Why, oh why, do they hate us so?

Kartik Krishnaiyer on the Major League Soccer Talk blog has published a very interesting screed on the hatred directed at footy from American sports commentators and publishers. (Read the story here.)

Recently, Fox News in particular has been particularly hateful, airing two different attacks on the beautiful game, specifically the American 2018/22 World Cup bids and in an immigrant-bashing way trying to draw some sort of forced connection between soccer and terrorism. I won't bother repeating the attacks. You can see them here.

Krishnaiyer makes some very cogent points, though to be fair I do think he does at times lapse into clear frustration and reverse finger-pointing, especially at the expense of American football. Among what I think are his best points are these:

That the Rupert Murdoch owned Fox News Channel would take on football and link it with terrorism is no surprise. The network in the past have exaggerated just about every hooligan incident abroad and had news anchors who were simply masked social commentators make statements like “this is reason 10,000 why soccer will never succeed in America,” or ” Europeans behaving badly.” Some commentators on the channel have even used a fear of the game to rile up xenophobic sentiment against Mexicans and other Latins in the US, claiming if we do not stem immigration, Soccer (again the term they choose to use, but I rarely if ever use: the proper term is Football) will eclipse Baseball as the national pastime.

And this one:

The irony is that FOX is owned by the very same man whose brainchild the English Premier League, has helped turned formally football adverse countries like India and China into football mad nations. SKY Sports made the Premiership into the world’s leading sports brand name. Murdoch has even taken advantage of the passion for football in nations such as Mexico (the country whose citizens FOX News commentators ironically fear most) by pushing his Innova satellite TV system which gives Mexicans more football viewing options than ever before. As more football has become available on Mexican TV, more domestic based FMF players have sought transfers to European clubs.


And this one:

Many sportswriters in the US are not only lacking intellectual curiosity about the outside world, but like their conservative brethren they will promote international events only when the United States is winning. Case in point: does anyone outside the US, or the handful of totalitarian regimes that exploit athletes for political purposes really believe the Olympics are a bigger sporting event than the FIFA World Cup? Are the Olympics a bigger event than the regional Euro finals, or Copa America? Are they even bigger internationally than the UEFA Champions League finals.

Why is it that Olympic Football doesn’t get the attention in the United States that Olympic Swimming or Olympic Track and Field does? Is it because those sports are more popular than football in the states, given that almost 12 million people in the US watched the most recent US National Team World Cup qualifier, while the aforementioned sports never get that sort of viewership outside the Olympics? Clearly that is not the case. It is simple: American success determines media coverage and the “worldwide importance” of an event.

Now clearly a conundrum of sorts is set up here. If American media outlets will only cover sports (Krishnaiyer insists that the proper term is Football, and will only use that. But I think that's one instance where he gets a mite carried away.) that Americans are winning, then will they cover soccer if the Americans win?

My feeling is that the answer is only grudgingly so, and that the Americans will have to keep winning and winning and winning to get any respect at all. Now, this is one area in which us Dynamo-followers are perhaps more fortunate than others in that the local media coverage here, both professional and amateur, is easily the tops in MLS, a point which Fearless Leader V of Dynamo Planet has made repeatedly. No MLS team gets this kind of support from so many different sources, though there are some teams that are well-supported.

Krishnaiyer makes multiple, and pointed, comparisons between soccer and American football, frequently pulling down the latter as unintelligent, nativist and anti-intellectual (though giving a nod to Florida head coach Urban Meyer as an "intellectual."). That brings up my all-time favorite point comparing these two sports, that Jamie Trecker makes in his book Love and Blood (Not read it? Do so, and before the next World Cup if you can.) Trecker says that NFL people all speak glowingly and with awe about worldwide Super Bowl viewership numbers being around 1 billion people, a number he
points out is about the same as tune in to the World Cup draw.

My attitude on this whole football v. football argument is that, as far as I'm concerned, Sports is Sports. They're all good. They're all fun. I enjoy some more than others, and clearly prefer football/futbol/soccer (Thank you, MLS marketing dudes). NONE is morally superior to any other. And if you stick my home town's name on your jersey, I'll root for you.

Still Krishnaiyer's piece puts a spotlight on this whole "attack soccer" phenomenon in the American media. Fellow Nutmegger Playtherapy's wife, who hails from Ireland, was struck dumb/flat out mystified that in the US soccer fandom or indeed playing the game is seen as synonymous with homosexuality. Now personally, I have never encountered this, but when i was a kid, my basketball-enjoying dad, taking me to see an old NASL Houston Hurricane game, said he found it hard to respect a sport where players ran around in shorts. I'm still struck by that irony.

Also, if you want to purchase that T-shirt design up top, check out this site here: http://www.zazzle.com/mlsrshop/find/qs-terrorist/sd-desc/st-popularity

What do you think about Krishnaiyer's article in particular and the issue of attack journalism aimed at soccer as a whole?