Soccer--the Thinking man's game.

Man, I thought I was busy before, but in the last several weeks, I’ve been working overtime and pulling out my hair dealing with a cranky server. So apologies for the further lack of posts—I’m a lazy bastard.

We’ve had only one Thunder home game, and it was weeks ago… and it’s still nearly three weeks until the next one. It’s a shambles of a schedule with the big break and the road trip at the end of the season, but June and July are going to be chock-full of fùtbol goodness.
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There’s a former Minnesota Thunder player who is now playing abroad that I communicate with via email and such, and a recent conversation brought something home to me. The subject doesn’t matter much, but the fact that the conversation ranged from psychological egoism to Heisenberg and back is not exactly what you expect from a pro-athlete.

There’s a profound difference in this country with the level of players’ intelligence. How many players in England, Scotland, Italy or Spain are likely to spend time talking to a fan about advanced physics or obscure philosophical doctrines? Not many, I’d guess.

I’d even question how many players in the NFL, MLB, NHL or NBA would do that sort of thing. I can recall it being a big story when Robert Smith retired from the Vikings at the ripe old age of 28 because he had better things to do with his life—like write books and pursue his Chemical Engineering degree or something.

The fact that most soccer players who come through the youth ranks in this country and go to college know that they will probably not make a whole lot of money playing tends to lead them to actually pursue their degrees. They need a backup plan much more than star athletes in college football or baseball.

I mean, where are the winners of the Herman trophy these days? Sure even those from the early 90s like Alexi Lalas (’91) and Brad Friedel (’92) are able to get paid for their play, but what about guys like Tom Kain (’85) or Bruce Murray (‘87)? Contrast them with the careers of the concurrent winners of the Heisman, Doug Flutie and Tim Brown respectively. None of those four had their career killed by injury, but while Tim Brown can live off the money he made playing for Oakland (and Tampa Bay,) while Murray, despite being arguably THE best US player in the late 80s must continue to work, even if he’s employed in the game (he’s currently a coach at Harvard,) he can’t be making a heckuva lot of money at it.

This trend is perhaps moving away as the entering rookie class of 2006 to MLS included a lot of players who are choosing not to get a college degree from like Wynn and Arvizu. Is this good or bad for the sport?

While I think it signals a good thing for the pay structure and playing level of the sport, as long as players in MLS are making barely minimum wage ($11,700/52 weeks /40hrs = $5.62/hr) players will always need a backup plan.

But I like to think of soccer players as slightly more cerebral, at least in this country, than the fat heads in the NFL, the toothless NHL players or the gangsta-hip-hop-wanna-bes in the NBA. I suppose I’ll trade the cerebral players for better play, though. Celebrity athletes I’ve been trained to deal with since birth.

So the future probably holds more Adus and Wynns than it does Chris Vorenkamps, but that’s probably good as far as the level of play goes. I just hope that there are still enough of the latter type to fill the ranks of minor league teams and keep us soccer nerds happy.