Why the game of football doesn't stop is challenging how Americans view sports

It is often said about American jazz pianist Thelonius Monk that what made him great was not the notes he played, but the notes he didn't play. It turns out that American sports are the same, and until recently, this has been a hindrance to soccer's success in the US.

The two biggest sports in America are baseball and football. In some cases, after a pitch or game, there is a break when the fan considers what just happened and what it means for what is to come.

Most of the time spent watching these games is not spent watching the action at all. It doesn't happen on the field, but between the spectators' ears, as they think about the relative benefits of going for fourth down or trying to steal second base.

Once the vocal effect or performance is recorded, another break, more time to think.

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Even basketball, the pace of which is very similar to that of football, falls into this well-known American sports pattern as the last minute of important games often takes forever with poor execution and timeouts.

In these conditions on the difficult field, the American people were once again left with no action, only thoughts.

The psychological experience of watching a football game is completely different, and frankly, very unfamiliar to the American mind. In global football, the action is almost never-ending: It sweeps and swells, it moves and flows, but in fact it goes on, relentlessly.

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Another way to think about the main difference here is through learning experience. One can read a book enthusiastically while simultaneously thinking about what one is reading, but that is very different from putting the book down, looking up and thinking about it. The former is dreamlike and liminal, the latter more pointed.

Soccer fans abroad often think that the ongoing hiatus from American sports is just an excuse for more commercials, and that's not entirely true. Americans love commercialism. In fact, the Super Bowl, our biggest sporting event, has a very different commercial competition.

But the reasons for the break run much deeper than capitalism and speak to broader differences in how Americans and others view the world around us.

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Philosophers Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze conceptualized time as two distinct concepts, Chronos and Aion. The first is sequential, one moment builds to the next, and is measurable in terms of past and future. The latter, Aion, is the eternal time in which everything happens, or seems to happen, at once.

The American lives by Chronos, the structure of cause and effect, and all that is measurable. This is why baseball involves more math than AP math courses. In recent years complex statistics have entered the world of football.

Europeans live in Aion. Their culture is thousands of years old, timeless and reaches both past and future simultaneously. This is evident on the football field as the fans don't really know how much time is left. Only the referee knows.

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Americans were much better at finding the timeless flow of football games, letting the subtle changes wash over them slowly, rather than spending three hours mentally calculating. In fact, it's relaxing.

This does not mean that football is boring. On an emotional level, it can provide all the heartache and joy of any American game. But it's not mentally taxing.

Ultimately what Americans would love most about the ongoing hiatus from our sport is the illusion of control they give us. Regardless of what is actually happening on the field, in those moments you are the coach or the manager, and it feels very real.

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It turns out that back in the 1960s, Europeans loved Thelonius Monk. They flocked to his staccato, one finger at a time, jazz piano unlike anything they had heard before. In its own way, soccer is returning the favor, giving Americans a new way to find time and beauty.

I don't expect Americans to ever give up our love of sports suspension. It's in our DNA. But after all, it's summer, so why not spend some lost time dreaming of World Cup football glory?

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