Debate: Should Soccer be America's New National Pastime?

By Glenn & Jake 

Soccer, or football, as the rest of the world calls it, is the most popular sport in the world. There's one country that seemed to turn its nose at soccer, snubbing it as if it were Matthew Lillard at a star-studded party, and that country is America. The World Cup is currently happening in South Africa and you cannot leave your house without hearing about it. It seems like America has opened its heart and let soccer pump through it and now its pumping through our veins and giving us life. With baseball's waning ratings and soccer's sudden boom in popularity, we must ask ourselves: should soccer be America's new national pastime?

Glenn: I would like to open my side with the sound of a vuvuzela playing, but English professors have not transliterated the horn noise into text yet. What I will say is that soccer (henceforth interchanged with "football") is without a doubt America's new pastime. All you have to do is walk into an Irish bar during a World Cup game. Men and women of various ages between 23 and 30 are likely drunk, cheering for a non-Caucasian football team. I can't tell you how many news stories I've seen over the last few weeks talking about American men and women getting up early to watch soccer. Most of these news stories also have someone cutely asking "and what were they drinking? Because it doesn't look like coffee." The implied joke is that they are drinking alcohol early in the morning and that is worthy of veneration. It isn't, but football is.

Jake: Soccer is without a doubt the most boring game slightly edging out the Two and a Half Men Edition of Monopoly. Doctors should prescribe soccer to patients with insomnia. Unlike Glenn, I refuse to call it "football." Everybody knows that football is the game that the Baltimore Ravens play, not some jackass team from San Francisco nobody have ever heard of. Soccer is a game that even children don't want to play and when I was a child I played the Wayne's World video game for the Super Nintendo practically every day and it was horrible, but not as spirit-crushing as watching a soccer match. Any game that can end in a tie is more worthless than a copy of a Blues Traveler cassette.

Glenn: Blues Traveler and Baltimore Ravens aside, there are many unfair attacks on football here. First is the claim that soccer is boring. Baseball is boring and has been America's pastime for thousands of years. Golf, popularized by adulterer Tiger Woods, is more boring than soccer and baseball combined, yet bourgeois people play it every day. When I watch the soccer ball roll towards the goal, I am thrilled. Ask any young woman or middle-aged woman if they're bored by shirtless football players running around in the heat. They are not bored; they are aroused. I have never been aroused during a football match, but it is at least as exciting as the two most boring sports that I mentioned earlier.

Jake: Soccer is a drool inducing snoozefest if you ask me. While it is debatable whether anybody has ever asked me, I am alway more than willing to blurt out my opinion on this or any subject. Saying that women aren't bored because they get wet at the shirtless soccer matchers is a obvious, yet misleading statement. Their arousal has nothing to do with soccer players, but rather the shirtlessness of a male athlete. If topless women played golf or baseball, you and I would have season passes and know the stats of many of our favorite players, one stat being cup size. Sexy men and women do not make a sport exciting. If anything it should make us all feel bad for objectifying the male athletes who merely want to share their skill, no matter how boring it may be, with the world and make millions of dollars doing so. While Glenn might think Golf to be the sport of the bourgeoisie, I say any professional sport is. They are all millionaires and, therefore, assholes.

Glenn: Starting with the election of Barack Obama and ending with resurgence of know-nothing Republicanism, America has tried to atone for the eight years of George Bush. There is simply no better way to do this, though, than the full embrace of football. Football is the most popular sport in the world and by making it our pastime it shows that the United States is sorry for our go-it-alone, ignorant approach of the 2000s. We want to value the things that the rest of the world values, even going so far as to elect our first black President. We've made so many strides in the effort of global harmony that I'd hate to see Jake and his anti-soccer movement ruin everything. Football needs to be our pastime because that is the only way we can attract more immigrants to our great nation. Maybe one day the US will be known for ruining the world's oceans AND soccer.

Jake: I know that my anti-soccer sentiment isn't going to win me any popularity contests, at least not in my Mexican neighborhood. Baseball is our national pastime and, while it is very boring, it should remain as such. Who are you and I to argue over whether soccer should be given a title that isn't even being offered. Maybe our next debate should be "Who the Hell do We Think We Are?" but it will probably be something about the old TV show Dinosaurs or whether "not the mama" was the best catchphrase of the 1990s. It was and we are just some guys on the internet with a comedy website that is criminally under read. And no, soccer should not be made the national pastime because it pretty much sucks.