Listening to soccer.

Did you know that the NBA is in the midst of its very first, "In-Season Tournament" right now? Played for something that may or may not be known as, "the NBA Cup"?

You might have picked this up on the local news, because during official "tournament" games, they cover the court with stick-ons telling you so. ZOWIE! The excitement!

Why is the NBA doing something so silly and, well, boring, I hear you ask? Well, mostly because it's the sort of thing soccer does.

Association football, as they know it elsewhere, is always doing things like holding special cup tournaments and "champions league" competitions, all around the world, in what are essentially their year-round, never-ending seasons. The little men with big bank accounts who run professional sports in America look at soccer's success and are filled with envy.

How can we make our sports international favorites, and thus make even more money than the ungodly amounts we already do? they ask themselves, and their minions.

Thus we get NFL teams dragged over to Europe for league games, and the idiotic, career-ending "World Baseball Classic," and now the "NBA Cup." Baseball, which is so insecure it tries to imitate all other professional sports, also features endless rounds of playoffs, which is how we get the fourth-best team in the American League playing the sixth-best team in the National League, in what used to be the premier sporting event in North America.

(Even professional soccer in America tries to imitate soccer, plastering names such as "United" or "FC" or "Real" on its teams, in an affectation that has nothing to do with the organic ways in which those real teams abroad acquired those names.)

Is soccer really so popular? Allen Barra, one of our smartest writers on sports, makes the bold claim that, whenever a country has a possible alternative—U.S. football, basketball, hockey, field hockey, cricket, track and field, even baseball—soccer ranks a distant second, or less.  

Soccer's biggest, sustained appeal—and most of its money—comes from Europe, of course, where the sport continues to reign uncontested. But is this because they play lots of "in-season" tournaments and "cup games"?

I would say the real appeal of soccer can be seen in this picture, a still from a video you can easily find on YouTube, or anywhere else on the internet. It's the fans in Liverpool's "Kop Curve," collectively singing the Beatles' new hit, "She Loves You," in 1964. 

The Kop Curve was a section of stands in Liverpool's ancient Anfield stadium. The section was originally named "Spion Kop," in 1906, after a battle in the Boer War where the Brits lost a lot of men, and in this moment stands for all that we love most about sports.

The Kop stood for hallowed memories, tragic and happy, and for local pride—in this instance, for the group and the sound that was suddenly sweeping the music world. Soccer meant getting together with the lads once a week or so, to cheer and drink and sing, and reminisce—to build memories. The same way that baseball and basketball and football and all other beloved sports used to. 

There is a dark side to this as well, as there always is to when men get together to drink and shout—something tribal, and bigoted, and too often racist, that led to soccer thugs and riots. Thank God there has been less of that—and more women, and people from all groups—at American games. But then, that's the struggle we all face, in everything, isn't it? Saving the best from the past while discarding the worst?

The men who run our sports don't get that. Indeed, even English soccer has come to seem more anodyne in recent years—not least because more and more Americans have bought in? (Looking at you, John Henry.) 

I don't think the answer is inventing "in-season tournaments"—or coming up with silly reasons for selling new, "City Connect" gear, or everyone-in playoffs. I think it's keeping the games cheap enough and democratic enough for everyone to be able to afford them. For everyone to get together to sing and celebrate, and remember. 

Instead, sports here and everywhere seem to be moving in the opposite direction. Yes, bring in more nepo babies and oil sheikh money to make it all the pricier, and more exclusive. Keep holding up cities, even struggling cities, for more stadium money—and moving to pathetic replicas of real places, if you don't get it. Stick ads all over everyone's most beloved memories, and lie as you breathe when the suckers question any of it.

As far as I'm concerned, you can take your in-seasons tournaments or your Little World Series. I'd rather be in the Kop—or at Yankee Stadium—circa 1964.