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DEL.ICIO.USU.S.-Mexico shown in English? Maybe not
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OK, hyper-sensitive American soccer fans. Instead of blasting the few friendly newspaper types who understand and occasionally try to stroke you (ahem, ahem), you may now turn your guns of ire toward the truly evil media monoliths who don’t even pretend to care about your predilection: the big-time television outlets.
Grant Wahl of Sports Illustrated — another one of the good guys in this business for soccer fans — explains why the Sept. 3 World Cup qualifying showdown between the U.S. and Mexico may not be televised on one of the 73,000 channels owned by ESPN. The reason: the gridiron, of course. This happens to be the first Saturday of college football. On ESPN2, the Dawgs are playing Boise State, the first half of which might be entertaining, unless UGA has another rash of arrests. On the ESPN mother ship, the defending champs from Southern Cal will run circles around the Hawaii Wahines (not the Rainbows, a nickname ex-Falcons coach June Jones didn’t want for his boys since it sounds effeminate to him).
But I digress. The best bet may be ESPN Classic, where there’s an old Joe Louis boxing match on the time the Yanks and El Tricolor kick off from Columbus Crew Stadium. At this point, the issue is unsettled. What gives?
Why it might be easy to dump on ESPN for this snafu, what I’d like to know is how hard Soccer United Marketing, which negotiates television time for the U.S. Soccer Federation, has been working to get this game some decent placement. The college schedule is done months in advance, and the CONCACAF slate has been out at least since January. Did anybody think about Sunday the 4th, when ESPN’s slate may be cleared up? Soccer has run up against the NFL and other big American sports in the past. Although both teams are essentially bound for Germany a winner in Ohio would clinch a spot in what’s become a fantastic rivalry.
As much as I adore Fox Soccer Channel, it would be an embarrassment and a disappointment if this game can’t get the attention it would on ESPN, which is its primary broadcast partner.
(Credit for suggesting this topic goes to Chris Martz, who’s soon headed to Spain where this sort of issue would never occur. From what I hear, bullfighting is more than second fiddle to La Liga.)
MLS didn’t do itself much good in absorbing a 5-0 thumping at the hands of Real Madrid Tuesday in an exhibition featuring the league all-stars against Los Galacticos at the Bernabeu. Then again, look who played for the home team: Ronaldo, Beckham, etc. Interesting to see how seriously this was taken, though it’s close to the start of La Liga season.
I’m not sure what MLS thought it could get out of this debacle, sending some of its players across the ocean during the middle of the season. Exposure? Not this kind.
Comments
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By Nicholas Irwin
August 23, 2005 6:42 PM | Link to this
I know everyone’s always quick to jump on ESPN in these situations, but I think it’s Soccer United Marketing who is truly at fault. Soccer United Marketing seems to have this really ridiculous attitude that basically says “you’ll take it like we’ve set it up and you’ll like it. The fact that soccer isn’t very popular in this country doesn’t mean anything. We think soccer’s the greatest sport in the world, therefore you should take it like we’ve proposed.” I’m not trying to denigrate the game of soccer. Obviously I love soccer, or I wouldn’t be posting regularly on this board, but at some point reality has to be faced here.
Demanding that ESPN show a soccer game instead of a football game is about as stupid you can get. They’re simply not going to do it. It’s not gonna happen unless we’re talking about a World Cup game vs. a preseason football game or something, and even that they would probably think about for a while. Football is the most popular sport in this country by a pretty wide margin. Soccer doesn’t even grace the top five. Hell, even baseball (the second-most popular sport in this country by an even wider margin than football is first) gets relegated to second-class citizen status when football comes around. So Soccer United Marketing thinks that they’re going to get better treatment than baseball in matters like this? They must be completely out of their minds!
What they should’ve done was attempted to work something out. Move the game to Friday or Sunday (as Wendy pointed out), move it to earlier in the day, engage in ongoing talks with ESPN throughout the process to see if maybe they can get one of the football games moved to Friday or Sunday (there’s no NFL to worry about since it’s the week before that starts), something. But no, instead SUM basically says here’s the game, here’s when we’re playing it, now you teleivise it. They are now getting the middle-finger response they deserve. This happened with the Gold Cup, too. ESPN would probably take the Gold Cup if they could televise only the U.S. games, but instead it’s sold as a package, and of course ESPN isn’t gonna buy the whole Gold Cup. If the U.S. were to be eliminated before the final, they would be pouring money down a bottomless pit. So as a result, Univision gets sole rights to the Gold Cup and shows the U.S. games on TeleFutura to raise that stations ratings, and half the people in this country aren’t able to watch the damn things. SUM really needs to pull their head out of their rear end and realize that they are not the No. 1 priority when it comes to sports in this country. If they want to raise the status of their sport, they’re going to have to compromise a little in order to get their games on channels where everybody can see them. And incidentally, if the game winds up on ESPN Classic, I hope they still show the tape delay on ESPN. Then people who don’t get ESPN Classic will be able to see it as well.
By Colin
August 23, 2005 8:33 PM | Link to this
Another problem about this game that is directly the fault of the USSF:
Ohio State plays a football game that afternoon in Columbus, meaning downtown Columbus will be gridlocked with OSU football fans and all the U.S./Mexico fans.
The USSF could have easily looked at the OSU schedule and scheduled the game on another day or another city.
By Alex
August 24, 2005 7:45 AM | Link to this
Also, don’t forget the fact that Monday the 5th is Labor Day and that afternoon would have been a great time slot for a game…great job USSF
By Joh Camp
August 24, 2005 3:09 PM | Link to this
I’m just trying to post an email to Wendy. The website does not make it easy to contact a reporter: Georgian, Blake Camp,of Duke University and Formerly of AFC Lightning and Clarke Central High School has been named to the Hermann Trophy watch List for the Second year. He was also named Monday to College Soccer News’ Presaeason All American Team. Thanks, Wendy