KevFu
Registered User
I was watching most games live early when there were 3 or 4 games a day, but I can't schedule my life around one game a day that my team isn't in. I've just been waking up and dealing with the terrible Fox Sports app to watch the QF/Semis on demand (NO Fox, I don't want to switch to WWE wrestling every 30 minutes into watching a 3 hour replay. Stop trying to switch!)
It's been fantastic to see how far the game has grown and become a better overall product. Mild bummer that it's going to come at the expense of the previously "automatic" semifinal berth and 50/50 being champs for the US; and putting both USA and Canada into a pool of 25 teams who are Quarterfinalist contenders.
But it's visibly better football. The reason it's "So far, so fast" is because the rest of the world HAD development systems for the sport, and they just "included females into it" instead of not developing them and picking the players who developed themselves the best.
I wish the US would jump on board the "Club" mentality where it's "We have the stadium and infrastructure, just play second set of games there with WOMEN'S MLS (and WOMEN'S NHL" etc), and keep growing the developmental system.
I'm a little intrigued (and mostly ignorant) about the club culture in Europe and how that can be applied to basketball.
I've been to Europe with college teams playing semi-pro club teams. As a CONCEPT it should/could be "easy." Like, European pro sport started with athletics clubs, where you had a gym and a field for people to play various sports and they decided to put together their best athletes at the club and go play other gym/clubs in various sports. I know that exists in France and Italy, and the former Yugoslavian nations... I've been to Europe with a basketball team, playing exhibitions in those clubs multiple times. I've got a friend who I met because he was a pro volleyball player in Croatia, met an American woman on one of the club's other teams; she retired and became a college basketball coach and he got hired as an assistant volleyball coach at the same school.
I just don't think these clubs really have a developmental system for youth where they're "growing and selling talent" for money like soccer teams do.
It's been fantastic to see how far the game has grown and become a better overall product. Mild bummer that it's going to come at the expense of the previously "automatic" semifinal berth and 50/50 being champs for the US; and putting both USA and Canada into a pool of 25 teams who are Quarterfinalist contenders.
But it's visibly better football. The reason it's "So far, so fast" is because the rest of the world HAD development systems for the sport, and they just "included females into it" instead of not developing them and picking the players who developed themselves the best.
I wish the US would jump on board the "Club" mentality where it's "We have the stadium and infrastructure, just play second set of games there with WOMEN'S MLS (and WOMEN'S NHL" etc), and keep growing the developmental system.
I'm a little intrigued (and mostly ignorant) about the club culture in Europe and how that can be applied to basketball.
I've been to Europe with college teams playing semi-pro club teams. As a CONCEPT it should/could be "easy." Like, European pro sport started with athletics clubs, where you had a gym and a field for people to play various sports and they decided to put together their best athletes at the club and go play other gym/clubs in various sports. I know that exists in France and Italy, and the former Yugoslavian nations... I've been to Europe with a basketball team, playing exhibitions in those clubs multiple times. I've got a friend who I met because he was a pro volleyball player in Croatia, met an American woman on one of the club's other teams; she retired and became a college basketball coach and he got hired as an assistant volleyball coach at the same school.
I just don't think these clubs really have a developmental system for youth where they're "growing and selling talent" for money like soccer teams do.
