Ojos Locos (pronounced [ˈo.xos ˈlo.kos], Spanish for “Crazy Eyes”) was founded in 2010 by restaurateurs Randy DeWitt, Jack Gibbons, Rich Hicks, and Todd East.[1] DeWitt, the owner of parent company Front Burner Restaurants, had previously founded Twin Peaks, a chain of wilderness lodge-themed breastaurants, in 2005.[2] The 2010 opening of the first Ojos Locos restaurant in Dallas coincided closely with the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the chain has consistently emphasized soccer as a principal sport to watch at its locations.[3][4][5]
Man, when I lived in the DC area…even if a bar wasn’t dedicated to the Caps…on any night they had a game…just about every sports bar turned into a Caps bar for that evening.
Ovechkin jerseys and Caps flags everywhere!
You might see a lot of the same if Houston gets the NHL.
If we’re talking non-breastaurant sports bars, there are at least a solid half-dozen in Houston (that I know of) that actually fill up on Premier League matchdays, despite kick times that are very unfriendly to bars and usually require early opening.
But if the NHL franchise comes…not only will there be a lot more hockey emphasis sports bars…but you’ll also see what I saw in DC with the Caps: nearly every bar becoming an NHL bar on game night.
What do you folks imagine can be done, if anything, to improve the men’s soccer “culture” in the USA, so that even if soccer in the USA doesn’t match some other spectator sports in TV ratings and attendance…we can at least play at a “Final Four” or better World Cup level?
As for the rest of the World Cup, now that the USA is out, I likely won’t be watching, but I think it’d be cool if Norway, with their “Viking Row” won it all!
The biggest issue with US Soccer is pretty much unanimously accepted to be the pay-for-play model at the youth level. It breeds nepotism and locks out kids who can’t afford to compete. I’ve seen this post going around a lot, and it describes the situation well:
MLS gets a lot of criticism whenever the US loses, but the reality is that MLS is a red herring. national teams are made at the youth level. Our best players should be playing in Europe anyway.
Yes, which is part of why other countries are catching up in those sports. MLB and the NBA are now almost a quarter foreign-born. We do have a little bit of an in-built advantage in Basketball, though – so much of that sport is dependent on genetics, and retired NBA players tend to settle down and have their kids in the US.
To some extent, that pipeline is yielding top players; we have more players playing abroad in top leagues than we’ve ever had before. That number has roughly doubled since 2010. But the pipeline is cut in a few places. A lot of kids switch to more domestically-popular sports. Others can’t afford the club system and don’t get the development they’d need. And then there’s the fact that there are thousands fewer High Schools with Men’s Soccer teams than Basketball or Football or Baseball, and few D-I colleges, and therefore fewer playing opportunities. It’s sort of the opposite of the Title IX narrative that gets a lot of the credit for our Women’s Soccer dominance.
Per the NFHS, there are about 50% more High Schools with Boys’ Basketball than Soccer. Most have both, but there are quite a lot that have only Basketball.
But the number of schools with soccer isn’t that far behind football.
Also, the number of women’s soccer schools is likewise way behind several sports, yet somehow, we DOMINATE the women’s side on an international level.
Go figure.
Of course, although ice hockey doesn’t come close to making the top ten HS sports for men or women, we’ve managed to win Olympic gold three times, win a few World Hockey Championships, and produce numerous NHL all-stars.
Ya know, that Egyptian coach is a really big jerk.
Not only did he nearly attack a photographer after the Argentina loss, but back in 2016, he actually attacked a photographer on the field and was jailed for it.
In addition to the 42MM that watched USA-Belgium, apparently 44MM people in the US watched Mexico vs England. [Note: there are 38-40MM Mexican-Americans in the US.]
Those two games were the two most-watched non-NFL sporting events in the US since Game 7 of the 1991 World Series. Outdrew every single Basketball, Hockey, or College Football game ever.
