US Soccer

The US women made it to the finals, a lot deeper than most people would have expected. While they have elevated the sport for a while in the US, I think it will only be for a fleeting moment. Soccer seems to fall out of people's interests after high school. As I watched the World Cup Finals last weekend, I was thinking about what would need to change to get the US audience into it.

Field Size
The field is simply too large... equivalent to several American football fields. So sot of the game is spent battling back and forth in the middle of the field. You often have to kick in the wrong direction to avoid opponents. And it's fairly safe to do so because the field is huge and you're usually not in danger even if you turn the ball over. So this can go on for hours without scoring. The solution is to shrink the field. It would force more face-offs and scoring plays. It wouldn't sacrifice any skills, but would make the game a lot more exciting. Players would be moving around all the time and get tired faster. Notice how all the scoring is towards the end of the game when the defense is fatigued. Also, for the TV audience, the camera shots would look a lot better.

Time
The game is just too damn long... 2 45 min halves. If there's a tie, it's 2 more 30 min halves. That's too long for anyone's attention span, especially when combined with the oversized field. Maybe shorten it to 4 15 minute quarters... slightly longer than a basketball game. The OT is unnecessarily long too... almost the length of the game. It should be sudden death to speed things up and keep players sharp for the duration.

Bonuses
There's only one scoring move in this game... kick a goal and get 1 point. How about a 2 point shot from a certain distance? The field is large and plain. Long shots are considerably harder.

So I basically turned soccer into basketball using your feet. But there's a reason why basketball is a more popular sport and why there's a whole culture around it.