Journal Entry #1
According to an article written for Soccer News Magazine in 1997, it is simply American to hate soccer. The writer goes over how Americans have somehow developed a sort of natural intolerance for the game calling it a gym class joke for geeks who need their hands to push their glasses up on their faces. This claim is evidently not factually supported and certainly takes no relation to a policy. Given that, we can conclude that this is a value claim. The writer begins by quoting American writer's derogatory comments on the sport in prints such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, and Boston Globe. For example, one writer for the Boston Globe argued that soccer was "a mindless sport where hordes of incomprehensible athletes run aimlessly in a circle until everyone is dehydrated and, finally, some guy uses his skull to score a touchdown." Clearly he was ignorant in his writing. He discusses how America was built on rough sports going all the way back to the first Ivy League sports. How Harvard replaced soccer with Rugby because it wasn’t rough enough. Later, Football was developed from a disorganized rugby game and became the glorified American sport. All the while soccer was played in America a few years before the fever hit European pitches. Thus, soccer is truly more American the football, yet it has been over shadowed by the rougher sport only because it is just that; rougher.
Article URL: http://www.sover.net/~spectrum/hist1.html
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