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Show Page Tuesday, May 28, THE HERALD, Provo, Utah, B8 1991 oecep remains me mvi sible snort m Am soccer tournaments. "Akeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing were soccer players. Jon Bon Jovi used to play soccer. A lot of rockers grew up with it. Tom Cruise used to play," Forte said. "We can't afford them, so we have to sell them on the love of the game. "But we're not ready yet. We've got somebody right now working quietly on a celebrity game. MTV is hot for it They had great success with their celebrity softball game. We're still working on the where and when. "We're also working on a sand soccer league in Calfiornia. Can you imagine the T&A on TV of five-a-sisoccer on the beach. We'll tour for two months from San Deigo to Santa Barbara, just turning up on the beach with some local disc jockey." There are still a few problems. Soccer has yet to take that final step, which will make it truly popular in the United States, Forte said. "Soccer has ... to become a SportsChannel is hoping to change all that By JOHN NELSON AP Sports Writer NEW YORK (AP) Despite its popularity, Michael worldwide Forte calls soccer "the invisible sport" in America. to commit a huge block of time to soccer. Don't I wish that SportsChannel was bigger? Sure," Forte said. "But what I tell people is that the big networks don't live up to our standards. They don't know yet how to broadcast soccer to Ameri- Why? "Look what happened to the North American Soccer League. It was doomed to failure when you had to depend on foreign nationals for tickets and for players. It was a decade ahead of its time." Forte is president of Soccer USA Partners, which has television negotiating and marketing rights to the U.S. national team that will play in the World Cup in 1994 in America. SportsChannel America already is more than halfway through its schedule of 12 games in the World Series of Soccer pitting the U.S. team against the best national and club teams in the world. Over the next four years, the cable sports network, which now reaches about 16 million homes, will televise 300 hours of soccer. "SportsChannel has been willing an avid buyer of tickets to a sport you're not exposed to as a kid." Forte said studies show about 27 million Americans play or have played soccer, with the peak playing age 16. It's the biggest organized sport in the United States at the age level, he said, "and it's the fastest-growin- g high school sport in America." "In five years, those will be 21," Forte said. "That's when I would start the next pro league, in 1995 when all those 27 million kids are 21. I'd put a limit on the number of foreign players you can have. ... I'd make it a spring league. No way I would compete with the NFL. I would announce a pro league just before the World Cup, and I'd announce the layers the day after. "If it fails one more time, you can kiss it goodbye forever." A key to SportsChannel's telecasts has been the announcers. No British or European accents. Just cans." The next scheduled telecast will be against Ireland at Foxboro, Mass., on June 1. The U.S. team also will play Juventus Turin and AC Milan of Italy and Sheffield Wednesday of the English League. Last Sunday, USA vs. Argentina at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, Calif., drew 35,772 spectators. Working with SportsChannel America and the U.S. Soccer Federation, Forte keeps busy figuring out ways to fill the rest of those seats and get Americans interested in competitive, professional soccer. "Am I going to get my dad to go out and see a soccer game? Not in a million years," Forte said. "But my son? Sure. You don't become plain old Americans, like Jimmy Donovan and Matt Bahr, the former NFL placekicker who was a soccer at Perm State. Bahr has been assigned the project of familiarizing viewers with an Americanized terminology of the game, borrowing phrases from sports like basketball to de- scribe such soccer moves as "picks," "screens" and "in your face disgrace." "The kids have already invented their own terminology for the game. One thing we're looking into ' is getting kids who play soccer to give lessons to our announcers with a sense of humor," Forte said. "We're going to try a nationwide talent search for someone to do and analysis who's under 16." play-by-pl- Forte's marketing ideas don't stop there. Celebrity sponsorships, socSheffield Wednesday cer ball giveaways at fast-foo- d beach stores, and televised co-e- d street sport," Forte said. "In Central Park, they're playing losers out. The other day, there were 10 teams queued up, waiting to play." Soccer can become an inner-cit- y game, Forte said, even though it's played on a surface larger than a seven-asid- e, football field. "You go to South America, or places like Cameroon. The strength of these players is their individual skills, their dribbling and juggling. You don't need a field for that Of course, you eventually have to get them on a field, but not to start." At the same time, soccer's front-offipeople also have to take the next step puiling some big moninto the game. Already. Forte ey has attracted sponshorship from Anheuser-BuscAdidas and the M&M Mars candy company. "What we need is somebody like McDon aids," he said. "And we're working on an airline. "Soccer has suffered 10 years of mismarketing. Sponsors would come in and be terribly underser-vice- ce h, d. " '. Evangel, Pacific Lutheran gridders will introduce Chinese to football Mo. (AP) -When the Evangel College football team steps on the field at 100,000-se- on the Chinese people all the way around." The trip, which has the blessing exhibition series in the nation SPRINGFIELD, where almost all of the 1.14 billion people know almost nothing about the game. Evangel coach Keith Barefield smiles and shakes his head at the prospect of two tiny Christian colleges making international sports history. Evangel, affiliated with the Assemblies of God Church, has about 1,500 students, while Pacific Lutheran has about 3,300. Pacific Lutheran was 2 last season, Evangel stadi"We play in a 100,000-seum, with a nationally televised audience of potentially over 240 those are million Chinese people Super Bowl statistics right there," Baref'eld said. "For two small schools, this will be the experience of a lifetime." The two colleges are members of the NAIA. The NCAA prohibits offseason exhibitions. "The Chinese wanted teams from schools that they felt would exemplify not only good American football, but also sportsmanship," at Beijing Workers' Stadium, the stands will contain more than the few hundred folks who attend most Crusaders games. Actually about 99,500 more, including China's senior leader, Deng Xiaoping, plus a potential television audience of more than 200 million. "Talk about being pumped up. The adrenaline is going to be pumping through our veins," offensive guard Shad McGuire said. "It's going to be like playing in the Los Angeles Coliseum." American football makes its debut in China when Evangel and Pacific Lutheran University of Wash., play three exhibition games over 12 days in three cities beginning May 31 in Beijing. Chinese television has shown highlights of Evangel and Pacific Lutheran games since September, when it was announced the private liberal arts schools would perform v. China. he Chinese government in 1989 ioiicited offers from American college football teams to play an of the U.S. State Department, will coincide with the two-yeanniversary of China's bloody crackdown on the movement. Glenn Bernet, Evangel's vice ar president for academic affairs, said school officials thought long and hard before accepting the invitation because of China's human rights record. "I would have to say it's still a concern, but I think we view the trip positively even in light of those concerns," he said. "We're convinced one of the ways to help the Chinese government understand the need to make some changes in policy is to have more exchanges like this." Pacific Lutheran coach Frosty Westering compares the exhibitions to the "ping pong diplomacy" employed by former President Richard Nixon, who brought American table tennis players to China in 9-- 6. at a, fcatots . 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