the ASL, what is now USSF and FIFA. If you ward off those threats, the American Soccer League probably remains and then explodes west like MLB in the 50s and 60s.
The first NFL championship game was an improvised game held at Chicago Stadium, at the time the home of the Chicago Blackhawks. The playing area was too small by about 20 yards, so once a team crossed midfield, it was set back 20 yards.
Obviously until 1965 or so there would be no easy solution to playing in the winter - either it would have to be a summer sport or some improvisations would have to be made. Perhaps a tradition of bundling up and playing in the snow would have to take place. Perhaps cities that also had hockey arenas could modify their arenas to accommodate soccer in a pinch (not regularly but if the field became unplayable.) Also, this May speed up the development of domed stadiums in places like Boston, Chicago and Detroit. Football stadiums, shared with soccer teams, may need some modifications (even heaters and a big tarp over the stadium may work as a primitive solution.) Bigger stadiums may serve as homes for a baseball team, a football and/or rugby team, and a soccer team. The Astrodome would be Home in the summer to the Astros, in the fall to the Oilers and Dynamo, and in the winter the Dynamo would have it all to themselves. After that craze dies out, expect a third stadium in the larger cities, one for soccer.
This may not make soccer the most popular sport in America, but it doesn’t need to be. It just needs to be in the same tier as baseball, basketball, hockey and football/rugby.
I think the challenge is to have universities take up soccer. Which is hard, since suring the era collegiate football started as a thing, IIRC they took up gridiron because it seemed like the rugby-based sort of game rich young men (which was most college students of the era) liked to play, whereas soccer was something that was more a working class sport (baseball is also more democratic, but by the early 20th century it had spread to all classes.) More importantly, it was a sport working class *immigrants* played, in a climate of suspicion of those very same immigrants.
So your biggest obstacle is to have it seen bot as something patronized by "those damned foreign rabble". Maybe a few influential Americans sent Over There during the Great War pick it up from their French opposite numbers, and it spreads anong returning soldiers of all ranks? Probably your best bet is America entering the war earlier.
So your biggest obstacle is to have it seen bot as something patronized by "those damned foreign rabble". Maybe a few influential Americans sent Over There during the Great War pick it up from their French opposite numbers, and it spreads anong returning soldiers of all ranks? Probably your best bet is America entering the war earlier.
Driftless
Donor
Many small towns in the US (at least the Midwest) didn't have High School football till the early 60's - the cost of the gear was too much for small districts. Couple the idea of TR slamming tackle football early in the Century, with selling school boards on the notion that Soccer Football is cheaper and that could help turn the corner?
*Adding to the TR condemning gridiron football train of thought: Sell the US colleges on twisting the old saying comparing Soccer vs Rugby, in this case the "Gentlemen's game played by gentlemen". That might work in the pre-WW1 days
Last edited:
mattep74
Kicked
Why do they have take into account college and high school, just have a youth system and have the players move to the clubs first time at 15-19 like Europé. You really Think a team in Europé would care about the college system if they saw a talanted 17 year old playing for his school and not offer him a multimillion contract?
NFL, NBA and MLB can afford to use the college system as a youth system, they have no opposition, in soccer that will not work.
Soccer was actually fairly popular in the U.S in the 1920’s. It’s popularity fell with the Great Depression. But it continued to be played quite a bit in the North East. The two statements can be analysed, that the two American Presidents to have played organised soccer, Bush Snr and Trump, both went to NE high schools.
A POD might be in the 20’s and 30’s. Or maybe even earlier. Large Northern and NE tycoons encourage their emplyeees to play soccer, it’s cheap and requires little equipment, and facilities can be easily made while at the same time school and college competitions become popular. The former eventually morphs into large professional teams, the later into its support leagues.
Come the 1950’s, and 60’s as TV money enters the US soccer becomes big.
A POD might be in the 20’s and 30’s. Or maybe even earlier. Large Northern and NE tycoons encourage their emplyeees to play soccer, it’s cheap and requires little equipment, and facilities can be easily made while at the same time school and college competitions become popular. The former eventually morphs into large professional teams, the later into its support leagues.
Come the 1950’s, and 60’s as TV money enters the US soccer becomes big.
Major league baseball never traditionally relied a college system. They used a farm team system of minor leagues, that sounds much like the youth system described for Europe. College baseball is a very secondary sport and its best performers never go directly to the major leagues, they go to the minors. NFL and NBA are the only sports that rely on colleges to produce players. They even relax academic standards for athletes, sometimes feeding answers to exams to them so they can get passing scores. While it produces money-making, marketable teams, it compromises the true educational role of the university. Most schools are so large that the percentage of students involved is very small. Of course, college athletes can't get paid, so there's four years of free labor for the school to sell expensive tickets to large 60,000+ seat stadiums.
That works if you butterfly away American football on the grounds of injury. And the POD is some time before 1920.