Bob Cook

If FIFA is serious about getting Americans to care more about the World Cup, it need do only two things: eliminate the Olympics and create another Cold War.

You can say that Americans' general disinterest in the World Cup has something to do with Americans’ general disinterest in soccer or any country other than their own. But that doesn't paint a complete picture of why the U.S. isn't gnashing teeth and rending garments over its national team’s lousy showing, or why there was little excitement in the team showed at all.

Until the U.S. is convinced its World Cup team is fighting a proxy war for the American way of life, it doesn't matter how many little soccer-playing kids the country has — Americans just aren't going to bother. America’s interest in international sporting events, like Mao Tse-Tung’s definition of power, grows out of the barrel of a gun. Until then, Americans will keep the “U!S!A! U!S!A!” chant in cold storage, instead satisfying their sectarian sports jones inwardly — that’s what college football and basketball are for.

Generally U.S. citizens, in the main, have cared passionately about international sporting events only when they're perceived as the means to show the world how the free, democratic, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps American system is superior to anything anyone else had to offer, especially if that anyone was the stone-faced, freedom-hating pinko Commies from the Soviet Union. (A World Series involving the Toronto Blue Jays doesn't count as one, but a Stanley Cup final featuring the Edmonton Oilers does.) If you think Americans got worked up about the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” because it was a pretty darned entertaining hockey game, please report to the nearest modern American history class.

The Olympics always were a good, every-four-years venue for these Cold War battles because the Americans and Soviets tended to be equally good at such measurements of power and grace as swimming, track and field, gymnastics and ice skating, so U.S. citizens could count medals to get an affirmation for, or a threat to, America's status as No. 1. Soccer never got onto the proxy battlefield, because the U.S was never a contender.

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The breakup of the Soviet Union meant that America was left as the declared world’s sole superpower. So what was the fun of beating up other teams in international competition? We Americans know we’re better, so why do we have to prove it?

It could be argued that Americans pay less attention to the World Cup, or any international tournament up to and including the World Baseball Classic, because of its thriving and varied professional sports leagues, up to and including the Arena Football League. It also could be argued Major League Soccer’s inability to, so far, become one of those thriving leagues hurts U.S. interest in the World Cup. After all, most teams in the World Cup have fans who fanatically support their local pro soccer team and transfer those feelings to the national team.

But maybe America is too large and diverse to allow for such a transfer, even in sports it likes. For example, basketball.

The only non-Cold War international event Americans cared about was the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball men’s tournament. That’s only because that year the U.S. wanted to make the point, after five years of losing international games with college players, that if it truly sent its best players, America would wipe up the floor with the rest of the world in the sport it invented. (OK, James Naismith was a Canadian, but he invented basketball on U.S. soil, so it’s American, right?) Once that message was sent, Americans stopped caring. Only 10 years after the Dream Team, few people bothered to show up in Indianapolis to watch the American team, bereft of “injured” superstars, play in the World Basketball Championships, much less find it a stain on the national soul the team finished sixth.

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Instead, when American want to have provincial battles over athletic superiority, they use the same venue they use to have provincial battles over seemingly everything else — the schools. For many Americans, identity begins and ends with whatever college or high school they attended, or they root for. The rest of the world might be shocked over Trindad and Tobago tying Sweden. America is still feeling the reverberations of George Mason making it to the NCAA Final Four. That school connection is why more Americans will argue passionately about whether to expand the Bowl Championship Series, rather than the World Cup draw.

Americans, it turns out, might be less xenophobic then they are just not inherently nationalistic when it comes to sports. That is, until Iran plops nuclear missiles in Cuba, or al-Qaeda organizes a soccer team. Assuming neither Iran nor al-Qaeda makes much of an Olympics splash, then and only then will Americans grow passionate about the World Cup, and start warming up the “U!S!A! U!S!A!”

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