The first organized soccer club in the country was in Boston in 1862. The first intercollegiate soccer game was played between Princeton and Rutgers in NJ a bit after that. The American Football Association was formed in Newark, NJ in 1884. To say that soccer was popular in St. Louis “a lot longer than in any part of…

Actually I kept reading, and to say that soccer was popular in St. Louis before ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE COUNTRY is a perfect example of hilarious arrogance and just flat-out incorrect stupidity that makes everyone delight in shitting on St. Louis sports fandom.

You lost me at “it’s fun to make fun of St. Louis”

Damn, the soccer fan in St. Louis is sure gonna be pissed.

The absolute 100% worst thing about Marchand isn’t even his dirty/cheap play, it’s how much of a fucking whiner he is. Even on this, the most obvious and clear of slashes/spears right between the legs in retaliation for a cross check and right in front of a ref, Marchand literally stays behind the play and skates…

I think this could still be cool for diehard fans, as it will serve as a youth All-Star tournament for a bunch of countries—hopefully it’ll just basically be the same as the WJC but on a much, much bigger stage.

This is some Brian McCann shit. Beal’s comment makes me want to puke.

Not that it matters, but Stolarz wasn’t the emergency backup, just the regular backup. He got called in at the last minute from their AHL team because of Mason’s illness, but that doesn’t make him “emergency”: http://www.sbnation.com/nhl/2017/4/1/15151494/flyers-emergency-goaltender-eric-semborski

The “hockey players are way tougher than basketball players” memes are kind of just writing themselves here. And I usually mock those memes, but like...pick it up here, fellas.

You’re a moron

I don’t think they are similar at all. There are just sports and women involved in those two scenarios, but they are completely not alike.

“We have plenty of money to pay for these things”...what does that mean? If Buffet and Gates started supporting universities, sure. But universities and state governments are bleeding, badly. Cuts are happening everywhere. So that choice of what things that are losing money and will need to get cut is just how it is.

I interpreted that athletic department losing $1.4 million as all the teams combined losing $1.4 million. That may be a different stat.

I’d love if we lived in a world where everyone could pay for everything and every possible program in the world was fully funded. But that’s not reality. Expense isn’t something you can simply choose not to focus on. The exact scenarios I brought up are being debated all the time by a lot of colleges.

Linking to a message board is never a good move. I don’t how you pulled that $2.5 million number out of your ass, but the entire athletic department (via an official statement from the university) lost only $1.4 million in 2016. Reference: http://espn991.com/university-of-north-dakota-athletics-are-losing-money-and-the…

What about this, which shocked me. Michigan State football generates 7 times more revenue than ALL OTHER SPORTS combined besides basketball...that’s crazy. If you add up Kentucky football and basketball, they generate 28 times more revenue than all other sports combined. I knew the gaps were big, but I didn’t know…

That’s just blatantly false. Literally a 5 second Google search proves that wrong. Alabama’s football team made $103 million in revenue and $47 million in profit last year alone.

I never said that’s their purpose. But it is the reality that money will dictate action when money is limited, which it always is—especially so with the majority of colleges.

Yeah. I know that (unfortunately) the money doesn’t literally just swap hands like that, but that type of debate is basically what I have going on in my hands. And it seems pretty clear to me that the money-draining sports should lose out.

Yeah, this is a good point. I forgot about that book “Death to the BCS”, which was super interesting and provocative back when it was written.