Joe's Folly? Ted Lasso has some insight into proposed South Loop soccer stadium

 

     Old habits die hard.
     When I read in the Sun-Times that Joe Mansueto has agreed to personally finance construction of a 22,000-seat soccer stadium in the South Loop, my immediate response was to smile at another rich man's folly. Soccer? Really? Who wants to watch a soccer game?
     But then a certain mustachioed coach wandered into mind.
     "Be curious," Ted Lasso said, in that folksy Kansas twang. "Not judgmental."
     Yes, Ted claimed to be quoting Walt Whitman, which is ridiculous. "Judgmental" is a 20th century word.
     It wasn't even coined until 1873, which happens to be the year Whitman had a stroke — I'm assuming the two events are unrelated — and he spent the rest of his life molesting his 1855 "Leaves of Grass."
     "Judgmental" isn't even an entry in my 1978 Oxford English Dictionary. Suggesting Whitman used the word "judgmental" is like claiming Lincoln said, "Transgender rights are human rights."
     But I digress, a folk illness among those with a fondness for words.
     "Be curious; not judgmental" is still good advice, even if coined by Jason Sudeikis, who along with Brendan Hunt — cast as the dark, deep-watered Coach Beard — are the masterminds behind Apple TV hit "Ted Lasso." The pair developed the show to reflect their own growing soccer interest as improv comedians at Boom Chicago, a Second City clone in Amsterdam.
      I became curious, learning that Mansueto is sinking one-tenth of his personal fortune into this project. Mansueto is worth $6.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. Building this stadium — taking the $650 million price tag at face value and ignoring the inevitable cost overruns — means he'll only have $6.2 billion left. Bold.
     My curiosity centered around this question: Did "Ted Lasso," which lent much-needed humanity to the first, awful COVID year, also boost the popularity of soccer?
     In ancient times, when I was growing up, American kids played soccer, informally, but it wasn't a sport we followed professionally. Nobody traded soccer cards. Soccer, like the metric system, was something happening far away, in Europe and South America.
     As recently as 2014, only 4% of American adults answered the question, "How closely do you follow Major League Soccer?" with "very" or "somewhat closely" while 80% said "Not at all."
     When "Ted Lasso" — a show about a small-time American college football coach improbably brought over to England to lead a fictional, hapless soccer team, AFC Richmond. — debuted in August 2020, the proportion of American soccer fans had soared to 5% while only 70%, like me, completely ignored the sport. I'd heard of Pelé, but wouldn't recognize him if he kicked me in the shin.
     As "Ted Lasso's" popularity grew, so did soccer's. Today, 12% of Americans — triple the number 10 years ago — follow soccer, while only two-thirds ignore it.
     But to credit "Ted Lasso" for the change is an ad hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this) error. Twelve percent of Americans is 40 million U.S. soccer fans.
     The Season 3 opening episode of "Ted Lasso" drew 870,000 households. If an average household has about two viewers, that means the United States has over 20 times the number of soccer fans as it does "Ted Lasso" viewers. If anything, soccer boosted "Lasso," not the other way around.

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