Every fall I hear the same thing: Soccer sucks!, Football is a real sport!

, and Soccer players are whimps (whimps being the PG-rated version). These remarks are almost always uttered by a four-hundred pound man wearing Zuba pants and stuffed into a grease-stained t-shirt that reveals a hairy beer-bellied midriff. Chunks of onion rings are stuck in his Tom Selleck mustache, and his buddies at the bar agree, obnoxiously laughing and promising to never allow their sons to play such a soft sportthey quickly proceed to hoot, holler, and whistle as a Dallas Cheerleader prances across the screen. This is why I dread the upcoming NFL season, not because I hate sports, or because I dislike football, but because I love Futbol, or what Americans call soccer,: the sport that is too boring, doesnt have enough scoring, and where the glass-constructed players dive too much. For Americans, soccer is not an easy sport to love. Fullbacks and halfbacks have to be explained as defenders and midfielders, offsides seems impossible to clarify to people used to watching linebackers trying to blitz a QB, and the idea of a league using relegation is unfathomable to fans who watch the same teams complete within the same divisions for decades at a time. To make matters worse, actually watching a live soccer game requires getting up before sunrise to catch a game that is being played thousands of miles on the other side of the world. I understand the apathy towards soccer, but the disdain towards it confuses me. So its time to set the record straight. For example, dont knock soccer for being boring. Sure, not many points are scored, but according to the Wall Street Journal, the average NFL game has only 11 minutes of actual game action. The average play lasts only 4 seconds, followed by a 40 second break. Break down these stats, and an NFL starting player will play less than 6 minutes a game! (The dead space is filled by remote controlled blimps and helicopters that hover over the fans and drop down free hats and gift certificates) A soccer game has 90 minutes of running time without any commercial breaks or interruptions. The average player runs over 6 miles per game. Sure, they may flop and dive every now and then, but Ive seen many NFL defenseman get slapped with a 15yard unnecessary roughness penalty for simply brushing their hand against a quarterbacks helmet, and plenty of wide receivers draw pass interference penalties by taking dives, feigning interference, and consistently complaining to the referees. The natural reaction by NFL fans towards these statistics is defensive, and theyll still boast about how tough American football players are while simultaneously mocking the feminine nature of soccer players. Such debates are filled with unprovable arguments and hypothetical circumstances, but in the end soccer is more rough than meets the eye.

For example, NFL players hardly fight (except when they invariably get arrested at the local nightclub), and on the rare occasions when they do duke it out on the field, they usually leave their pads and helmets on and flail at each other like confused penguins before the coaches, referees, and players arrive to separate everyone. Lets face it, baseball has more brawls than the NFL. Footballs good-ol-boy-toughness mentality (commonly found in dive bars, VFW events, country music concerts, truck stops, The South, during the 1990s, and rural areas) is a product of marketing and media hype, and most soccer naysayers have never experienced a rivalry game, where, at such an event, the opposing fans are escorted in by the police (sometimes by the military) and are confined in a section separated by the rest of the stadium by huge fences and fidgety men wearing riot gear. Fires erupt in the stands, explosions occur, hooligansmotivated by sheer hatredviolently go after each other, and mayhem is everywhere. On the field, players often resort to dangerous punches, kicks, headbutts, and stomping, which inevitably results in both teams digressing into frenzied mobs until the visiting team is either forced off the field or escorted to safety. Its not a pretty sight. Compared to soccer, attending an NFL game is like being in a library. For the last 40 years American football fans have chanted De-Fense! De-Fense! Very creative. Contrarily, tens of thousands of manic soccer fans use an array of inspirational, derogatory, and profane chants and songs every game, often making them up on the spot. NFL fans simply do whatever the jombotron tells them to do, mainly: Make Some Noise! The two fan bases have subtle but important differences. Football has sports bars, soccer has pubs. Football has jerseys, soccer has kits. Football has a field, and soccer has a pitch. Football has millions of dollars, and soccer has millions of Euros. The list could go on. According to research studies, within two years of retirement 78 percent of NFL players will be bankrupt. But this is what happens to football players: they grow old and become fat. They complain to the league about poor retirement benefit packages while continuing to gorge on hamburgers and milkshakes and refusing to stop eating the 8,000 diet they maintained as a pro. Upon retirement they booze it up, attend strip joints, squander millions on bogus business ventures, and if theyre lucky, get some extra money doing commercials for the Hair Club For Men. They dont know how to function in society. Similarly, this is what happens to the average football fan, like my friend sitting at the bar and ranting against soccer, they grow excessively overweight and resort to wearing sweatpants in public.

The soccer fan is a bit more refined: they wear suits, drink Guinness, pay attention to the stock market, stay in shape, and are up-to-date on current events. This is my theory on where the hatred comes from: football fans are simply jealous. They no longer are the homecoming kings who date the cutest girls in high school. Instead, they painfully watch as the metrosexual wearing a Barcelona FC scarf moves in on their ex. In the end, football fans are like the Brett Favres of the world: old-school jocks clinging to the past and wondering why women arent turned on by creepy text messages. But they can have Brett Favre, Mike Ditka, John Madden, and Jerry Rice, because soccer fans have Cristiano Ronaldo and David Beckham...and a date for this next Friday night.