All other sports are just entertainment, soccer is a force of nature. It’s a true global phenomenon that both unites and divides the world’s population, and every four years sends TV audiences through the roof. Over 5.6 billion people watched live matches in the 2006 World Cup and almost 300 million tuned in for the final.

It has caused international incidents (the blatant handball by French striker Thierry Henry last year soured relations between France and Ireland) and even wars (the 100-hour Football War between El Salvador and Honduras). Yet it has also been credited for breaking down barriers, the most famous example being a game played by British and German soldiers in no-man’s-land between the trenches on Christmas Day, 1915.

This June, the 19th Football World Cup will take place in South Africa, but while the rest of the world is bracing itself for the onset of football fever, America stands alone. How and why, I don’t quite understand. Unquestionably the U.S. could decide to become a real competitor. It has the facilities, the money and the patriotic fervor to be up there with the very best of them. If America really, really wanted to win the World Cup it would happen. Maybe not this tournament, or even the next, but a team with the full force of the USA behind it would become a world beater.

The problem is, I don’t think America really wants this. But the USA cannot isolate itself from international sport forever, so I say you have two options: If you won’t join us, beat us. Take one of your sports and turn it truly global.

But could any American sport ever really match soccer? There are only four U.S. sports that could maybe fit the bill: baseball, (American) football, (ice) hockey and basketball.

These are all big and all team sports, both important factors since they already have some global recognition and people want to support a team/country rather than an individual.

I don’t see baseball, however, as a serious prospect. Apart from the perceived arrogance of calling its principal national competition the “World Series,” games are too long and I just cannot get past the comedy giant gloves. A cricket ball is actually harder than a baseball and moves at similar speeds, yet cricket players are quite adept at catching it with bare hands, albeit incurring the odd broken finger. For this reason alone, baseball would struggle to win over any of the one billion cricket fans in India.

Football is also not a good choice. Games are far too long with far too many drawn-out breaks from the action, and the Super Bowl is honestly a pretty boring affair because of this and a lot of people only watch it for the commercials. It also has too many obscure rules and the players have far too narrow roles on the field. Some spend pretty much their entire career just attempting to move forward a couple of feet and never seem trusted with handling the ball.

So it’s between hockey and basketball. Both are fast-paced games where pretty much every player can be called on to play offense and defense in the space of a few seconds. Even as a complete novice it’s easy to get drawn into a tight game.

Hockey, though, has two major disadvantages. The first is equipment. You need to either live somewhere really cold or have an indoor ice rink nearby, and so immediately most of the world is excluded. It might be pretty popular in North America and Northern Europe, but there is no chance of street kids in some poor third-world country playing a pickup game. The second is fighting. Simply put, it’s a joke. In any other sport the players would be sent off and banned for a very long time for what they get away with in hockey. Until the game sorts this problem out, its global ambitions will be limited.

And that leaves basketball. The good news is that, after making enemies by ripping the other three to shreds, I have a very different opinion of its prospects.

A Basketball World Cup could just maybe oust soccer from the global consciousness, if only for a while. It is not an easy task, though, and the fact that I only discovered while writing this column that a world championship actually exists, and plays its 17th quadrennial tournament this summer, hints at what needs to be overcome.

As a relative newcomer to basketball, I would say forget the current format and forget the NBA. Instead, March Madness would be the ideal model for such a tournament.

It has everything you would want: The different rounds are played across the USA, bringing the action to the fans; almost everyone has a local team involved, cue legions of diehard patriotic fans; the huge number of games played dominates TV schedules, making it almost impossible to escape from; giant-killers abound, exciting upsets are what it is all about; men’s and women’s tournaments are played side-by-side — in fact, it could be the sport with the most parity between the two sexes.

So host big regional tournaments in four of the continents of the world and play a week of intense action with the games spread across the TV schedules purely as a consequence of the different time zones. Then relocate to a fifth continent for the finals a week or two later. Up to 32 teams could easily be accommodated, bringing in millions of fans and leaving ample room for upsets. And run the men’s and women’s tournaments at the same time to further jam the airwaves and leave no room for thoughts of other sports.

For now, though, I’m going to stop dreaming and turn my attention back to soccer. The first ever World Cup to be played in Africa kicks off in less than two months and England sit third favorites to come away with the top prize.
Tom Taylor really believes in this year’s England squad. Prepare him for his inevitable disappointment at tom.taylor “at” stanford.edu.