When the rest of the world says football, Americans translate as soccer, despite the fact that the Beautiful Game was around long before the Americans themselves. And the only time the majority of us even notice soccer is if were taking our kids to play it, or if America has somehow managed to make it into the World Cup group of 16. We dont expect to get much further than the first round there, anyway; and we quickly lose interest. Too few beer commericals, perhaps. For Americans, football means that oblong-shaped ball that ironically is mostly handled. High-schoolers and junior leagues play on Friday nights; colleges play on Saturdays; and the NFL uses on Sundays (and Mondays and Thursdays, now). The National Football League is Americas most popular professional sport, with a great deal of sports programming devoted to it, and nobody really cares that the rest of the world have never really fallen in love with playing it. In contrast, in some football-crazy states, such as Texas, a high school game can draw 50,000 people. Americans prefer a game they can win (or see their team doing so); and soccer has too many low-scoring affairs or ties to suit them, plus no one gets tackled in the bone-jarring way that requires shoulder pads (and rugby is just too dirty). Of course, that doesn't explain why baseball is so popular, but then we are a nation of contradictions.
17. ESPN
When it launched in 1979, ESPN was regarded as a joke: after all, who would want to watch a 24-hour cable sports channel? And their early programming was limited to posting scores, slow-pitch softball, wrestling and college soccer, but that changed and the channel's influence quickly grew. Now they have contracts to show live games from the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball, plus the college game, and theyve expanded into the international markets. Films and TV shows needing a sports reference usually include an ESPN clip. Subscription to the channel and its sister channels makes up a fair-sized chunk of the average Americans cable TV bill (and we willingly pay it) which is not bad for a company that started out with the idea of covering local teams in Connecticut.
