Varsity Kansas - The Blog

Joanna: Coming from Tennessee, Jonathan has all kinds of different viewpoints on issues we take for granted. One such topic that I was especially intrigued by was his take on how boys soccer should be in the spring instead of the fall. As it is, soccer goes up against football in Kansas, which could mean that both sports are losing possible athletes.
It’s definitely an issue I haven’t considered, I guess because I look at football and soccer as completely separate, that athletes decided long ago that it was one or the other. That football players are not soccer players and vice versa.

J. Long: I can understand how Mrs. Chadwick has just accepted this type of thinking, but seriously.  I pretty sure that a lot of the smaller schools don’t have soccer teams because they barely can scrape together enough kids for football.
Soccer is extremely physical and therefore right up the alley for football players. Maybe I’m wrong, I doubt it, but if you asked some of the football players they’d probably say they’d play soccer if it was in the spring. However, then again maybe I’m underestimating how big baseball is here. But surely it’s not on the Friday night light’s level.

Joanna: I don’t even know if it’s because of baseball. Maybe it was because what else is in the fall besides football? Tennis and golf are both in the spring, so is baseball. So there’s cross country and football in the fall, and that’s it. I guess it makes sense to have it then. In the spring, you’ve got baseball, track, golf, tennis. That’s a lot of sports that could have lost athletes when soccer was first added back in the 1980s.
I do know some track coaches who probably wouldn’t mind having girls soccer in the fall. One less sport to take away its athletes.
On another note, I have heard a lot of football types rip soccer. I personally have never understood this, but soccer just can’t seem to be considered one of the major sports in college or professionally by a majority of people in this country. You make a good point, though, that soccer players and football players have toughness in common. Is there any athlete tougher than a soccer player, who’s only wearing shin guards?

J. Long: Well see in Tennessee golf is played in the fall along with cross country and football. Soccer is too technical of a sport. Soccer won’t really catch on because it lacks the “it” factor that football, basketball, and hockey have. Look at boxing. People always love a good fight, yet boxing hasn’t crossed over to this generation. Some say it’s because of the lack of heavyweight fighters, but I think it’s because people want to see movie fights. They grew up watching Rocky and Apollo or Mr. T or the Russian guy go hard on each other for 15 rounds. That’s what they want to see. Not the sweet science that boxing in its purest essence really is. I didn’t grow up playing soccer so I don’t marvel at beautiful crossing passes or side sweeps. I like straight to the point action. I’ll skip the regulation portion, just give me a shootout.

Joanna: So you like the shootout so can see someone like Brandi Chastain rip her shirt off?

J. Long: It’s been a month and you talk like you’ve known me forever.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 2:42 p.m. and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.