Once every four years or so--usually around World Cup time, but not always--the hype for soccer and its impending popularity surge in America becomes unbearable. We are constantly reminded that the rest of the world devours soccer voraciously and that America is somehow less sophisticated because we prefer sports that are interesting to watch.

This past summer the soccer lovers came to my camp in droves, preparing to spread their love of the sport and at the same time castigate those (well, at least me) who did not enjoy soccer. For them, non-soccer fans were "ignorant" and did not like soccer because "they don't understand it." Moreover, they said I did not like soccer because I never played it. As my good friend Zack Colman pointed out to me, fans of other sports will leave you alone if you don't like it but soccer fans seem unwilling to do so.

Well I admit that I have not always given soccer an open-minded chance and probably am ignorant, should I have to understand or play soccer to enjoy it? I enjoy watching hockey, but my feet never fit comfortably into ice skates and I was (am) slower than a two-legged dog and therefore never enjoyed playing the sport. While I don't necessarily understand the intricacies of the sport, I can still watch hockey live or on TV and derive utility.

Although I play basketball about five times a year, my previously acknowledged (lack of) fleet of foot and a correlated lack of jumping ability prevents me from playing the sport with any semblance of regularity. That being said, I devoted more time to watching the 2006 NBA playoffs and NCAA tournament than ever before.

This brings me to football, which is by far my favorite sport to watch. While certainly handicapped in hockey and basketball, my body structure prohibits me from ever playing football. Every Friday afternoon--rain, shine, or blizzard--all of my friends play football and every week I need to think of a new excuse of why I can't play. The real excuse is that I can't run, throw, or catch and especially can't tackle. Despite all of this, I am glued to the television for a combined 20 hours on Saturday and Sunday, watching as much football as possible.

The fact of the matter is, soccer is not an exciting sport to watch--especially on television. Devoting two hours to a sport where there will be a maximum of 5 scores, a strong possibility for a tie, and no overt strategy just does not appeal to me.

Because of the lack of substitutions, the players are all visibly winded and tired at the ends of games. 1-0 leads are often insurmountable because the leading team sits on the ball for 45 minutes and the other team does not have the energy to pry the ball away, run up the field, penetrate a prevent defense of eight men, and then score on the absurdly athletic goalie. The field is both too long and too wide and there are too many men in play. The lightness of the ball prevents long-range accuracy in shots, the announcers over-dramatize simple plays, and the players don't look like they could compete in the NFL or NBA--they look like glorified track runners.

The worst part about soccer is the faking of injuries. How am I supposed to enjoy a sport where Manu Ginobli would be in the top 10% in toughness? The pace of the game is slowed down even more than usual because in every game there are at least ten plays where a player goes down and conveys the same level of agony as Nancy Kerrigan. Soccer fans defend this ridiculous behavior as "gamesmanship," but to me it makes the game seem more like a farce than a sport.

All of this would be fine if soccer fans would allow me to ignore the sport in peace. They are the only group of fans that will not accept the fact that not everyone enjoys their sport. When someone tells me that they don't like watching the NFL I don't immediately get defensive and proceed to insult their intelligence (well, at least out loud). To a soccer fan, it is inconceivable that everyone else does not share the same passion that they do for soccer and they feel like they have to be missionaries spreading a religion so that the ignorant can be saved.

Because of obnoxious soccer fans, I went from merely not watching the sport to going out of my way not to watch it. Their insistance that I do not understand the sport has led me to embrace my ignorance instead of trying to understand. The reality of the matter is that soccer will never be big in America and it is because baseball, football, basketball, and hockey are more exciting and fulfilling to watch.

Attention sports columnists: there is actually a rather large gray area that exists between being a homer and being a douche bag.

I understand that there are few things that are more annoying than the columnist or broadcaster who always makes excuses for the home team, never offer critical analysis, and wear their hearts on their sleeves when writing/talking about their teams. That being said, one of the few things that is more obnoxious than a homer is a columnist who is a douche bag.

These columnists are ones that consistently undermine the efforts of the team they cover by criticizing every single move, constantly whine, and are excessively negative. While these writers claim that they are merely being objective, their agenda is exactly the same as that of homers, but in the form of negativity instead of extreme optimism.

For example, last week in the Chicago Sun-Times, Jay Mariotti wrote, "Can we agree it's the worst job in baseball, worse than cleaning slimy dugout floors or discarding used steroids syringes? Just because the Cubs have a managerial opening doesn't mean anyone wants the job."

The manager of the Cubs is the worst job in baseball? Really? For me, being the manager of the Cubs seems like one of the best jobs in baseball because the fanbase is passionate, the city of Chicago is beautiful during the summer, and the culture of losing has been so far ingrained in the culture of the Cubs that you are a victim of the system if you lose but are a colossal hero if you ever win the World Series. Despite the fact that the Cubs have been uncompetitive for the last few seasons, no one would argue that the Cubs have less of a chance to win the World Series next year than the Pirates, Royals, Devil Rays, Nationals, or Orioles. The managerial job of the Cubs is a job with extremely high upside and relatively little downside, yet Mariotti exaggerates the downside of the position by saying that "the grief, the boos, the hassles, [and]the abuse" come with the job.

Columnists like Mariotti, the Boston Globe's Dan Shaughnessy, every columnist at the New York Times and Daily News, and Jeff Jacobs of the Hartford Courant almost never have anything positive to say, do not give credit where it is due, and seek to undermine the home team's efforts while defending themselves because they aren't homers. What they do not understand is that it is possible to be critical when it is necessary while not being a douche bag 100% of the time. Michael Wilbon does this very well. This week, he correctly notes that the "Redskins are the most disappointing team in the NFL after the first third of the season," but then goes on to offer solutions instead of grossly exaggerating the team's problems and giving them no chance to succeed.

My biggest problem with the douche bag columnists is that I do not understand what their point is. Why undermine the team that most of their readers root for? One of the reasons that newspaper sports sections are a dying breed is that readers have moved on to the internet for their sportswriting where people like Bill Simmons and sites like Deadspin offer legitimate sports coverage without a selfish, negative agenda. While extremist negative columnists may sell more papers in the short run, they just piss people off in the long run.