Evening Public Ledger, 10-26-1915 |
On Tuesday night’s (July 8, 2014) Late
Show with David Letterman, sportscaster Keith Olbermann joked that in America,
“soccer is the sport of the future – and always will be.” Olbermann acknowledged that the joke was not
new. He even commented that etymologists
had researched the phrase, and found that it dated back to the 1970s.
The joke dates to as early as
1990, according to Barry Popik’s online etymological dictionary, The
Big Apple. Popik recently posted a list of several citations to versions of the
joke dating back to the early 1990s, although the joke is
probably even older:
[T]he old joke
goes: soccer in America is the sport of the future and always will be – most of
the rest of the world couldn’t care less.
The Daily News-Record (Harrisonburg, Virginia) (N.Y. Times News
Service), June 4, 1990.
The joke plays off the long-hoped-for
(by soccer enthusiasts) rise of soccer in the United States. Popick
credits Kyle Rote, Jr. with earliest attestation of the joke’s set up line, “soccer
is the sport of the future.” The
Independent Record (Helena, Montana), March 3, 1974, Eloy Aguilar (Associated
Press Writer).
But the sentiment, if not
the exact phrase, is much older:
Proof of the popularity of soccer in
Philadelphia at least was forthcoming last Saturday when nearly 1000 players
were actively engaged in the game. It
has been said up to the present Americans have not taken up the game with any
great enthusiasm, and that it is mostly played by Englishmen. This was true a few years ago, but it is not
the case now.
At
least 80 per cent. Of those taking part in the game in the city and
vicinity last Saturday were Americans and not hyphenated ones at that. Now that the schools and colleges are taking
up the game, it is bound to forge ahead.
It was 20 years before soccer attained
its great popularity in England, and 10 years from now it should be one of
America’s national games, judging from the strides it is making.
Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), October 26, 1915.
But despite soccer's permanent status as sport of the future, it is also our
past. When Rutgers played Princeton in 1869, the first inter-collegiate football game in the United
States, they were not permitted to carry the ball. The “Association
Rules” were only a few years old at the time (1863), so I'm not really sure whether it was even called “soccer” yet (the word soccer having been
formed from an abbreviation of ‘association’); but it was closer to pure
“foot”-ball, in which the ball is moved primarily with the feet.
[(Surprisingly, perhaps, the stereotypical football cheer, sis-boom-ah, was heard at that first game.)]
[(Surprisingly, perhaps, the stereotypical football cheer, sis-boom-ah, was heard at that first game.)]
American college teams did not
carry the football with their hands until Harvard played Canada’s
McGill University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 15, 1874. McGill introduced Harvard to a version of the
Rugby game, which had traditionally been played at the Rugby School in England.
The Rugby game found fertile
ground in the United States. A review of
the first Harvard-McGill game in Harvard’s newspaper, the Advocate, proclaimed:
Football will be a popular game here in
the future. The Rugby game is in much
better favor than the somewhat sleepy game now played by our men.
Parke H. Davis, Football the American Intercollegiate Game,
Charles Scribner’s Sons, September, 1911, page 65.
The attitude expressed by those
Harvard students contrasts with the opinion of an English-born soccer referee thirty
years later:
The Washington Herald (DC), November 27, 1910 |
Socker football as it is played in the
United States is entirely too rough and unmanly, says R. S. Court, the well
known socker official. A referee has a miserable time while he is on the field
during a game. The spectators in some
towns are worse than the players – mostly in the mining towns. The spectators should encourage the referee
when he is trying to prevent rough playing instead of calling him all the names
they can think of.
The Washington Herald (DC),
November 27, 1910.
Rough soccer may be
unsportsmanlike, under the rules of soccer, but to decry “rough” play as “unmanly”
may encapsulate the difference between the national characters of England and
the United States. About one hundred years before the Harvard-McGill football
game, the orderly, well-trained Redcoats lined up in perfect formation in open fields and complained about the backwoods tactics
the Colonists employed – they hid behind trees and wore camouflage – how unsporting
of them, I must say.
It is now more than one hundred
years since referee Court complained about the unmanliness of rough sports, and
soccer has not yet surpassed the NFL, Major League Baseball, the NBA or the NHL in
popularity. I guess it’s back to the
future, again.
As for my part, I do not count
soccer out. Nearly every single person I
know who was born after the early ‘70s played in some form of youth soccer
league and has a better understanding of the game than I do. It is interesting, though, that everyone plays soccer in their youth, yet avoids watching it later in life. Perhaps it suffers the stigma of being a child's game; does anyone (other than Patches O'Houlihan and his ilk) watch professional dodgeball? I am neither a sociologist nor a psychologist, so the answer will have to wait.
I may have missed the soccer boat, but the future is now. No, really, I mean it this time.
Pacific Commercial Advertiser (Honolulu, Hawaii) December 14, 1905 |
This blog here can also focus on why soccer isn't as popular as compared to basketball, baseball and the national football league. I think it will be interesting to understand fully from the perspective why the United States hasn't followed suit in the arena of sports like most of the world. Maybe considering looking at it from a historical standpoint in which England would have dominated the sport and they being former colonizers of the US may have a role to play in it. I do like how part of the history of the sport in the US was mentioned as well as the mentioning of Great Britain as a role in soccer.
ReplyDeleteThis blog beautifully captures the intersection of early sports and pop culture. The insights and anecdotes are fascinating, making it a valuable resource for enthusiasts. I appreciate the thorough research and engaging writing style—truly a delightful read!
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