major league soccer slowly on the rise in North America

[drkohler]

Kasz216 said:

drkohler said:

It may have been or it may not have been at the time. It was exactly the key agument I was told then (by a group of people I'd certainly consider with a higher than average education level. This included several sports teachers, including football teachers at various levels.).

Well that's a problem because there is no such thing as a football teacher.

 

Most likely, the people you talked to, just don't really know the history of the sport.

You are interpreting the term "violent" too literally. We are not talking about people pulling knives and guns out of their pockets. (Btw, the teacher I remember actually was a teacher (math I think) who was asked to be a soccer coach as well. Not every school had/has coaches for their sports teams. But that is irrelevant to the discussion). I'd term a sport violent when the players are packed into something resembling an armour and the basic goal is to try and crash into other players, leading to injuries (and quite frankly, to serious mental problems after a few years of head banging). The "non-violent" equivalent sport everywhere else is called rugby and has considerably less problems with "violence". Then again, rugby is considerably more popular than football (outside the States). So the three simple reasons for the increase in soccer's popularity can be summed up as:

1. Everybody can do it - even women - pretty much everywhere

2. You don't have to pay a fortune for an armour

3. It's a lot cheaper for a family to watch a soccer game than (probably) any of the more prominent games

Of course part 3 is only true as along as soccer is not too successful. Once big business sees profit things can change, usually to the worse.