Sports
 

'Boring' sport poor excuse for bad accents

Commentary

Barrett Goldsmith

If you've had the opportunity and the stomach to see an entire episode of Sportscenter recently, you've probably seen ESPN's attempts at covering the 2004 European championships in Portugal. 

Even if Euro 2004 is the most important soccer event of the season (sorry, Athens) and trails only the Word Cup in worldwide prestige, it probably doesn't warrant much more coverage on primetime in the United States than that. 

But does every highlight package have to include either a) a Scottish accent, b) an imitation of the Spanish television "goal" exclamation, or c) the word "football" said smugly? 

Granted, these antics pale in comparison to some of the other clowns on ESPN and other networks -- can somebody do us a favor and equip Stephen A. Smith with a mute button? -- but the requirement for anchors to throw disclaimers into soccer coverage is a bit ridiculous. 

We don't live in a soccer country, and that's great. We've cornered the market on baseball, basketball and American football, and that's a pretty impressive feat. But we don't need to demean a sport that everyone else on the planet worships. 

The common complaint about soccer is that it's boring, and that's understandable. Baseball comes the closest of our major sports to soccer in this respect, but double-digit run totals are becoming more the rule than the exception. A typical NFL score of 35-17 sounds pretty impressive, until you realize that the score would be 5-3 if each score counted as one point. 

Another complaint about soccer is the complexity of its league system. This criticism is legitimate, and even people who follow the sport admit that something needs to be done to streamline the various clubs and competitions. It's pretty hard to tell the difference between the European club championship and the FA Cup, or the Champions League from the League Cup. 

Plenty of things are wrong with soccer, as is the case with all major sports. But there's also a lot that is right about soccer. The elation on a player's face after scoring a goal in extra time is as dramatic as anything you will see in sports. 

Fans are more passionate about their club than most "die-hard" fans in the states, and anyone who disputes that point should ask someone who has missed a penalty kick or committed an own-goal in a cup final. Bill Buckner and Scott Norwood can only imagine. 

If nothing else, watching soccer on European television can be a lot more rewarding than watching other sports. The commentators will call out a referee and attack his character for making a bad call, and players are regularly deemed to be worthless. 

I'm not suggesting that anyone stop watching his or her sport of choice and become a soccer hooligan, or that watching soccer and saying "football" makes you cool or cultured. All I'm asking is to stop it with the lame accents and clichés. Or at least throw up your hands and say, "USA-USA."

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