WhistlinDixie

MLS Gaining Popularity?

I just ran across this article on ESPN.com. It looks like Major League Soccer (MLS) has gotten its first ever television contract. ESPN2 will air 26 games on Thursday evenings and three playoff games, and ABC will broadcast the season opener, the all-star game, and the MLS Cup (the MLS championship series).

This has me really excited. It looks like soccer might finally be taking off in the states. I love the World Cup (I watched as much of the past two as I could) and it is about time that Americans can watch soccer on both broadcast and cable television. The sport still has a way to go before it overtakes hockey, but I think that the day is fast approaching. Then soccer can be America’s fourth major sport. (They currently refer to themselves as the fifth major sport, which is somewhat inaccurate since, at the moment, they are borderline major. After all, only three teams even have their own stadiums.) I look forward to the day that American soccer is as legitimate as the English Premiere League or Italy’s Serie A and soccer is the second most popular American sport behind American football. I’ll be dancing on the streets when that happens.

From First to Worst

It’s amazing how much things can change in a year. Last year, the CIA intramural soccer team took first place in the recreational league tournament. Tonight, our season ended a little prematurely. You see, we didn’t win a single regular season game this year. In fact, we got outscored 7-1 in the three games that we played. Our worst loss of the season was a 3-0 decision against Fiji (the brothers of Phi Gamma Delta). Guess who we, the last seed in the tournament, got paired up with? That’s right, Fiji, the top seed. (Don’t you just love the standard tournament format?) Needless to say, we lost. The margin by which we lost was what surprised me: 7-0! What was really bad was that tonight was the first night that we fielded a full team (nine players) from the beginning of the game. Up till now, we usually spent the last minutes before the game started frantically calling people and begging them to come out and play with us, so we could have the minimum of seven players to avoid having to forfeit. Tonight, we even had an extra offensive weapon that we had been without this season.

That puts me O-fer in the tournament win category since soccer last summer. I guess that your hopes can be easily inflated by having German foreign exchange students on your team. I guess that’s what we’ll have to do before next summer, persuade German foreign exchange students to come to Kettering just so we can have an awesome soccer team again. I can dream, can’t I?

Fun, Fun, Fun

You know what? It can be fun to get out on the weekends. Today, I visited the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum and the Field Museum. You probably figured out what kind of stuff that they have at Adler. The Field Museum is mainly natural science. I spent pretty much the entire day at those two museums. The cool thing is that those two museums, plus the Shedd Aquarium, are all on the same campus, within easy walking distance of each other. I greatly enjoyed my time at both museums.

While I was making my drive in to Chicago, I heard on the radio that the Chicago Fire were playing tonight at home at 7:30. I was intrigued. After all, not only are Adler, Shedd, and Field all on the same campus, but it just so happens that Soldier Field, the home of the Chicago Bears and the Chicago Fire, is part of that very same campus. I figured that tickets to a pro soccer game would not be that expensive, and, at the same time, I would get to experience Soldier Field. After I left Field at 4:30, I walked over to Soldier Field and got my ticket to the game: Section 107, Row 2, Seat 15. For all of you who have never been to Soldier Field, that puts me at about the 35 to 40 yard line in the second row from the field level. It was an awesome seat! How could you call it a bad seat when you could hear the sound of the players kicking the ball and cursing at the refs? Unfortunately, I had to use stadium food for dinner. Not cheap.

Next Saturday, I am going to visit the Shedd Aquarium and the Museum of Science and Industry. Then, the next weekend, CJ comes up here! It’s a pity that Chief can’t make it too, but he’s already been here, done that. Can’t wait!