Quick Sports Takes - 20 August 2007

• I'll admit it: I'm a soccer fan. The first sport I remember playing with friends as a kid in Birmingham, Alabama, was, believe it or not, soccer. I've liked the sport for a long time. So I am a little biased. But with all the hoopla surrounding David Beckham's arrival in the United States and Major League Soccer (MLS), I'm getting tired of all of these sports talk, newspaper, and TV people attacking the sport of soccer. If they want to say that the MLS is terrible, that's fine with me. The MLS is not up to the standard of the English Premier League, the Bundesliga, and those other European leagues. If they want to say that the MLS will never be on the same level as the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball, that's okay, too. Those sports have a long tradition, and soccer is not going to sweep them away. But these people are attacking the sport itself, saying that it is boring. ESPN's Colin Cowherd said on his podcast, "One of the problems with soccer is that the clock starts from 0:00. America is a 'wind-down' country, not a 'wind-up' country." Are you kidding me? So, soccer is bad because it is different. Ridiculous. From this point on, I'm not subscribing to the Cowherd podcast, or anyone else with ridiculous comments like that.
• Another thing I'm thinking about giving up is college sports. (I can't believe I'm saying this, considering I grew up in Alabama and went to the University of Alabama.) I'm beginning to dislike the concept of kids getting full scholarships to universities to play sports and not doing their part as students. I think it's better for someone to skip college and go straight to the pros than to go to a university and graduate on classes like table tennis and The Beatles, which makes a mockery of the university they go to. The NFL should start a minor league for these kids. (Baseball obviously already has such a system, and the NBA is on its way.)
• One thing I'm not going to give up on, though, is being an Atlanta Falcons fan, even though they're in for a bad season after all the Vick trouble. I've been a Falcons fan since living in Atlanta in the early 1990s; I'm used to bad seasons. :)