SHUHEI MATSUO
Assistant Online Editor
As we all know, the United States is really good at being the world’s No.-1 in sports. In fact, the NFL is, by far, the best football league in the world, and the NBA and MLB give the winning teams the “world” champion titles.
Hold on, but who won the gold medal for men’s basketball at the 2004 Summer Olympics? Argentina. And who won the 2006 World Baseball Classic? Japan. Actually, Team USA didn’t even make it to the finals for both of those events.
More importantly, I can’t even think of a time when the entire world fought for football. Oh, I forgot no other country plays this sport.
Actually, let me take that back. I remember the last time the world got together for a football tournament. It was 2006 in Germany. Yes, the World Cup 2006. You know, for the rest of the world, football means kicking a ball with feet. But this true football is hardly played in this country.
Well, the MLS tried to make it popular when the Los Angeles Galaxy imported David Beckham. But it’s not working as well as the league expected. To make a significant change in the league, the superstar first needs to outnumber the number of tattoos on his body with the number of goals he scores in a single season.
That may take a while, but how come the most universal sport is minor in the United States?
“[Soccer] is not scoring, and there is not too much excitement going on the entire game,” says Matt Digges, a junior on the men’s water polo team. “I like soccer. But I don’t think a lot of people see the sport itself.”
Indeed. American football, baseball and basketball are all exciting with lots of scoring. And more importantly, these sports have a lot of timeouts, which allow companies to run their ads. But in soccer, the clock doesn’t stop. So TV stations cannot put any advertisements in between those 45-minute halves. Yes, it’s all about business, isn’t it?
Look at the salaries of the highest-paid American athlete in the top-three sports of the country. Peyton Manning, $14 million. Kevin Garnett, $22 million. Alex Rodriguez, $26 million. And the MLS’s star Landon Donovan only makes $900,000.
The United States needs to include soccer in its top-five sports, if not top-three. If the country wants to be No. 1 at everything, soccer has the most competition thus the most valuable to be at the top.
Look at the World Cup. People around the world go absolutely insane during this time to see which country captures the little golden cup. It’s not about the money that they play for – it’s about the pride for the game and their country.
Speaking of the worldwide sport, the Office of International Students Services at Pepperdine is hosting its 10th annual soccer tournament Saturday at Tari Frahm Rokus Field. Ten teams of at least eight Pepperdine community members – American, international, undergraduate, graduate, faculty and staff – will play to share the excitement of the sport.
“I’d like to think of it as a World Cup in a day,” says Mary Guirguis, OISS office manager and the coordinator of this event. “So you don’t have to sit and wait for the end of the tournament. You’ll get the instant gratification.”
Being an international student and a soccer fan, I figured this would be a great opportunity to contribute to the OISS for the last time, since I’d never even heard of this event for the past three years. So I’m in this tournament with my team, the Rising Suns.
Soccer has always been one of my top-five sports, but I haven’t played in a while because I’ve injured myself many times playing this sport. The last time I seriously played soccer seven years ago, I sprained my ankle severely that it “bent” inside. But time has healed my traumatic memory. I’m ready to come back on the field again.
So come check out the Pepperdine’s annual World Cup on Saturday at 10 a.m. This time, I’ll try to bend it like Beckham.
04-03-2008
