Simmons - "...it wasn't a bandwagon thing"

ESPN's Bill Simmons is one of the great sports writers, and writes of how soccer has officially arrived in the US-

When Donovan scored that Cup-saving goal against those spineless playing-for-a-tie-when-they-needed-to-win-by-two-goals Algerians, the moment resonated like no other goal in American soccer history. We didn't have anyone telling us how we should feel, what the implications were, what the moment meant. We knew what it meant. We wanted more games. We wanted our boys to keep playing. Someone scored. We celebrated. We jumped up and down. We ran around the room. We were alive for another game. For once in a fragmented sports world, we all happened to be rooting for the same thing.

When does that happen anymore? In 2010, you can follow any athlete, whether he plays 13 miles away or 3,000. You can watch any game you want. You can read any and every opinion that exists. You can find out information as soon as it happens, instead of 12-18 hours later in a newspaper. You can interact with other fans who love your team; you can butt heads with the people who hate them. You can tweet your thoughts on a big play as the players are still celebrating it. You can root for your real guys and your fantasy guys. You are fanatically autonomous.

We didn't have nearly as many choices when I was growing up. Either you rooted for local teams or you jumped on a successful bandwagon (such as the Steelers' or Cowboys') because they were always on national TV. The days of "I'm going to fall in love with Oklahoma City because I love watching Kevin Durant, even though I live in Maine" were still decades away. Eight-Year-Old Me rooted for the four Boston teams, Ali, Nicklaus, Connors and Leonard. I hated the Yankees, Raiders, Dolphins, Canadiens, Flyers, Sixers, Munson, Nettles, Stabler, Clarke and Kareem. I liked Earl Campbell and the Oilers' uniforms. I liked David Thompson and George Gervin. I loved all Topps cards. I loved Gerry Cheevers' mask. I loved Terry O'Reilly and Mike Haynes. I loved Freddie Lynn more than anything. And those were the only real sports opinions I had.

Fast-forward to 2010. What shapes Eight-Year-Old Me? How would EYOM settle on 10-12 things to love and hate? How would EYOM differentiate substance from nonsense? How could a moment stand out for EYOM when everything gets televised or covered? It's total sports overload. Too many choices, too much noise, too many extremes, too many niches, too many forums, too many opinions, too many people trying to stand out. You become numb after a while. The only thing that never gets old? Winning in the most dramatic way possible, then basking in the glow of that dramatic victory with as many people as possible.

Recently, Tiger Woods came closest to uniting everyone for a common rooting interest -- remember the 2008 U.S. Open? -- but his career imploded and he squandered that momentum indefinitely (if not forever). There is no "Wildly Popular American Athlete" or "Wildly Popular American Team." We even turned on Brett Favre. We only share the Olympics together, every two years. A rotating cast of athletes that fleetingly capture our affection, and after that, we never consider them again.

The U.S. soccer team could own that "everyone" domain for the simple reason that it's unattainable for anyone else. We always want our national soccer team to succeed; it would be un-American to feel differently. There's continuity through the years when certain players (such as Donovan, Howard and 2010 breakout star Michael Bradley, locks to make the 2014 World Cup) stick around for a prolonged time. There's always a finish line (the Cup every four years), with dozens of exhibitions, smaller tournaments and World Cup qualifying strewn in between. If you want, you can extend your attachment by following American stars on their club squads. Add everything up and it feels like following the Lakers, Red Sox, Niners or whomever.

(Note: I knew I was hooked on Saturday, after Bob Bradley started Ricardo Clark over Maurice Edu, when I was sending e-mails back and forth with friends much like I would have done had Doc Rivers started Tony Allen in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. What the hell is going on? Why are we doing this? Is Edu injured or something? This is terrible! WHY??????? You may have been sending those same e-mails to your buddies, too. That's the "everyone" domain.)

A cynic might say, "Come on, you could have said the same thing when we beat Colombia in 1994." No way. You need time with these things. Decades. You need kids like me to grow up with soccer in their lives. You need a few memories to stack up. You need it to happen organically. The theory that soccer would never catch on until we found our own Pelé or launched our own successful pro league was dead wrong. We only needed to be exposed to great soccer for a prolonged period of time. We're American. We only respond to the best. The cream of the crop. Nothing else is going to fly.

We don't care that much about Donovan playing for the L.A. Galaxy with guys who couldn't sniff the Premier League, just like English people wouldn't care about seeing Dwyane Wade playing with a bunch of D-Leaguers in London. We want to see Donovan tested against the best. In the months leading up to the 2010 World Cup, I watched Donovan play big games for our national team, for the Galaxy (in the playoffs), then overseas for a solid Everton team. I knew he was a world-class player. I knew he was legitimate. I wasn't stealing that opinion from a magazine or a talking head. The hours I logged with Donovan made me feel invested in him.

It's just easier to care about soccer now. Actually, it's something of a perfect storm -- the technology in place, the flaws of our own professional sports, the efficiency of soccer games, our longing for the pre-JumboTron days when people just cheered and that's what fans did, our best-of-the-best fetish, ESPN's unwavering commitment to pushing the sport, the urgency of every game -- that makes more sense as a whole than it did 10 years ago. After that crushing Ghana defeat, the U.S. players weren't devastated just because they blew a winnable game, but because they knew a growing number of Americans actually cared and it wasn't simply a bandwagon thing. (The TV ratings backed it up: an astonishing 19.4 million U.S. viewers.) It was like pining for the same girl for four years in college, finally hooking up with her one night, then getting kicked out of school the next day.

Dammit! I blew it! I had her! We could have had something!

Regardless, the U.S. completed Stage 1. Soccer is no longer taking off. It's here. Those celebratory YouTube videos that started popping up in the 24 hours after Donovan's goal -- all unfolding the same way, with a stationary shot of nervous fans watching the game in a bar, going quiet for a couple of seconds during the American counterattack, reacting to Dempsey's miss ("Nooooooooo!"), holding their breath for two beats ("Wait a second …"), exploding on Donovan's finish ("Hi-yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"), then chanting "USA! USA! USA!" afterward -- tapped into a collective American sports experience unlike anything since Lake Placid.

I would never compare Donovan's goal to Mike Eruzione's goal, or compare the significance of an early-round World Cup game to the best American sports night ever. But you can't tell me Donovan's goal was a fleeting moment or a lark. Each celebration clip that landed on YouTube could have been any American bar, any group of American friends, anywhere. Like John Cougar Mellencamp's annoying Chevy commercial sprung to life. Only it wasn't annoying. I thought it was glorious. Those clips choked me up. Those clips gave me goosebumps. Those clips made me think, "I forget this sometimes, but I'm glad I live in the United States of America."

Rasheed Wallace loved to say "ball don't lie." YouTube don't lie, either. We will always have the Algeria game. Always.