King Kaufman's Sports Daily
English soccer fans angry about proposed offshoring of their national game. Quaint. But we could learn from them.
Read more: Sports, Baseball, England, Soccer, Football, NFL, King Kaufman, Sports Daily
Feb. 11, 2008 | English media and soccer fans are up in arms over a proposal by the chief of the Premier League, who wants all 20 teams to play an extra weekend of matches overseas every January starting in 2011. The teams have voted unanimously to examine Richard Scudamore's idea.
The Brits make us Americans look like pikers in the outrage business when it comes to this sort of thing.
"They're killing our game," read a headline in the Daily Mail. Another in the Daily Express went, "Sold: Football's soul for £200 million."
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Malcolm Clarke, chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation, a fan-advocacy organization, said the plan "would drag the Premier League into the realms of farce." His group made huffing noises about a boycott of sponsors.
Over on this side of the pond we have a little experience in this area. We're a spring training away from another baseball season opening in the middle of the night for the home fans, in the Tokyo Dome, with garish advertisements on the uniforms. The Boston Red Sox and Oakland A's will play a two-game season-opening series a week before everyone else starts playing real games.
"A's fans," chirps a story on MLB.com, "your game time for the March 25 opening pitch will be 3:05 a.m. PT, so start making the necessary adjustments now." Ho-ho!
The just-completed NFL year featured the first-ever regular-season game played outside of North America, a dreary New York Giants win over the Miami Dolphins in London. There was a game played in Mexico in 2005. There'll be another in Britain in 2008.
NFL fans get only eight regular-season home dates a year, so moving one of them to another country is a big blow to the die-hards, though there was a groundswell of "let 'em have that one" over that Giants-Dolphins tilt.
But generally, the outrage over these matters has been, at times, almost ... palpable.
Next page: We're so much more evolved in the U.S. We were used to accepting this kind of insult years ago!