The state of U.S. Youth Soccer

The first track has its origins in politics. In the 1970s, parents across the USA pulled their kids out of Pop Warner football and Little League and stuck them into soccer on the notion that the game was "less violent." Now, obviously, these parents had never seen an Old Firm game, but the point is that all of a sudden soccer went from being a sport to an "activity."

The two are very different — a "sport" is a contest.

Some people are better than others: somebody wins, somebody loses. In the gauzy view of the 1970s, soccer was retro-fitted to make it a game where everyone got a chance to play, and everyone got a trophy for showing up. Everyone was special — and therefore no one was special, and thus soccer became a symbol of liberal excess. While it's a stretch to call this activity 'Communist' (as some did at the time), it's pretty clear that a game in which everyone gets to play and everyone wins is not a sport.

This version of 'soccer' lives on today in the American Youth Soccer Association.