No offense to soccer, but I think I’ll stick to real sports like football

At 4 a.m. one night last semester, I crept back into my dorm room after watching the first UNC versus Duke game. I was stone-cold sober and hadn’t been out all night celebrating the win. In fact, I don’t much care for either UNC or Duke.

But when you’re studying in Scotland and you get an offer from a friend who has ESPN360 to watch a basketball game, you take it— because God knows when the opportunity to watch American sports will come again.

Now, I’d consider myself a pretty big sports fan. In fact, talk to anyone who knows me, and they might even tell you I’m certifiably insane. But for the life of me, I just could not get involved with the two biggest sports across the pond: rugby and soccer—excuse me, football.

My first exposure to rugby came in a pub one afternoon in early February when Scotland faced off against England. And I was dumbfounded. I’m not a complete idiot—I knew that forward passes aren’t allowed in rugby. I also knew that, in order to score, you have to physically touch the ball to the ground—an action that spawned the American football term “touchdown.” But other than that, my knowledge was pretty poor.

The entire game I thought, “Why don’t the other guys just throw a block?”

Well, turns out you can only touch the person who has the ball. Which results in a lot of passes to other people who run into the same wall of opponents as the previous ball carrier and give the impression that there will actually never be any forward progression. It’s riveting, let me tell you.
I played soccer as a child. Wasn’t any good at it—I’m not a very athletic, big surprise—but it did give me a basic understanding of the game, which I find incredibly boring. But because everyone else in the world seemed to enjoy it so much, I thought perhaps I was missing the intricacies of the game, the strategy, and understanding that only come with time.

Nope. Soccer, as it turns out, is a pretty straightforward game. If you trip someone unintentionally, you get a yellow card. If you do it intentionally enough, you get a red card and get thrown out of the game. You pass the ball beyond the last defender outside of the goalie and you’re offsides. It’s basically guys running up and down a field for 90 minutes with maybe a combined five shots on goal.

There are exciting parts to both games. Breakaways and amazing passes‑and when someone actually scores, it’s usually in an impressive fashion. But those moments are few and far between. For the other 80 minutes of the game, you’re moving your head back and forth because the possession keeps switching. I mean, these guys get paid to play keep away!

But my English, Brazilian, and Catalan friends kept telling me that it might be boring on TV if you’re not a fan of the teams playing, but it’s completely different when you go to a game.

So my eight closest friends and I bought cheap tickets to the Scotland versus Italy rugby match of the Six Nations tournament and hopped on the bus from St. Andrews to Edinburgh for the game—the one game in the entire series Scotland was actually favored to win.

To get into the spirit of the game, I bought a rugby shirt in Edinburgh as we watched the men in facepaint and kilts make their way to Murrayfield Stadium. Apparently, you’re not a true fan if you don’t wear a kilt. My friend Alden painted the Scottish flag over his entire face. Kristen spray-painted her hair blue.

The highlight of the match? When one of the Italian players tackled a Scottish player and accidentally pulled down his pants. The guy mooned at least the 10,000 people at the game, not counting the ones watching on TV.

It was fun, sure. And I understood what was happening—aside from some of the fouls because their refs don’t announce them on a loudspeaker or give hand signals—you’re just supposed to know. But by halftime, I was ready to leave.

Scotland ended up winning, but that wasn’t much to brag about considering it was the only contest they won. And I did find the Ireland versus England match very exciting on the telly, though not as my single form of entertainment. I couldn’t focus with the same degree of intensity as I do when watching football, basketball, or even baseball—and my friends will tell you that baseball ranks just above golf as my least favorite sport to watch on TV.

The whole world can cry about the stupid Americans not appreciating the sport of soccer. I would cry too if that was the best sport that existed in my country.

Holly MacDonald is a Barnard College senior majoring in history and English. sports@columbiaspectator.com