Bill Simmons, on the most depressing sports summer ever, and why soccer will never take off in the U.S.:
People keep stupidly perpetuating the "every kid grows up playing soccer -- those are the kids who become adults and who might buy tickets" argument. You know what else I did as a kid? I gave myself a Muslim name. I ate my own boogers. I seethed because Tom never caught Jerry. I checked my closet every night to make sure an evil clown wasn't there. I left my baby teeth under my pillow because a fairy gave me money for them. None of these things has any correlation to my life now. The fact remains: Americans will never care that Beckham is playing soccer in a league of half-decent guys, just like English people wouldn't care if they had a mediocre baseball league and the London team signed A-Rod.
Or as someone else put it, Beckham in LA will be a big story as soon as Americans give a fuck about soccer, which by rough approximation should happen about 45 minutes after the heat-death of the universe.
Posted by: Dave J at August 2, 2007 10:04 PM