There's a brilliant, shining light in our world of darkness and ignorance. It appears once every four years: the World Cup. For that one month each couple of years, people in the USA care about soccer (or football for our international friends). Doubters still say that the sport will never catch on here. They're wrong.
A couple years ago, there was no soccer on television, and nobody cared. Now it's on ESPN almost every weekend and awesome goals regularly make the Top 10 on SportsCenter.
So hide yo' kids, hide yo' wife! Soccer is coming and they're going to love it.
The beautiful game has been coming for a while. People have been paying more attention, going to more games, and otherwise learning more about it.
If you haven't been to a DePauw soccer game, fix that next year because they rock. They even have a handy Facebook group (The Official DePauw University Membership and Supporters Club) to let everybody know when games are so we can go do what DePauw students do best: be loud, obnoxious fans.
Soccer just needs a messiah to take it to the next level.
A new light is also on the horizon and it's called the New York Cosmos.
Right now it's a dead brand name from the 70s but in a decade it could return to its former glory.
Back in the 70s, the Cosmos were the first international mercenary team. With an insane amount of financial backing, they brought in the biggest names in the game from all over the world, including Brazilian player Edison Arantes do Nascimiento – also known as Péle.
Cosmos games regularly had 50,000 supporters there to see the spectacle on the field – attendance figures only matched by Machester United, Barcelona and Real Madrid.
They played teams from all over Europe and regularly clobbered them. It was a serious-business team.
Poor financial planning eventually led to their end in the 80s, but they're coming back.
Péle is already involved with the planning and scouting players for the resurrection.
Cristiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid (and a captain of the Portugese national team) is one of the players being considered for the team, just a sample of the caliber of player the Cosmos name attracts.
The best part? The Cosmos were legendary for an almost recklessly offensive approach to the game.
With plenty of goals and star power like Ronaldo on the field, it isn't so hard to imagine a USA where sports fans finally understand the appeal of soccer becoming a reality in the not-so-distant future.
The American love of underdogs and upsets is a match made in heaven for soccer. Just this weekend Liverpool F.C. (an incredibly talented English team) was expected to beat West Hampton United (the team from the film "Green Street Hooligans" and "Cass") by four or five goals.
The West Ham underdogs somehow pulled out a ridiculously entertaining 3-1 victory. If that had happened in America it would be on ESPN until next weekend.
The USA is ready to fall in love with soccer; it just needs the Cosmos to ask it out on a date.
A flashy team like that is the sort of change needed to bring the US soccer league from a minor league hobby to a major sensation. The hopes of every American soccer fan rest with the Cosmos and they will succeed.
As the Philadelphia Union's motto goes: Jungite aut Perite. Join or die.
— Carter is a sophomore from Carmel, Ind., majoring in English writing. opinion@thedepauw.com
