Deliver me from the World Cup

The World's biggest sporting event, soccer's World Cup, began Friday in South Africa.

Zzzzzzzz!

This is just the latest in a long line of attempts to assure us that interest in soccer is poised to explode in the USA.

I'll believe it when I see it. I've been hearing the same thing since the 1960s and the North American Soccer League. Remember the Atlanta Chiefs, Kaizer "Boy Boy" Motaung and Emment Kapengwe?

I tried to watch, because there were far fewer TV sports options back then than there are now. It would be a pretty good treatment for insomnia -- maybe better than golf.

All those kiddies running around playing soccer the past three decades have grown up -- and so have their sports tastes. They've moved on to interesting sports.

America is a country of winners. We don't like losing and don't care about sports where we don't dominate or don't have a chance to do so. The American drive to succeed is a major reason why we aren't speaking Japanese or German.

Heaven help us if Americans begin settling for ties.

Through the first two games of the World Cup, there have been zero wins and zero losses. That's appropriate. Soccer is the Switzerland of sports. Neutrality is preferred.

Are the lives of people in every other country really so unfulfilling that they get excited about this stuff? If so, to quote Lee Greenwood "I'm proud to be an American."

I can appreciate that not everyone's sports interests are alike. Baseball's my favorite, and right now, for me, college baseball outpaces MLB. Don't give me any grief about baseball being boring. It's light years ahead of soccer in excitement.

I find it humorous that most of the sporting world looks down on the USA because we don't get excited about guys kicking a ball up and down a field - that's way too large - with about four legitimate scoring opportunities per game - on a good day.

If they want to make soccer interesting, then remove the goalie -- or ban him from using his hands, too. Then, it might -- might -- be a sport worth watching.

What happens to the soccer growth in the USA if the American team goes 0-3 and out in the first round? Then, it will be time to prepare for soccer as America's sport of the 2020's.

If soccer's your sport, knock yourself out -- but don't try to tell me I don't know what I'm missing.

I do.

Not much.