Rating: 
Summary: Offside is on target....
Review: "Offside"'s authors have come up with a book that works both as a work of sports history, and socio-cultural criticism. Markovits and Hellerman paint a clear picture of American social behavior as it relates to the teams we follow, detailing the development of U.S. sports culture, and its expansion into the dominant role it currently holds in society. Clear without being dumb-downed, intellectual without being too "academic" (i.e. wordy, jargony, overly theory-based, etc.), "Offside" is a serious, enveloping work.The main meat of the book lies in its center section, which goes into a historical account of the birth and development of the "big three & 1/2" sports in America (baseball, football, basketball and hockey). The authors show how each sport had a "window of opportunity" to expand within the backdrop of America's cultural and financial explosion from apx. the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Great Depression. Here, the book exposes something probably unknown today: that soccer had the opportunity to take part in this development in the 1920s, but due to politicing and in-fighting, was not able to keep a single, solid, professional league together, choosing to split instead into smaller, weaker, more insignifcant groups that could not sustain themselves long enough to gain a fan base and a presence in the American sports scene. Meanwhile, the "big sports" ended up a societal "necessity" in the 1930s: spectator-sports and movies boomed, giving people the best bang for their diminished bucks. The later sections of the book explain how soccer may have been granted a new "window" due to (1) the World Cup in the U.S. in the past decade; (2) the establishment of the MSL, with the most capitol of any American soccer league yet; and (3) the dominance of the U.S. Women's team, thus giving a female form to the historically male world sport-space. There are new challenges a fledgling sports league faces that didn't exist at the beginning of the last century, some more obvious than others--I'll leave it to the authors and their grand piece of work to explain the rest.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining & Accurate
Review: A great read - and not just for sports fans. Markovits and Hellerman use their topic (the lack of a real soccer culture in the US) to explicate and explore the relationship between America and the rest of the world. For those interested in the development and history of the United State's various sports leagues, OFFSIDE has plenty of accurate facts, references, and resources. For those interested in the more theoretical & sociological aspects of the work, OFFSIDE has a strong and clear outline and plenty of well written, interesting analysis and argument. If you want to understand the social and political role sports play in human culture, OR you want to learn more about American exceptionalism, (and have fun doing it), OR both, read this book!
Rating:
Summary: If you like sports, you will love this book!
Review: Anyone interested in sports should purchase this intuitive book by Markovits and Hellerman. They pose and then answer the question 'Why has the United States remained so aloof from the world's most popular sport?' They explain the origins of the "Big Three and One-Half" and clarify how each sport uniquely became a part of American "hegemonic" culture." It does a thorough job of exploring and explaining the rise in popularity of sports from the perspective of the theory of American Exceptionalism. This book imparts unique and fascinating incites of sports from a sociological viewpoint, while its multitude of information behaves as a reference and an almanac for the development of American sports history. Reading "Offside" will entertain and educate even the most sophisticated sports fan!
Rating:
Summary: If you like sports, you will love this book!
Review: Anyone interested in sports should purchase this intuitive book by Markovits and Hellerman. They pose and then answer the question 'Why has the United States remained so aloof from the world's most popular sport?' They explain the origins of the "Big Three and One-Half" and clarify how each sport uniquely became a part of American "hegemonic" culture." It does a thorough job of exploring and explaining the rise in popularity of sports from the perspective of the theory of American Exceptionalism. This book imparts unique and fascinating incites of sports from a sociological viewpoint, while its multitude of information behaves as a reference and an almanac for the development of American sports history. Reading "Offside" will entertain and educate even the most sophisticated sports fan!
Rating:
Summary: great but lengthy
Review: Be prepared that this tome has a lot of unnecessary intellectualizing (I did not get why the author used some Austrian references when, let's face facts, Austria have not been a world power in soccer since the '20s and '30s. The footnotes alone are a book in itself. Despite this academic approach this book is beyond brilliant in its analysis of North American sports--yes, it's not just about soccer but places soccer in the context of how it has struggled to establish itself at the pro level in North America and explains why. For those of us who love all four major sports . . . and soccer, it is an eye-opener to learn about how soccer was a fairly established sport in America but blew its advantage just as baseball and college football took over. A definite great read but could have used a better editor to slash and burn much of the lengthy overworking of some points.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliantly researched, not sure about premise
Review: Books on American soccer (and, good grief, there aren't many to choose from, folks) tend to consist of little more than statistical abstracts or how-to-play coaching guides. Narratives tracing the game's development are few and far between, and for that reason alone we should be grateful for this book. The history of the American game is in the hands of too few people, and the story of its development (or the lack of it) is often unfamiliar to even the most devoted fan. If I understand Markovits's premise correctly, the reason why there is no soccer in America is because it cannot find room in America's crowded three-and-one-half sport "space." This I find hard to accept. Almost certainly, there are many reasons why soccer has never been embraced by America, "sport space" amongst them. Patriotism and xenophobia, ignorance, incompetence and lack of vision, conflicting interests, and just plain bad timing have surely made significant contributions, too. One only has to read much of what Markovits and Hellerman have written to see this. I really enjoyed reading this book, particularly its attempt to compare the development of soccer with that of America's other major team sports. It may be an academic work, but it's hardly excruciating to read, and its truly international perspective (rare in American sports books) makes it essential reading for anyone curious as to the game's failure to take hold in the U.S. The painstaking research and careful annotation is also worthy of mention and will be useful to future writers.
Rating:
Summary: American Soccer's Missed Opportunities & Untapped Potential
Review: For those of you who always wondered why soccer never established itself as one of the dominant sports in America,this is your explanation. This is an excellent book for soccer fans, sports fans in general, and even social scientists (but you don't have to be a political sociologist to get tremendous insight out of this book). There are chapters on: Sports as Culture in Industrial Societies The concept of "sport space" and how both baseball and football have made it very difficult for soccer to becomone one of the "big 3" sports. A tantalizing set of missed opportunities in the 1920s when soccer could have established a much stronger presence. Not to mention the destructive role that college soccer, and particularly the NCAA has had from the beginning on the development of soccer. The modification of American "sport space" in the 2nd half of the 20th century when pro football displaced college football as the dominant form of that sport, as well as the development of the NBA and the spread of the NHL. All of these inhibited development of soccer in that era. The ambiguous role of the NASL and its positive and negative impact on MLS. The impact of the 1994 World Cup; and The coverage of the 1998 World Cup by the American media. The authors examine the American sporting structural foundations that have inhibited soccer from taking its place as a dominant pastime -- such as baseball or American football. But rather than asserting that these dominant positions of team sports "invented here" will remain for the forseeable future -- at soccer's expense -- the authors are wise to mention such factors as globalization and and latino influence in the US that may make the 21st century a more vibrant "sport space" for soccer than was the 20th. In short, this is an exceptional piece of sports analysis that all serious soccer fans should devour.
Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: Having read this book eight times I find the book to be of the most immense importance that i am thinking of putting the authors forward for the nobel prize. Outstanding.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice theory. Football data inaccurate, though.
Review: I am not sure that the footballing reader will take their arguments too seriously. It is a vaguely entertaining attempt to theorize about 'soccer' and it's place in the American psyche (or lack thereof), but some of the 'facts' used to back up the ramblings are inaccurate, and this results in the book losing some credibility. It was a good attempt, though, to explore an interesting and confounding phenomenon. Perhaps it will spark some interest and a more accurate study will appear as a result.
Rating:
Summary: Not just for soccer fans
Review: I enjoyed this book a great deal. It is about much more than soccer, although soccer does take center stage,of course! Anyone at all interested in soccer(as in watching and being a fan, not just playing) should read it. The book is also about the relationship between modern sports and society, and most importantly, how and why the United States is both different and similar to other modern nations regarding its sports culture, or "sports space" as the authors phrase it. Much of this argument is presented in the first chapter, which some might find intimidating due to the heavy amount of references to traditional academic literature. But those who stick with it will be rewarded with the author's incisive analysis to the subject matter, and the book does become an easier read along the way. The second chapter provides a good historical analysis of American sports space overall(e.g., key developments in the history of baseball, basketball,etc.), including the reasons for soccer's perceived absense from the scene. Soccer fans will enjoy the third chapter, where the authors present the history of soccer in the U.S., which they continue to analyze in Chapter 5. Throughout the book is an important discussion of the development of the modern American sports culture, providing the context for understanding how soccer does and does not fit into that space. Overall, this is a book well worth reading for anyone interested in American culture in general, or for those into the American sports scene in particular -- soccer fans, of course, will love it. As a fan of women's sports, I appreciated the authors' portrayal and analysis of women's soccer, most notably the 1999 Women's World Cup, though I disagree with their view of the "marginalization" of women's sports in general, women's basketball in particular. And, I wish that the authors would have taken the time to devote a chapter to the 1999 Women's World Cup -- HELD IN THE U.S. -- in the same way that they did for the men's World Cups of '94 and '98. In general, however, I felt this was an excellent book, deserving of 5 stars.
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