Justin Whitaker, right, and Chase Varhol react while watching a screening of the USA vs. Belgium World Cup soccer match Tuesday at Miller Plaza.A sports writing idol of mine once wrote that the only reason futbol was more popular throughout the rest of the world than our American football was because most of the rest of the world couldn’t afford to equip its youngsters with helmets and shoulder pads and such.
And quite possibly for far too long I embraced such smugness as fact. Why, indeed, would any right-thinking human prefer to watch a 1-0 soccer match when it could view a couple of opposing groups of macho males attempt to beat each other senseless by, say, a 7-0 final score, even though that would really be no different than a 1-0 soccer match?
Even now, if given a choice of watching this coming January’s first NCAA Division I championship football game or February’s Super Bowl as opposed to the good ol’ US of A in a World Cup final, I’d probably still pick our football over everyone else’s futbol, because, well, as a fifty-something I’m determined to do all I can to see that my life changes as little as possible before it ends.
But in the wake of the Red, White and Blue’s inspired loss to Belgium on Tuesday — yes, I wrote “inspired loss,” and not only because American goalie Tim Howard looked like LeBron James, Derek Jeter and Richard Sherman all rolled into one — I now also believe this country will at some point over the next 30 years witness a moment in which futbol begins to hold its own with football on a regular basis. Especially everywhere outside the Southeast north of south Florida and whatever constitutes the Southwest west of Texas.
Yes, Southeastern Conference country — which actually includes the Lone Star State, thanks to the arrival of Texas A&M — will continue to view football as a religion for the foreseeable future. Or as a Tuscaloosa, Ala. pastor once reportedly told then-Alabama coach Bill Curry’s wife, “No, [college football] is much more important than [religion].”