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Thread: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

  1. #31
    breath westofyou's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    What he's mostly good for these days is free kicks and long service.
    AND he looks good on a marketing poster.


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  3. #32
    Rally Onion! Chip R's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by thatcoolguy_22 View Post
    This signing could very well be the beginning of a steady influx of European players into America. If we get enough "star" caliber players the world will take notice.

    IMHO
    I'm guessing if that happens, they are going to have to give these players Beckhamesque contracts. Beckham is being paid as much for his appeal as for his playing skills - perhaps more. He's also in the twilight of his career. They would also be playing in a sub-par league. It'd be like if Brett Farve went to Canada. Now if enough stars came in, then MLS would improve but then they would have to either grow their own stars or import them and pay them obscene amounts of money. I'm no expert on MLS but I doubt they have the money to import the creme de la creme of the soccer players and even if they did, they would have to get into a bidding war with the conglomerates that own the elite European teams.

    I think that if they want to make soccer a little more popular here, it's probably a good move. But it's never going to be ingrained in the hearts and minds of Americans like football, basketball and baseball are.
    Quote Originally Posted by Raisor View Post
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  4. #33
    breath westofyou's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    But it's never going to be ingrained in the hearts and minds of Americans like football, basketball and baseball are.
    Never is a long time. It will never been welcomed from the two minute message boys at the networks though. They love back and forth sports with little meetings and rules interpretations.

  5. #34
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    WestofYou's right. Never is a long time.

    Who would have thought in the 50's that basketball would be the success it's been. Hell who would have thought that in the 70's when NBA finals were still shown on tape delay.

    In the 40's football was barely recognized outside the college game, and even that was only mildly interesting to the Pacific time zone.

    I liked the comparison ESPN.COM had with Gretzky going to the Kings in the late 80's. However if that's the case MLS drastically overpaid.
    Quote Originally Posted by BuckeyeRed27 View Post
    Honest I can't say it any better than Hoosier Red did in his post, he sums it up basically perfectly.

  6. #35
    Rally Onion! Chip R's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by westofyou View Post
    Never is a long time. It will never been welcomed from the two minute message boys at the networks though. They love back and forth sports with little meetings and rules interpretations.

    It is a long time. Say, how's hockey doing in that area?
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  7. #36
    breath westofyou's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Chip R View Post
    It is a long time. Say, how's hockey doing in that area?
    Hockey was greedy, it has no business being so deep in the south. Swing in your wheelhouse and you'll do fine. Soccer will grow, sure it may never be as big or as over blown as Football is in the US, but it sure ain't going to go away anytime soon.

  8. #37
    Rally Onion! Chip R's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by westofyou View Post
    Hockey was greedy, it has no business being so deep in the south. Swing in your wheelhouse and you'll do fine. Soccer will grow, sure it may never be as big or as over blown as Football is in the US, but it sure ain't going to go away anytime soon.
    And that's all I'm saying. I think a lot of soccer people feel that since soccer is the most popular sport in the world that isn't the US, that is should be on at least a par with football and baseball. There may be surges of popularity from time to time and maybe a pro soccer league can thrive in this country but it's never going to be as popular here as the NFL, MLB, NBA or even NASCAR. Doesn't mean it's a bad sport but I just don't think it's going to catch on like a lot of fans hope it will.
    Quote Originally Posted by Raisor View Post
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    Chip is right

  9. #38
    breath westofyou's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Chip R View Post
    And that's all I'm saying. I think a lot of soccer people feel that since soccer is the most popular sport in the world that isn't the US, that is should be on at least a par with football and baseball. There may be surges of popularity from time to time and maybe a pro soccer league can thrive in this country but it's never going to be as popular here as the NFL, MLB, NBA or even NASCAR. Doesn't mean it's a bad sport but I just don't think it's going to catch on like a lot of fans hope it will.
    What's NASCAR?

  10. #39
    Harry Chiti Fan registerthis's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by westofyou View Post
    What's NASCAR?
    I'd tell you what *I* think the acronym stands for, but I think it would generate some hate mail for me.
    We'll burn that bridge when we get to it.

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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Beckham is not being paid anywhere near $50M by the Galaxy or MLS. As the BBC reported, that sum includes all his promotional endorsements, including an incredibly lucrative Adidas contract and his many tie-ins in the Asian market, where he is ludicriously popular.

    Based on conversations with a friend who is well-connected in certain MLS circles, the league is probably paying about $2M of his salary (as per the salary cap exception rules) and AEG, the owners of the Galaxy, something along the lines of $6-8M a year.

    I have no idea why the press has taken the total number and run with it, it's frankly disingenuous and stupid and is going to cause global bad press for MLS. Note that no one ever mentions Peyton Manning's promotional earnings, or Alex Rodriguez, or any of the other 'major sport' athletes who make far more off the field than through their club salary. Or, quite frankly, the ridiculous salaries Saudi and Qatari soccer clubs pay completely over-the-hill European stars.

  12. #41
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    Do they have anyone worth watching? The days of Brian McBride being long gone, is it true that their top goal scorer had only around 5 goals for the season? That's pitiful.
    McBride might be coming back to Columbus. Columbus has said in recent weeks that he is the player they are targeting with their no salary cap exception. Time will tell if they can convince him to come back.

  13. #42
    Posting in Dynarama M2's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Chip R View Post
    But it's never going to be ingrained in the hearts and minds of Americans like football, basketball and baseball are.
    I was thinking about this a while back and, while I agree that in my lifetime that's probably the case, I think it's important to recognize that some things are peculiar to our era.

    For instance, Gen Xers (and Baby Boomers to a lesser extent) were raised in the NFL era. I was born a few weeks before the first Super Bowl, when football was a distant second to baseball, and by the time I came into sports consciousness the NFL had pretty much seized the top dog position. Supposedly, before I was born people did not sit around all Sunday watching football games, especially those that didn't involve the local team. It's not that no one did it or that people weren't interested, just that it wasn't ingrained behavior to the degree that we see today ... or so I've been led to believe.

    For me, Sunday football was ritual. It actually took me a few years to stop watching the NFL from 1-7 each Sunday even after my interest in the game waned because it literally hadn't occurred to me that you could do something else. When you think about it, football's quite a phemenon with Gen X. Males in my generation watch it in huge numbers, even those who didn't play it at an organized level. Though we all played a lot, even those who never put on a helmet. I remember as a kid, I wound up playing neighborhood football roughly 200 times a year.

    Yet, with the passage of time, we're going to become a less desirable demographic. We also pile on more responsibilities as we get older and Sunday in front of the boob tube becomes a fairly impractical notion. My question is, will following generations share our football mania?

    I don't think that's likely. First off, there's a glut of media these days. We're way past the point where football could rule the roost by dint of being the only thing on. You can watch the best in the world play soccer. Basketball, baseball and hockey are now all over the place as well. Like racing, tennis or golf? There's entire channels for those sports. Like extreme sports? It's all over the place.

    That last one is where football's in the most trouble, IMO. I don't see a lot of neighborhood football games these days. I do see a ton of kids on bikes and skateboards and roller blades trying to pull off tricks. Anecdotally, football doesn't seem to be as much of a casual sporting activity with kids these days. They don't seem to play it as compulsively as we did when I was young.

    So you've got these kids who haven't played a lot of football and who've grown up watching plenty of things other than football. I've got to believe that's going to cost the NFL viewers down the road. In time that will make the sport less prestigious and less wealthy. I don't think it's going broke, but my guess is in a few decades we'll look back on the past four decades as the golden era for the league.

    Kids will also be playing a wider variety of sports and that will impact who ultimately goes to the NFL. Variety will cause kids to gravitate towards other sports. The problem football has is it requires a lot of humanity to play it at the organized level. You need at least 22 kids to run a real scrimmage.

    Here's a quick example of how quickly a football program can erode. Nantucket High School in Massachusetts spent 30+ years as a powerhouse in its neck of the woods. There weren't a lot of kids on Nantucket Island, but every one of them played football. They also had a legendary coach. Everyone turned out to watch the games and kids grew up dreaming of starting for Coach Capizzo. Nantucket won multiple state titles and the team's stars were made men on the island for life. The entire island built an identity around football.

    I came to the island the first year Nantucket High had a soccer team and I got to put together a special section for the big Nantucket-Martha's Vineyard game my first fall. Coach Capizzo had done everything in his power to prevent the high school from having a soccer team, but finally enough kids had come up through youth soccer programs (the product of a lot of yuppies moving their families to the island) that it became unavoidable. As I was interviewing him about the big game and the legacy of football on the island, he told me that in four years it would all be over, that Nantucket wouldn't be a football powerhouse anymore. His reason was simple, there weren't enough kids on the island to field a good football team if some of the better athletes were being siphoned off to soccer. It was going to hurt him at the skill positions. The steady stream of 1,000-yard halfbacks he'd come to enjoy was going to dry up.

    He was right. Nantucket hasn't won a championship since 1996. It's still a good little program with a legendary coach, but all it took was 20 kids deciding to play soccer instead to diminish it.

    Something similar could happen on a national level. A generation could come along and enough varied interests that suddenly football doesn't get its pick of the alpha males. Who knows, maybe it's already happening and we won't see it at the pro level for another decade.

    The NFL really only has one place to go given where it's been. I'm guessing 50 years ago it would have seemed impossible to folks that baseball wouldn't be the top dog sport in the U.S.A. for as long as there is a U.S.A. The world changes.
    Last edited by M2; 01-12-2007 at 05:10 PM.
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  14. #43
    Are we not men? Yachtzee's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Soccer may well be the #1 sport in this country when Hispanic-Americans become the majority, which isn't a far fetched proposition, based on the last census.
    Wear gaudy colors, or avoid display. Lay a million eggs or give birth to one. The fittest shall survive, yet the unfit may live. Be like your ancestors or be different. We must repeat!

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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Yachtzee View Post
    Soccer may well be the #1 sport in this country when Hispanic-Americans become the majority, which isn't a far fetched proposition, based on the last census.
    That particular demographic shift also bodes well for a baseball renaissance, at least theoretically.

  16. #45
    Rally Onion! Chip R's Avatar
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    Re: David Beckham to the MLS!!!

    I thought this was kind of amusing. Evidently, Beckham sought the advice of none other than Tom Cruise in deciding to move here. Calls Tom a "wise man".

    http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070112/...onference_dc_1
    Quote Originally Posted by Raisor View Post
    I was wrong
    Quote Originally Posted by Raisor View Post
    Chip is right


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