\n<\/p>\n
Old habits die hard.<\/p>\n
When I read in the Sun-Times<\/a> that Joe Mansueto has agreed to personally finance construction of a 22,000-seat soccer stadium in the South Loop, my immediate response was to smile at another rich man\u2019s folly. Soccer? Really? Who wants to watch a soccer game?<\/p>\n But then a certain mustachioed coach wandered into mind.<\/p>\n \u201cBe curious,\u201d Ted Lasso said, in that folksy Kansas twang. \u201cNot judgmental.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, Ted claimed to be quoting Walt Whitman, which is ridiculous. \u201cJudgmental\u201d is a 20th century word.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t even coined until 1873, which happens to be the year Whitman had a stroke \u2014 I\u2019m assuming the two events are unrelated \u2014 and he spent the rest of his life molesting his 1855 \u201cLeaves of Grass.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJudgmental\u201d isn\u2019t even an entry in my 1978 Oxford English Dictionary. Suggesting Whitman used the word \u201cjudgmental\u201d is like claiming Lincoln said, \u201cTransgender rights are human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n But I digress, a folk illness among those with a fondness for words.<\/p>\n \u201cBe curious; not judgmental\u201d is still good advice, even if coined by Jason Sudeikis, who along with Brendan Hunt \u2014 cast as the dark, deep-watered Coach Beard \u2014 are the masterminds behind Apple TV hit \u201cTed Lasso.\u201d The pair developed the show to reflect their own growing soccer interest as improv comedians at Boom Chicago, a Second City clone in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n I became curious, learning that Mansueto is sinking one-tenth of his personal fortune into this project. Mansueto is worth $6.9 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index<\/a>. Building this stadium \u2014 taking the $650 million price tag at face value and ignoring the inevitable cost overruns \u2014 means he\u2019ll only have $6.2 billion left. Bold.<\/p>\n My curiosity centered around this question: Did \u201cTed Lasso,\u201d which lent much-needed humanity to the first, awful COVID year, also boost the popularity of soccer?<\/p>\n In ancient times, when I was growing up, American kids played soccer, informally, but it wasn\u2019t a sport we followed professionally. Nobody traded soccer cards. Soccer, like the metric system, was something happening far away, in Europe and South America.<\/p>\n