Why does football, aka soccer, never make it to the main stage in America?

Americans, in general, are dazzled by size. To name a few, just look at the quarter pound cheeseburger, the power size Jamba Juice, Hummer trucks, Walmart, and our dear California state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, their presence alone is not only overpowering but can be intimidating in a lot of ways, and their sheer volume says quite a lot about Ameircans' infatuation in bigness. In America, size is an equivalent measure of manhood and power - the more muscular you are, the higher you can hold your head up.

Compared to Europe and Japan where meterosexual with delicate facial feature and slim figure has come to become the standard of male beauty, American concept of a "true man" is one with a defined jawline and well built muscles, and one who carries a gun and hunt in the wild. This very image (think of Brad Pitt) has probably stayed the same way since the birth of the nation albeit the drastic social change in the last 100 years.

The same preference for muscularity and manhood over anything else deemed less macho naturally affects our sports selection. American Football is the most popular sports in the states and it features nothing but big, no, HUGE guys whose arm width easily outmatches my thigh width. Basketball, as well, are not meant to be played by the regular-sized human beings. The average height of NBA players is about 6'8'' as opposed to 6'1'' of the players in the English premium league.Unless you have sonic speed, there is close to no chance to be selected to NBA if you are less than 6 feet tall.

So what about baseball? You don't have to be the biggest, the tallest nor the quickest to play baseball. True. Baseball is probably the least physical sports among the popular sports in America but the myth with baseball is that it falls very well into the category of "American Dream". With hard work and strong determination, you can develop from an amateur baseball player to a pro, and in fact, lots of players in the MLB played in the development league before going to the national league. The dream of becoming a pro athlete is actually within the reach of the common people like me and you, which is precisely the charm of this sports and echoes nicely with the core value of America.

Football, on the other hand, is being discriminated against in America because its very nature discourages intense physical contacts and nothing in the game of football celebrates the toughness of the players. Not only you don't have to be the biggest nor fastest to play football, too often, we see a supposedly world class player dives to the ground, clutches to his leg and whine in agony in a pathetic attempt to have the refugee calls foul. "How in the world will you get hurt with a tab on the shoulder?" An American audience will probably yell. Put it this way, "Making a show of your physical vulnerability runs counter to every impulse in American sports.", says an American columnist. In short, America is just too barbaric a nation to appreciate the beauty and art of football and we just cannot be satisfied until some fists are thrown and players carried off the court on a stretcher.

So can America ever embrace football? Probably not. And it is for the sake of international stability anyway to keep the Americans out from the football elites. The anti-america sentiment will surge, as if we are not hated enough already by the rest of the world, if team USA wins the world cup.

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