Colin Cowherd Hails the Coming of Soccer as a Big Four Sport, Actually Makes Sense

My good, sweet god. I didn't think I'd be saying this, but I think Colin Cowherd is onto something here. And that something, of all things, is soccer.

This isn't the first time that Cowherd has gone on a rant about the surging popularity of the Beautiful Game in America. He seems to roll this spiel out for every big soccer tournament, and this year's Copa America was no exception.

On his Fox Sports 1 radio show on Friday, Cowherd claimed that soccer is one of the four most important sports in America on the air today. Granted, this is relative progress: he's conceding that hockey is less important to Americans than soccer, which would have been news maybe a decade ago, but still. He actually went on record extolling the virtues of soccer. Just take a look at this list of quotes:

- "Our country is changing. The demographics are changing, and people coming into our country are soccer fans, not hockey fans."

- "Last night in America, 100,000 people showed up for a soccer game and none of our players or teams were involved."

- "Celebrity culture in America's never been bigger. Soccer stars are celebrities. Baseball's got one celebrity: Bryce Harper. Every soccer team's got celebrities."

- "The other thing is soccer guys aren't six-ten like an NBA star; they're not 350 pounds like an NFL player. They're five-foot-nine-and-a-half to five-foot-eleven, 180 pounds, and they're approachable. And they don't wear a helmet. And a soccer star is on the field for two hours."

- "In hockey, your star player is on the ice for 20 minutes. In baseball, he only has four at-bats. Clayton Kershaw only pitches once a week."

- "Soccer is easier to play; it's more relatable; it's less expensive. It's more global, and right now in America, it's in the Big Four."

Cowherd does gloss over a couple facts, such as: more Americans watched the Women's World Cup Final in 2015 than the Stanley Cup Final or the NBA Final that year—so it's not just people rooting for foreign teams. And the fact that the rise in soccer popularity might be more of a generational shift, ranking as the second-favorite sport among people under 25—as opposed to an immigration-based shift. Also, I'd love to see Cowherd come up with a soccer celebrity on Crystal Palace.

But when Mike Francesa goes on the air absolutely incensed that Sports Illustrated dedicated 11 pages to soccer in a recent issue (don't worry, he counted them for you), it's reassuring to hear Cowherd be worldly and rational—even if it's for just a few seconds.