I have to admit I have never been a huge soccer fan. I rarely watch soccer, or futbol, on tv. It is not that I find the game boring but I only have so many hours I can allocate to sports viewing. Soccer gets squeezed out versus other sports. When we lived in England, I did watch more and followed the Premier League. Now, I reserve my soccer time for the World Cup. Following the U.S.A.’s women’s team tends to be a lot more gratifying than cheering on the men. The women’s team is a superior program and always show up. The U.S.A. Men’s team is always a “next” Cup team. My calendar is marked up the U.S. Women matches and I will be watching as long as I can manage to stay up – pacific time zones – ugh.
There are similarities between futbol and college football, particularly in terms of fandom. The big soccer clubs are as heavily tradition-laid as any FBS program. Like college football fans, they are passionate and travel in force to away games. For the majority of my career, I worked in a large multi-national corporation and the chatter during the World Cup easily matched the tenor of college football discussion on any given Monday across the U.S. As a service to the less enlightened FBS fans, below is a primer on some the women’s country teams and their U.S. college football equivalent. Enjoy it, and our cleaned up review of Mississippi State (probably equivalent to the Canadian team – plays in a really tough division, has occasional moments of brightness, but never really in contention to win it all) here.
FIFA Women’s World Cup Teams and their NCAA College Football Equivalents
