THIS Soccer May Actually Be The Next Big Thing

Maybe it's the result of a football hangover. Our football.

But we've just become aware of a show that could, repeat - COULD, help make that other football more popular here than a team of David Beckhams could ever hope to.

A freelancer emailed to to say:

It seems that something called Fox Soccer Channel, or FSC, carries nothing but soccer. Okay, I'm down with that. Don't know who watches the thing, but that's not the point.

According to their listings they show damn near every league in the world. There are always a bunch of Mexicans playing on this patch of dirt underneath the power lines near where I-610 crosses Route 59. The next time I drive by, I fully expect to see a FSC crew shooting the action.

Those guys better be union.

Anyway, each Monday this Fox Soccer Channel runs a game from the English Premier League. You know, the one with the Manchester Uniteds and such. But this game doesn't have any regular announcers. They get 2 guys to call the game, but they are fans - one for each team! And they say what they want and do what they want and scream and yell and tell each other to shut up and it's great! It actually makes me want to watch and see what will happen next. This could be what soccer needs to pick up fans all over the country.

Of course if soccer gets popular here we'd have to shoot more games and who wants to do that? Maybe Starbucks could be a sponsor and give the crew enough free coffee to stay awake during the games. But you gotta check this thing out!

I'm fixing to TiVo the show each Monday.

So with thanks to Awful Announcing, The Beautiful Game, and Footy Mania, here's an example:




Our thoughts: We've got a lot of these all-whatever channels. NFL, NBA, NHL, golf, 2 for college sports, etc. All of them rerun games. Over and over.

Maybe this could be an interesting idea for some of those re-airs. Or maybe this could put the SAP button to good use.

Of course, maybe the fannouncers would be too damn obnoxious to listen to. (I just copyrighted "fannouncer", so don't even think of using it without paying a licensing fee!)

Internet radio had channels with fans calling games off their TVs, but the leagues got all huffy about violations of the rules from those disclaimers we run every day. It would be entirely different if the leagues were doing it themselves, and reaping the publicity and profits as well.

Who knows? Soccer may catch on after all!