世界盃正在德國如火如荼的進行中，然而如果來到了美國，你就會發現美國人對於這個讓世界瘋狂的賽事表現的一如往常的冷漠，在那裏，人們會在體育類的電視節目中選擇棒球，籃球或是橄欖球而非英式足球。也許來自ABC電視臺的一些數據能讓我們來見識一下美國人是如何對世界盃視而不見的。ABC轉播的前八場世界盃比賽收視率僅有2.5%，約800萬人，2002年世界盃決賽的觀眾也只有390萬人，而全球的觀眾則是11億，與之形成鮮明對比的是收看今年“超級碗”的觀眾就有910萬，差不多390萬美國人觀看了奧斯卡頒獎典禮，上個月的“美國偶像”決賽的觀眾則達到了360萬，想想吧，這些本國的節目和一個世界性的超級大戲相比，居然在美國人心中是一樣的地位，甚至還高於後者。
鏈結：http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=reu-worldyawndc&prov=reuters&type=lgns
原文：
World Cup a big yawn in soccer-hating US
By Steve James
NEW YORK (Reuters) - If you look west from Germany these days you'll see America stifling a yawn at the World Cup.
Despite a doubling of TV ratings for the first-round matches this month, before the U.S. squad failed miserably, soccer still ranks below televised poker tournaments in a land where baseball, basketball and American football rule.
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To put it in context, ABC-TV's average rating of 2.5 for the first eight matches it aired represents barely 8 million viewers in a nation of just under 300 million. Only 3.9 million Americans watched the 2002 World Cup final, out of 1.1 billion worldwide.
By comparison, nearly 91 million viewers watched this year's Super Bowl, the glitzy climax to the season for America's home-grown form of football. Nearly 39 million watched the Academy Awards, Hollywood's big night, in March and 36 million tuned in for last month's finale of "American Idol," a TV talent show.
And on ABC's sports cable network, ESPN, which presumably attracts more serious sports fans, the World Cup has had even fewer viewers, averaging around 1.75 million on channels that reach 91 million homes.
No surprise then, that a poll by the Global Market Insite market research service found only 11 percent of Americans surveyed were "definitely" interested in the World Cup, compared with 45 percent of respondents world-wide.
"Despite an estimated combined $420 million invested in official partnerships by U.S.-based corporations to gain worldwide visibility, the facts don't lie: the U.S. lags significantly behind other countries when it comes to being passionate about 'the beautiful game' of soccer," GMI said.
The poll revealed that 56 percent of Americans did not even know that the 2006 World Cup was taking place in Germany.
NOT PART OF CULTURE
Soccer just isn't part of the culture in a country that often prides itself on sporting isolationism.
Millions of kids may play the game in America. But unlike the spontaneity of soccer on Rio or Cape Town beaches, or in the alleys of Berlin and Bologna, you don't see kids kicking a ball around on the streets of Philadelphia or Memphis.
American opinion is still shaped by a handful of sports commentators who can barely hide their hostility. Yet, even as the U.S. team was competing in its fifth consecutive finals, two long-time opponents of soccer appeared to soften.
First, it was Frank Deford, a Sports Illustrated columnist, who delights in provoking soccer fans with outrageous jibes.
In a National Public Radio commentary, he actually praised the passion of the world's fans, and called soccer players "rock stars of sweat."
But the transformation was fleeting, as he still thinks soccer is not for Americans.
"America is one of the few countries that escaped being infected by the soccer pandemic," Deford went on. There is more interest this month in the professional basketball and hockey playoffs in America, "the only country where soccer is not important," he said.
Another apparent convert was Jack Kemp, the former NFL quarterback and Republican presidential candidate, who once called soccer "socialistic and collectivist" during a speech in Congress.
Yet he acknowledged in a posting on his Web site this week that seven or eight of his 16 grandchildren play soccer.
"Watching our USA soccer team tie the Italian team last week and on Sunday watching the athleticism of the Brazilian team, I'm hereby publicly acknowledging that soccer can be interesting to watch," said Kemp.
Unfortunately, he couldn't resist a late hit.
"I love soccer, but it's still boring," he added.
If a nation's newspapers reflect its thinking, then USA Today has America's attitude to soccer nailed down.
"That Americans have a love-hate relationship with soccer is indisputable," columnist William Mattox Jr. wrote last week. "We love to play the game, or at least to have our children play it. But we hate to watch it.
The newspaper ran letters echoing his comments.
"If America hadn't been founded by the pilgrims leaving ... to seek freedom of religion, a few hundred years later America would have been founded by the pilgrims seeking freedom from soccer," wrote Rollie Robinson of Portland, Oregon.
作者—北京第二外國語學院-英語系-于歡
責編：盧爽