OU needs a men's soccer team in the next three years, and we need to start investing in the women's team today.
In fact, I propose that OU draft a long-term plan very soon to phase out football and replace it with soccer as the sport that the university invests the most.
I know that it is a crime to speak blasphemy against football in these parts, but lets face it, soccer is on its way up. Football is on its way down. According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the most recent statistics show that high school football participation dropped from 1,133,350 in 1977 to 981,790 in 1997. A Harris Poll conducted in October of 2002 showed that professional football declined in popularity by 6 percent of the whole population from 1999 to 2002.
Soccer on the other hand has only been surging upward in popularity since 1990. According to the Soccer Industry Council of America, as of 1999, more than 17 million Americans played soccer. And in 1999, 3.6 million youths under 19 were registered to play, a number that grew from 8 percent to 10 percent a year since 1990. Even in Norman, a bastion of American gridiron tradition, the number of pre-high school youths participating in organized football is a mere fraction of the number of youths participating in organized soccer.
Americans are building a culture where a large population that played soccer in youth will follow it as an audience in later years, and as early as 20 to 30 years down the road, soccer could be the most popular sport in our country. Baseball was once America's favorite pastime because generations ago kids would play pick-up baseball in empty sandlots. Today those sandlots are covered with grass and the kids playing on them dribble a ball with their feet.
None of this might be affecting OU yet. The university profits gratuitously from football with Bob Stoops at the helm, but it will. One must know, however, that there are only a handful of schools in the NCAA that make money on football. Some schools break even. Most schools, including bigtime programs, lose money. In fact, OU was losing close to $2 million a year on football in the years leading up to Stoops' hiring. It's only a matter of time before universities start to realize that football is simply a bad economic venture.
There are several aspects of soccer that make it inherently more appealing than football. By nature, football is strictly a gladiator sport. Players on the field risk life-debilitating injuries for the enjoyment of the spectators in the stands. As mentioned before only a small portion of the population actually plays, it is almost impossible to play into older age, and in order to play football as it is written in the rules and observed on TV simply requires too much equipment.
Soccer on the other hand is a participatory sport, requiring only a ball, markers for goals and players. As we see in photographs from around the world, one doesn't even need shoes to play. More importantly, soccer a is a sport that offers equal participation between males and females.
Because of this gender parity, substituting soccer for football could singlehandedly alleviate the Title IX controversies that arise because there are no women's sports that necessitate the number of scholarships the men's football team eats up. Therefore, soccer is also friendly to other sports. If you played a sport other than football in high school, just think, you could be receiving a scholarship somewhere in the absence of football, or at OU if we had a soccer team instead of a football team.
From the spectator standpoint, soccer is exciting because it provides nonstop action throughout every second of the allotted playing time. It is not continuously starting and stopping and scoring could take place at any moment.
Finally, soccer is important to have at OU because soccer is the universal language. It's no wonder that we can't cooperate or even be a part of the U.N. when we aren't even speaking the same universal language that the rest of the member nations are. Soccer is a diplomatic tool. It is revered worldwide in every culture. "In South America, soccer is a lifestyle. For the people of Brazil, the two most important things are God in heaven and soccer on earth," said Leonardo Alves, University College freshman from Brazil.
"Back home, in most of my friends' rooms are posters of soccer players, soccer cards, and soccer jerseys. I know that I have two soccer jerseys: England and Aberdine," said Kenah Nyanat, University College freshman from Malaysia.
"By not having a world class sport such as men's soccer at OU we might be passing the message that we don't really care about being part of the world," said Glauco Ortolano, assistant professor of modern languages and literature. "And that is condescending to say the least."
Of course, the U.S. soccer team that had been the perennial doormat of world soccer competition is on the rise. Last year the men competed to their highest round ever in the World Cup, playing in a quarterfinal game with Germany.
And of course, the U.S. women have been nothing but utterly dominant on the global scale, winning the first ever Women's World Cup in 1999, and poised to take another this summer in China.
That being said, in reality, if OU were to abandon football for soccer, enrollment figures would probably drop, donations from football-loving alumni would come to a screeching halt and in many ways the school would lose a fundamental piece of its historical identity. However, if it is the goal of OU to become a first tier university among the best in the nation and the world, it has to start shifting its focus outward.
OU has to stop backpedaling into the past and has to take a step into the future. And in sports, soccer is the future. We have to start planting the seeds for a successful program before the reign of soccer sweeps over the country. It's only a matter of time.
-- Carlo Romero is a University College freshman. His column appears on alternate Mondays. He can be reached at dailyopinion@ou.edu.
hello there & you too