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Soccer Is Worth Another Try

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Derek Maul

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 2, 2008

I tried out for a professional soccer team in 1980 and made the cut before a bunch of factors steered me in other directions. Today, I'm too old to be one of the Tampa Bay Rowdies, but it looks like I might get another chance to watch.

Professional soccer is coming back to Tampa. That is so cool. I'm appalled, however, at the loud public voices writing the project off before it gets started. The main reason, belched time and again, is, "We tried that before; it didn't work."

Have these naysayers never heard of Thomas Edison and his false starts? How about the Internet: Does the Web look anything like the idea launched a few decades ago? Then there's America, "The Great Experiment": Aren't we still struggling to get it right?

Take a look at Ybor City. Spend some time in West Tampa. How about redevelopment downtown and at Channelside or Temple Terrace's vision for a town center and Brandon's commitment to a real sense of place? What if we applied "We tried that before; it didn't work" to those efforts?

If Tampa isn't about "We believe, so let's move forward," then we're denying our historical identity as a community. "Can do" is written into our civic DNA; it's the heartbeat that makes our city tick.

One of Tampa's great attributes is its diversity: ethnic, racial, religious, culinary, demographic, political, recreational, you name it. Where else in America can you attend a professional golf tournament one day, spring training baseball the next and a Stanley Cup playoff game that night?

Soccer, I'd argue to the boorish voices pooh-poohing the project, is as cosmopolitan as sport gets. That's who we are. We're not just another cookie-cutter, generic city, and the reborn Rowdies concept screams, "Tampa is a kick in the grass."

It's not like the team owners want to rob taxpayers of hundreds of millions of dollars to build a nicer stadium. Instead, the team plans a privately funded 7,500-seat soccer-specific arena in northwest Hillsborough County.

We can't get enough of the Tampa Bay Rays because they're winning. What would a little enthusiasm for a few imaginative soccer entrepreneurs cost us? They're not asking for a subsidy, just a charge of positive energy.

So let's knock off the cheap shots and instead throw our hats in the air for a group of guys who want to bring some fun back into the professional sports mix.

Repeat after me: "Tampa is no town for cynics," "Soccer kicks," "Goooooaaaaalllll!"

Columnist Derek Maul can be reached at derekmaul@gmail.com.

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