Think about how the experience of watching a touchdown has changed.
Years ago, when the running back on your favorite team dove over the goal line, the officials would raise their arms in the air, and you would go crazy, jumping up and down in your living room. That was it.
Today, almost reflexively, we delay our celebrations. Let’s see the replay. Did the ball cross the plane of the goal line? Did he fumble? Where was the ball when his knee touched the ground? Oh, look, the opposing coach has thrown out his red challenge flag. Now the officials are going to hide under a black hood, while we watch light-beer commercials for several minutes. But don’t go anywhere, because sooner or later, after you watch the same play 47 times from 12 different angles, the officials will determine whether you actually have anything to cheer about. This process is called “further review,” but it could also be labeled “hope you didn’t have any other plans for your Sunday afternoon.”
Even Major League Baseball, the American sport that once seemed most resistant to replay, is now delaying games to double-check calls. And let’s face it, in recent years, baseball games hadn’t exactly been zipping along, even without replay. The pitcher walks around behind the mound, plays with a rosin bag, licks his fingers, rubs them on his shirt, throws over to first, steps off the rubber, asks the catcher to repeat the signs, and then when he’s finally ready to deliver, the batter asks for timeout. The hitter steps out of the box, adjusts his batting gloves, then his manhood, a gesture that in any other setting would be obscene. He takes a practice swing, looks at the third-base coach. Finally, he steps back in, and then—and only then—is a pitch actually thrown.
Foul ball.
Let’s do it all again.
Or think about statistics. Used to be, the only baseball acronyms anybody knew were ERA and RBI. Now you’ve got WAR and OPS and wRC+. I’m a Sabermetrics acolyte. When I write about baseball in this space, I often cite metrics. But can it sometimes feel like you need a doctorate degree in physics to talk about baseball on the Internet? Absolutely.
Don’t get me wrong. I love football and baseball. Basketball and hockey, too. And I think it’s good that we’re able to use technology to get things right. Nobody wants blown calls. Any Cardinals fan who watched the 1985 World Series should be a supporter of replay review. Still, it seems to me that in this march toward sports progress, we’ve lost something, a certain simple joy.
That joy seems to be everywhere at the World Cup.
First of all, when you sit down to watch a soccer game, you know (approximately) how much time you’ll need to invest. It’s two 45-minute halves. Even when there are breaks in the action, the clock never stops. At the end of each half, to make up for times when the clock was running but nothing was happening, they add a few minutes of stoppage time. This is an inexact science. Unlike in basketball, where a game-ending shot will be analyzed on replays to see if it left the shooter’s hand just before or just after the final buzzer, a soccer game ends pretty much whenever the officials feel like it.
The play on the pitch is supervised, for the most part, by a single referee, making it far less regulated than other major sports. (Though if you want to criticize futbol, all of the diving to draw calls is a little out of hand.) This year, for the first time, the World Cup is using technology to review goals, but the process is quick, mostly seamless, and hardly ever needed.
Soccer has basically no statistics.
Sure, from the perspective of an American sports fan, some of this seems a little hokey. It’s also more entertaining, less mentally taxing. Part of this might just be me. I’m not a real soccer fan. The sport is growing, and I have many friends who follow MLS or various European leagues the way that I follow baseball or football. Maybe for them, soccer is just as involved and technical as, say, football or baseball.
I can only speak as a casual soccer fan, and I have to say: How great was the U.S. victory over Ghana on Monday?
First, Clint Dempsey scored that mind-bogglingly quick goal to put the red, white, and blue up one to nil. I find it sort of amusing that FIFA keeps changing the official time at which he scored, but it was basically 30 seconds into the game. Then, for the rest of the match, Ghana completely dominated the action. The United States hardly ever had possession, and when the Americans did get the ball, they would immediately turn it over in some stupid way. And yet, despite shot after shot from Ghana, the U.S. clung to that one-goal lead.
The announcers kept reminding us about how bad America has been at the World Cup. It’s a rare sport where the U.S. is an underdog. We had only won our opening game once in the last 80 years. Since 1990, our record in the World Cup is pathetic. Could this be the start of something better?
Then, late in the second half, Ghana scored the equalizer, and it seemed that all our dreams were lost. At that point, I figured the best we could hope for was a draw—until a few minutes later, when defender John Brooks hit a header off a corner kick straight into the ground and then straight into the goal. Even that play seemed to lack the artistry and imagination of the goals scored by the Netherlands or Germany. But the goal was ours.
Afterward, when the U.S. had run out the clock on its 2–1 win, a commentator on ESPN would call it a great “comeback.” In truth, the U.S. never trailed at any point. But yeah, it did feel like a comeback.
That’s the beauty of soccer: less technicality, more raw emotion.
