The soccer mom has entered the national lexicon, replacing the Little League coach as the stereotypical American parent. And yet the TV audience in the U.S. for the entire 64-game World Cup tournament will likely be smaller than it is for a typical World Series. Show me a soccer mom who's watching the World Cup and I'll show you a ticked-off woman who thought Grey's Anatomy would be on. Her life is spent shuttling her kids to and from soccer games and soccer practice, and she's still not watching the World Cup. In fact, the only time she's ever watched soccer on TV is when she was playing back home video of her kids.

When the folks who make Red Bull energy drink bought the MetroStars and changed their name to the New York Red Bulls, nobody sneezed. Try naming a major league baseball team after a soft drink and you'll wish for the kind of comparatively gentle treatment that Barry Bonds is getting around the country. Baseball fans don't even like it when the teams name their stadiums after beverages. But for Americans to get upset about the name of one of the country's professional soccer teams, we'd first have to know that the country has professional soccer teams.

I don't mean to disparage the game itself; it's so physically demanding that soccer players make the guys in the NBA look like out-of-shape couch potatoes. But that hasn't gotten the attention of this country's sports fans.

You know that movie Fever Pitch, with Jimmy Fallon playing the obsessive Red Sox fan? It was a remake of a little-known movie by the same name about a soccer fan. The studio, 20th Century Fox, decided they had to change it from a soccer movie to a baseball movie, because nobody in this country could ever imagine getting that wrapped up in soccer. As if to prove the point, Goal! The Dream Begins is in theaters now, and it was the No. 28 movie in the country last weekend. More people have gone to see that Akeelah movie about a spelling bee.

Look, we tried. We just don't like watching soccer. We tried when the World Cup was played on U.S. soil in 1994. The biggest soccer event in the world, played right on our front lawn, and we didn't care for more than a few minutes. You know who our national spokesman for the World Cup was? Elisabeth Shue's little brother. Yes, the guy who played Billy on Melrose Place was the most famous soccer player we could find in this country. We tried again when the U.S. team won the Women's World Cup in 1999. We got excited for a second when that one player took off her shirt, but that was about it. By the time the Women's United Soccer Association got started in 2001, we had moved on to something else. The league folded in 2003. What else could the U.S. women's team possibly do to get our attention? Besides winning the World Cup, they won the gold medal in the Olympics and one of them even married a baseball player, but we still didn't care enough to keep the league around for more than two years.

Sorry, soccer, but when your players have all their clothes on, we're just not that into you. Maybe we can still be friends ... if you'll help us study for the spelling bee.

Adam Hofstetter's column appears every Wednesday on SI.com. When he gets back from driving his kids to soccer practice, he'll read your letters at ahofstetter@gmail.com.

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