You can’t pay me to watch soccer

June 23, 2026

Dell Franklin walking his dog on the beach

By DELL FRANKLIN

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

One of the people I hang out with in the morning at Cayucos Coffee asked, “Are you going to watch the soccer matches?” Knowing I’m an avid sports fan who loves talking sports, he was all enthused, even excited about the World Cup of soccer coming to America.

“No,” I said. “I am not watching soccer.”

He looked so disappointed, even stunned. “Why not? It’s a great sport.”

“I’m not going to watch one second of soccer.” I said firmly.

“But don’t you want to watch the Americans play? It’s the World Cup. We have a great team.”

“So what. I don’t care about the World Cup. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“But aren’t you at least rooting for the Americans to win?”

“I don’t care what they do. Soccer is alien to me. I’m sick of hearing about it. I don’t wanna hear soccer experts and former players on TV and radio talk about soccer anymore than I want so-called experts talking about pickleball or lacrosse or horseshoes or fucking corn-hole. I have enough on my plate with football, basketball and baseball…”

“…But soccer’s a great game, like hockey. Great athletes doing their thing.”

“I realize they’re great athletes. I think hockey’s a great game. But I can’t watch it even if the skill’s are amazing. There’s not enough scoring and I can only watch so much sports.

“As for soccer, I find it insufferably boring and aggravating. A bunch of maniacs running up and down a field kicking at a ball and there’s hardly any scoring and when there is, everybody has to go apeshit, everybody tackling the scorer, the announcer going nuts, all the stupid flag-waving in the stands.

“And then there’s the body contact and faking injury. When these guys get touched or brushed or pushed, not only do they flop, but as they go down they’re already feinting like they’re dying, like they’ve been shot in the heart, and then they roll around and everybody runs over and the guy’s still rolling around in agony and then they go to a commercial and when the commercials are over the guy who was dying is up and moving around good as new.

“How can you watch this shit after watching a football game where a guy gets hit so hard by a monster who runs fast and weighs close to 300 pounds and is intentionally trying to discourage or demoralize or even knock the guy out of the game and he jumps up and pounds his chest and talks trash to the monster who tried to dismember him?”

“Jesus, Dell, you’re a real downer. I thought you loved sports.”

“I’m down on sports. You can’t even watch the games you wanna watch or the teams you root for on cable anymore because everything nowadays is streamed out on fucking Apple and Amazon and Hulu and Netflix and Disney this and NBC that and ESPN this and HBO that, so that the bastards are trying to squeeze every extra penny out of you because they know you’re a sports addict, they know you can’t bear to miss a playoff game with your team and are forcing you to pay extra to stream, and I say fuck the bloodsuckers, I’m on the verge of shit-canning sports.

“What they charge at games for seats, parking, food, is a disgrace, and now you can’t even get the game you want on TV without paying more and more, and you end up in a bar to watch your team’s playoff game because you’re desperate, and you get fucking drunk and end up blowing a ton of money buying drinks for yourself and a friend you bump into who buys you one, and you wobble home drunk and wake up with a hangover, all because these greedy pricks are trying to squeeze you until you’re wallowing in poverty over a fucking stupid sport while the players and owners and agents and all the rest of the sharks are getting rich!”

By this time, I had driven the friendly, affluent, always upbeat associate away, possibly ruining his day. But I felt better. This has all been building up in me for months, a year.

And of course the Americans won their first two World Cup soccer games and it’s getting worse, the pundits and experts are going hog-wild, everybody’s gaga, praising and blessing this sport, claiming it will take over America at some point just as it has taken over the world, and what really pisses me off is that it is not on the streaming services, no, it’s on Fox.

I can get it any time I want, but I can’t get the baseball game I want when it’s being streamed.

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a sports fan and sports addict, because I feel like I’ve actually wasted decades of my time and wish I’d found something else to waste my time on, but I’m hooked, and I’m pretty pissed off and you can shove soccer up your “you know what!”