The three-headed Disney monster of ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 are carrying all the games, and they're doing so in high definition. Good for them; high def was designed for sports, as evidenced when I could see blades of grass flying after a corner kick.
Let me preface this by saying that I am not a fan of soccer (translated in every other country on the planet to 'football'). Maybe it's the fact that I work globally for a living and all my partners around the planet are enthralled and lost for the next thirty days. Whatever.
Somebody help me understand this one: England's match on Saturday morning is important enough to bump Lilo & Stitch back a couple of hours to give it to us on ABC. Mexico and Iran were important enough to be on ABC yesterday. Let's face it, anybody of Mexican persuasion was probably watching it on a Spanish-language channel; unless ABC offers an SAP button (which I honestly don't know).
Team USA, our own NATIONAL team, isn't important enough to bump Oprah, The View and whatever soap opera pablum is being pandered at 11:00 CDT on a Monday morning to give our national team the widest distribution? Let me guess: Soccer moms only take their kids to games because they have to but don't want have to watch it on TV? They prefer to live their Desperate Housewives lives while their charges are at summer camp?
While the World Cup and the Olympics share the major trait of being a quadrenial event, there are only sixty four games and thirty two teams. This isn't like having curling shunted to MSNBC at 4:30 in the morning because they've got figure skating to cover in prime time, dammit. There's sixty-four games. They're commiting to show them all in high definition which is an investment.
I don't want to be mistaken for a flag waving, sycophantic idjut, but isn't this just one of those things that you do because you're supposed to?
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You would think that whatever hopes the soccer leagues, etc, have of increasing their market share and attracting new fans would be influenced by having the "hometown" team playing when people could actually watch them. Of course, I say the same thing about baseball and the World Series, so maybe I'm just a nutjob.
From the tinfoil hat section: maybe they aren't showing them here because the overwhelming anti-American sentiment of the crowds would be emabarrassing?
Nah...it's taking place in Germany and it's a US / Czech crowd...would've been more interesting to have been in the crowd for yesterday's Mexico / Iran tilt, that's for sure.
But it's all moot because of the absolute bed-shitting which the US did in their big 3-0 piping at the hands of the Czech team. That's okay, there's still a chance to get healthy against Italy and Ghana. Try replicating that sentence in any other context, unless it involves war-mongering or Iron Cheffing.
Although it's amazing what happens when you get announcers who aren't paid by the team. XM Radio has all the games and I was listening to them absolutely give it to the American team during and after the game. Called the Captain out for a loser's limp excuse in the postgame comments and said that the big players didn't come to play today.
Really makes me wish that announcers were paid by the leagues rather than the teams; we might get some more objective commentary.
Oh, wait, who am I crapping? Thursday afternoons, 17.05 in the afternoon...
Ratings. More people watch Oprah and the Soaps that watch Monday morning ESPN2. In the minds of the exec. all viewers (that they care about) have cable/dish and will watch regardless of the channel so why shut down the only ratings you're going to get? Then Germany goes and sits down in an annoying time zone to screw everything up. Damn Germans.
If you don't like that ABC turned their back on the World Cup you can always watch it on Univision or Telemundo. Much better announcers.
As for the US team, I'm very disappointed in Beasley. He didn't get his foot on the ball very often, but when he did his game plan was to slow it down and give it away. Very unlike his more Fire style. I hope he's playing better for the Dutch.
Ok, here's a REAL WC question; Why are the Brits represented by England? Could they send a Scotland, N.Ireland and Welsh team if they qualified? Could we have a WC version of an all NY World Series? Now that would bring out the hooligans!
I can answer your question, senor anonymous (and hey, don't be a stranger!!)...
The Irish, Northern Irish, Welsh, Scots and Angles (English) all had their own squads in WC qualifying. A few WCs back, I believe that the Irish, N Irish, and English qualified, and bad luck on the final day kept the Scots out.
Thanks Mr. Rabble.
I suppose that is because they have independent premier leagues? Perhaps we need more squads to qualify so we can make the World Cup more like the World Series! ;^)
You know, I'm not sure, but I think it may have less to do with the establishment of a premier league and more to do with whether or not a "country" has a FIFA-affiliated national chapter or whatever.... So I think that Puerto Rico gets to have a "national team" in baseball, and soccer and basketball, etc., without having an actual national league. I do know that the 1994 WC in the USA was predicated on the re-establishment of an outdoor national league.
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